Gwangju Plays: Ingress

Are you tired of playing the same boring games, or sitting on your couch staring aimlessly at a T.V.? Ingress may be the answer; a real world “massively multiplayer online game” (MMOG) that is taking over Gwangju.

Developed by Niantic, a Google subsidiary, the game takes place in an alternative version of the real world on your smart phones. According to the in-game storyline, players join either The Enlightened faction or the Resistance, two groups that are hunting for alien “exotic matter,” or XM. Participants download the app, and then use a Google Maps style interface to find portals––typically a historical landmark, museum, sculpture, convention center and other popular destination point around the world––that have this exotic matter. Each team competes to control as much of the XM as possible.

According to the Google Play store, there have been over 7 million downloads of the game so far worldwide, and now it is available to download on the iPhone as well. There are over six hundred Ingress members on Korea’s Google+, with more members being added every day.

Even though the game has been out for over two years and has developed an intricate back-story, it is not hard for a new user to join. Player Stephanie Peters said “There are two parts of Ingress,” said Stephanie Peters. “There’s the part where you run around blowing things up, basically playing ‘Capture-the-Flag’, and then there’s the part where there’s a complicated mobile storyline. We don’t really play storylines, which sounds like a big copout, but it’s a lot of backstory to catch up on.”

Ingress is only available in English, which can make it harder to enjoy the storyline for non-native speakers. Yang Hae-kwon (Ingress name: Samsungman) is a level 14 Resistance player. He’s one of the highest-ranking players in Gwangju and thinks that despite the language barrier, the mechanics of the game are easy. Of those who consider the game difficult, Yang is contemptuous. “They want to play in their chairs.”

Kim Jae-in (Ingress name: NeoJaein) is a level 8 member of the Enlightened team who thinks Ingress is the next step to gaming. “Some people say that Ingress is the third generation game. The first generation game is video games. The second-generation game is DDR (Xbox, Dance Dance Revolution.) That makes people wake up from the sofa. The third generation is Ingress. It’s getting out of the house to walk around.”

The easiest thing about the game, all of the players agreed, is how easy it is to commute and play the game.

“I have seen so much of Gwangju that I’ve never seen because the best possible places to go are the places you’ve never been,” says Peters. “I’m going to go to the 5.18 Sangmu Park and take a portal, and it gives you a reason to get out and stretch your legs and go hunt down cool things that you’ve never seen.”

Brian Burgoyne (Ingress name: 1BigFool), is a level 8 player on the Resistance team. He went from weighing 90 kilograms to weighing 85 in a month just by playing the game. “I walk between 6-10 miles a day. That’s why I got into this game more is because it gave me a path. This is my purpose for the day, and then I add it up on Google maps, and that is eight miles.”

Gwangju’s tight-knit players are fiercely competitive. Right now the Enlightened team controls most of the downtown area, while the Resistance team has taken over the Sangmu area. In spite of their competitiveness, the factions were able to unite for a project this year entitled “Gwangju Lights.” In the game, once you capture a portal, you can connect the portals in an area and create a zone visible on the game map. This strengthens the area a team controls. The factions used their fields to spell out the Chinese symbol for light to represent Gwang (light) ju (province).

“It took an enormous amount of coordination, because it meant that no one in Gwangju was allowed to make fields for a week and a half,” said Burgoyne. “There was a truce for like a week and a half! We couldn’t blow things up. We couldn’t make fields so we could spell this out, and it was visible across the city. On the world map, you could see the first character for Gwangju. It was very cool.”

Each faction is looking for new members to fight for the cause. To get involved with the Gwangju Ingress community, sign up on Ingress Google+ or the Ingress: Gwangju: Enlightened Facebook page.