Did you know about this?

Video games are pushing the edge of technology and this one is crazy.  And of course there have been a number of movies making a parody or prediction of such a world like the Tron films.  Did you know however there is a game called Ingress that is being played in major metropolitan areas all over the world and you likely don’t even realize it?  How is this possible that there may be game players all around us and we haven’t even noticed?

Here is a bit of info about one story of this being played in the wide open:

Early last summer, at 3 a.m. in the South Bronx, an agent named D Skully was getting frustrated. Staring into a black-and-green grid on his smartphone, he attempted to secure a target for his team — but every time he thought he’d nabbed it, it’d get stripped away. He looked around; nobody else was out. 

Suddenly, D Skully spotted a girl’s face illuminated by the light of her phone screen in a small car parked down the street. As she remembers it, he went and knocked on her window to confront her, and as soon as she was caught, the car peeled off.

The two of them were playing Ingress, an alternate reality game (or ARG) run by a Google startup called Niantic Labs. Ingress is like a giant game of Risk or Capture the Flag, only the game board is the entire world. The goal is to capture as many “portals,” or in-game waypoints and locations, and hold them for your team for as long as possible.

Except unlike other mobile games, Ingress players — known as agents — have to run around city streets, parks, alleys and backcountry destinations in order to win. The game is played by millions of people, and if you’re in a major metropolitan area, chances are that Ingress players are all around you.

Will this continue to grow in popularity and start expanding into other areas such as business with virtual reality gamification?  We hope you enjoy the video!

thanks to mic.com for the info

thanks to Jordi R Cardona for the pic