Trust but verify...
Morganza
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How do I verify that a given Niantic Chat username is associated with a given game account?
What would prevent someone from making a Niantic Chat account that impersonates someone's IGN?
What happens when there are innocent collisions? As far as I know names aren't reserved universally; when PoGo was released, Ingress players were told they had only a limited window to reserve their names.
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Big concern, agreed.
I would suggest that your Niantic Chat profile name is pulled through from the account you logged into on the relevant game, and that cannot be changed unless you apply for a name change.
I would then allow agents to set a "Display Name" instead... so for instance, my profile name would be @Azhreia, but my display name might be Viona.
The Niantic Chat platform shoudl be able to offer something no other chat platform can... and that's to visibly tie a gaming account to its chat persona. This should also include the relevant game faction/team/school indicators.
If Niantic Chat name and Ingress agent name were not associated, Niantic Chat seems to be useless for agent community. Because discord, slack, etc are better text chat tool for us. Niantic Chat could have advantage over them only if it came with verified agent name.
Agreed
Same is true for PokemonGO, HPWU. If Niantic Chat is unified chat tool for all Niantic games. Agent name, trainer name should show up on user profile page at least( in this case Niantic Chat username could be different from agent name).
Some people chose different names in each game specifically because they didn't want the connection to be obvious.
Group could be game sensitive: when you create a Group ask for what game it will used .
Posting in that Group would use the IGN for that game.
Mention would use the same IGN.
User could have the posibility to show other game name if they want or not on their profile.
Check a profile should be related to the game profile
Also -- please learn from the recent disaster where PoGo and HPWU friend lists were unified, leading to people having dozens of new "friends" who had not played the game in a year.
Just because someone downloaded and set up a game does not mean they are a player; this will become far more important as the Niantic platform grows to dozens of games with distinct audiences.
What Private Chat should have is a lobby for a mod to accept or reject an application to the private group.
Which is quite common on both Telegram and Discord.
I figured that this was specifically meant as a test run for ingress, so you would want to use whatever name would be associated with your IGN for ingress specifically IMO. I know it didn't specify and only asked for a niantic name though. Who knows if the later communities for PoGo and HPWU will be heavily intermixed, but I would imagine they would get the option to use whatever IGN is associated with each game for their given forums.
As far as verifying agents to their chat name I could see some type of email verification to their known gaming account. How are agents even verified now? Communities are spread across so many platforms that there is no universal network that niantic can oversee or moderate. If there were to be a rogue player they could step in to take control of it and get it fixed much easier.
I think it's an important question and a lot of people are probably wondering similar things in regards general opsec and how people can be properly verified coming into the chats.
On another note, I think it will give a much friendlier option to new players that might be weary about having to meet a stranger in a park so they can look at their phone before being able to join a community. Not that I don't like jumping in cars with strangers to chase triangles and all :)