Sustainability and contributing to Ingress

entronentron ✭✭✭
edited September 2019 in General

Niantic has (rightfully IMHO) taken a lot of flack for the poorly thought out changes to anomaly participation.

However the continued sustainability of Ingress is a valid concern.

I think most people would agree that Niantic, as a company, does need to make to money.

What is less clear however is whether each individual Niantic game should make a profit.

I would say that each game must provide value to Niantic but that value is not necessarily purely monetary. Because Niantic games are not standalone but have common points, such as the POI database it is possible to contribute value in non monetary ways. Beyond that it is also possible to contribute value not by *making money* but by reducing money that Niantic would otherwise have to spend itself (such as when volunteers organize anomalies).

However, it is also true that many, probably most, Ingress agents do not contribute much to Niantic (though they may spend large amounts of time and money on the game itself).

I include myself in that: although I am quite active in my faction communities (organizing communities and operations), that, though good for the game, does not really provide any value to Niantic. I have spent very little money in the store (the obligatory pack of keylockers and a few frackers) and do not generally buy paid Niantic anomaly packs. I was active in OPR (which I do consider contributing to Niantic) when only L16s had access but my more recent OPR activities are far more sporadic.

Many good ideas have been proposed for monétization (such as skins, or other non pay to win items) and a reasonable subscription would probably be accepted by many serious agents. However there will never be a consensus on these questions because everyone has a different time / money trade-off. This is quite normal, an unemployed person has more time and less money than someone with a well paying job who may prepared to pay some money to get rid of some grind yet it would not be fair to allow all items to be purchasable.

I think it should be possible to agree however that, if we want Ingress to be sustainable all "confirmed" agents should contribute something to Niantic. That could do money or it could be non monetary, such as OPR reviews and, maybe, portal submissions (as those help to make not only Ingress better but Niantic's other games too).

So my proposal is:

Up to L12 nothing changes. Everything remains free, in order not to discourage new players.

Starting with L12 every agent has a "contribution points account". Points are deducted from this account every (day/week/month) and, when the balance is zero the agent can no longer play until the account is credited.

The account may be credited in many ways, mixed as each agent chooses,

The ways of crediting the account are both monetary and non monetary but all provide *value to Niantic*

Examples of monetary methods

  • Spending money in the store
  • Purchasing an (optional) paid anomaly badge (a free badge should still be available)
  • Paying a subscription

Examples of non monetary methods:

  • Obtaining a given number of OPR agreements
  • Successfully submitting a given number of portals
  • Being a PoC for an official Niantic event
  • Having an official player role approved by Niantic (eg embedded reporter, Vanguard, TR)

I do not want, at this stage, to discuss the complicated stuff like what the "exchange rate" is between all these (how many OPR approvals are equivalent to $1 in the store...) but I think a system like this could provide a fair and sustainable future for Ingress.

I actually think this would be likely to lead to more contributions, both monetary and non monetary than today, whilst no one would be forced to pay anything.

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