What would your idea be to make ingress more profitable?
Even though this is an assumption, but based on recent events, 100% increase on frackers, paid anomaly tickets, it is clear to me that Niantic is looking for a more sustaining way to operate instead of intermittent income.
likely that somewhere in the terms of service we have given all rights away to Niantic on what we say here (who reads those things?) so why not brainstorm here and use wisdom of the crowd to make ingress, the game we all (mostly) love better. What would viable options be that would create more profit
For example, I wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee for having an extra 20% redacted on the cooldown of my hacks on all portals. Others would really consider this pay to win and would hate it and shut that idea down.
I would love a paid option to an api where I could **** the portal closest to my home and **** an Arduino or Raspberry to a smart light that would change the colors depending on neutral/blue/green/attacked. The creative things we could do with that... (hell, ingress could team up with some of the smart people that play this game and sell kits for it).
Why can't I buy CMU directly from the website as a digital pack/code instead of the play/app store where google/apple takes a cut.
Why the requirement for a creditcard when so many people do not own one (and I was told that the payment provider Nia uses actually has options for other (local) payment options that have the exact same processing fees)
What would your thing be? What do you think is the best option to create a better revenue stream for ingress without it hurting gameplay within reason, I mean 'keep it as is' clearly seems no longer to be an option.
Comments
Media locker.
Ask 100 people get 100 opinions.
I have no inherent problems with paid anomaly tickets. That is if this thing was adequately announced beforehand and the whole thing was adequately laid out. Like having a decent amount of payment options instead of just a creditcard (which outside US really isn't as normalized as a payment method). I also think 15 euro's for an event that is primairily organized by players that don't get anything but gratitude and a slew of stress related conditions from it is quite steep.
Other then that the only thing they would really really need to stay away from is pay to win. The second they start entering that territory i'm going to peace out of this entire game and any other Niantic game. I'm violently allergic to companies that poison their games for profit like this.
Although I would like to subscribe to Ingress, I don't agree with items being a reward. Maybe colourful COMMS messages and a Funders Medal with the story line attached to it "helped NIA fund research into the Ingress Scanner".
Idk, but I don't want them to anger the community in anymore ways than they've already done.
My idea would be for Niantic Inc. sort that themselves, Simply because they have harvested the agents for free work and services for long enough. And with their recent, badly communicated move alienated agents beyond repair.
I think that cosmetics with some functionality might be a good route.
This is all irrelevant. We've repeatedly provided suggestions for how Ingress could be better monetized and this is what the result was - disregarding suggestions and doing insane things.
How about paying for more information on unique portal interactions? $10 a month to see which portals we have hacked and captured and which is our "guardian." I'm confident a lot of players will be interested and that it won't break the game.
$5 - $10/month sub.
This means that those who do not have access to a credit card are still being penalized
So many good options have been put in so many threads over the months about this, but my personal picks would be:
This thread is about ideas to monetize the game, it is not about how to get people without access to credit cards the ability to send money to Niantic.
I know and fully understand that's an issue, but if every decision is based on that issue, there's no point in thinking about the original question what-so-ever and we should just give up right now.
Another thought: Take a page out of Valve's book, somewhat. Don't host anomalies until $X amount has been raised through store sales/subscriptions/etc.
I believe after today's fiasco, that players would not be interested in achieving some level of required in app purchase requirement for anomalies to begin.
However there is an opportunity for commercial entities to help fund anomalies, as part of their marketing.
For example H2GO (water), with participants encouraged to purchase, with discounts, during the event week when ever they buy that brand?
- Swag
Self explanatory. Currently there is clothing swag but if you need ideas of what swag to come out with, you have the community market for your reference on what attract agents to buy them.
- Subscription service
This could be done by having a global league leaderboard challenge where agent subscript to which offer them rewards for reaching different ranks (example top 10% gets a special medal like Field test event)
Rewards for the league leaderboard could be unique badges in their profile, unique prime scanner interface, unique agent avatar icon, inventory items only exclusively obtainable in this challenge (VRLA or extremely rare shield)
Somewhere in the August AMA I recall them saying that seeing which portals are unique and which ones you’ve hacked is already in the works.
Link to AMA: https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/3642/august-ama-questions-and-answers#latest
Snippet of conversation:
It's very simple, put ads in the app and make an ad-free paid version, like so many other apps. Of course this would mean removing all the pay-to-win items from the store. I would much rather pay for ingress, than see it turning more and more into a pay-to-win game as is happening now.
Active players play this game daily, so what's the problem with paying a small fee for the game? Occasional players or players how can't or don't want to pay can still play for free with ads.
I also don't mind paying for anomalies, but the way it was introduced now and communicated was of course ridiculous.
I wouldn’t mind having the option to purchase lucky eggs like in Pokémon go... double ap for 30 minutes.
Swaaaaaaag.
More paid character badges.
More key lockers... maybe have key lockers beyond what are available now be subscription based?
But seriously, I think all our work on the creation and maintenance of the POI database should be taken into account when deciding how “profitable” ingress is.
Ingress is never going to be as profitable as Pokémon Go. If they’re drawing a comparison here then they may as well **** ingress now.
A tiered medal for remote anomaly attendance. If, going forward, remote attendance will also always cost money, give those that do so a real incentive for it. In addition to the anomaly medal itself, introduce a tiered remote attendance medal.
PoGo and HPWU already have some concepts that can easily be translated to Ingress:
Item that doubles your AP gain for 30 minutes.
Item that doubles your XM gain for 30 minutes.
Encrypted capsule as random drop when hacking portals. Agents need a decryption code to decrypt a capsule, then walk 2, 5 or 10km to run the code. Each agent gets an infinite decryption module for free, more limited use decryption codes can be bought in the shop. Decrypted capsule yields rare/vr items. (If possible make the items account bound, to prevent abuse)
Custom avatar colors/motives/backgrounds for certain achievements, buying paid supporter tickets or just straight up bought from the store. Custom "Arrow" models for the overworld map.
"Special research"-missions (think GoFest special research) that take place at a certain time that could reward players with unique achievements and rare/premium items.
So far I can't come up with an Ingress equivalent to raids or fortress battles, which would probably change the game design much more than the examples listed above.
Ability to expand the number of inventories.
You can still play. This is just for people who want to support the game financially. A lot of people who do have access to credit cards still wouldn't subscribe.
Key gallery: a special type of capsule that you can put "souvenir" keys into as a way to build a scrapbook of your travels. Purchase as many as you want, each holds a certain number of keys. For example, you could have one for a vacation, one for OPR approvals, etc. And once you put a key in, you can delete the gallery entry but you don't get the key back.
Bring back the physical swag.
I know people that will buy not only one kit but loads of them just to give away for the local community.
I would like a novel series on the backstory. preferably paperback, but I could live with ebook. I would love to read the backstory.
That can be found at Niantic's store.
https://shop-niantic.com/pages/ebooks
thank you
Been playing since the beta - didn't know this.
Publicity isn't a strong point it seems
I'd love to see (and have suggested) that Field Tests (or a similar event by a different name) be a paid event that is done on-demand. Like a mini-nomaly in a box.
Put in a request for Cell #, date/time, and proposed playbox, along with a $50 (or $XX, or $x per expected attendee, or price tiers based on event size up to 50/100/500 people) payment, and you get an event in your place.
Want a mini-nomaly event for Baconomaly? Done.
Want to have a get together for your faction, or an xfac competition to build the local community? Done.
Perhaps have 2 or 3 rule sets that the organizer can choose from. Or not.
Perhaps have a limit of 1 event per septicycle per cell. Or not.
Niantic needs to do nothing except establish the scoring report for the playbox and attendees.
This is repeatable income that costs Niantic nothing in terms of time/investment except the ability to keep score, requires no Onsite presence from Niantic, and it builds the community. Put a clause that local organizer is responsible for any required permits, etc.
We're being milked.
If every ingress player didn't play, from the beginning, this product, this company, would not exist in its current form.
We shaped the field of play, and we continue to do so.
I'd be happy if ingress was closed, in terms of new recruits, and for ingress to be supported by the billion dollar franchises built from our efforts.
Add a pay wall to join ingress, don't add a pay wall to play and help build the other products.