Future of Ingress, Making it Profitable, Earning Back Player Trust
This was originally posted on Reddit as a response to a comment from Brian Rose (https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/ducqi6/the_future_of_ingress/f75dybi/). A couple of people have asked me to move it over here for wider discussion, so here it is.
I very much want Ingress to stick around. I want it to be profitable. I would like to see it be successful at a financial level as well as being groundbreaking. Ingress is the only one of Niantic's games in which there is actual team competition, in which I can accomplish things that alter the territory and gain something for my team. PoGo and HPWU are fundamentally masturbatory games-- they are all about your personal stats, badges, collections. Ingress encourages and in some ways requires working with your teammates to accomplish things, since what you can do on your own is limited. Ingress is the only game where I can look at the map at the end of the day and say "I accomplished something."
At the same time, I want Ingress to be fun again. I lost Sojourner at day 1606 because I couldn't raise sufficient interest to keep it while I was on vacation. What I actually lost was an unbroken hacking streak from December 2, 2013 to August 2019. I want Niantic to understand the player base, whiny and bitchy as we may be, and do things that drive the game forward in ways that fit the game's unique characteristics. At the very least I'd like Niantic to stop **** themselves in the foot... how many feet do y'all have, anyway?
How does Niantic make Ingress profitable? You do it by adding value for the players, by providing things that will make the game more interesting and enjoyable for us without turning it into a pure pay-to-win situation. Pay-to-win is... OK for masturbatory games, but not for ones in which there is competition. Frackers were a fabulous invention because they reduced the amount of time that needed to be spent on acquiring gear. At the end of the day I didn't really get more gear, I just got the same amount faster. Doubling the price was a dick move, though. What would have been better? Create a better fracker and charge double for it. Remember the turbo mode fracking that happened for a little while, four times the gear output but they only lasted for five minutes? I said at the time that I would gleefully pay double for those. Charging for anomaly badges that were previously free? Again, insulting to the players and a really horrible blow to the unpaid volunteers who spend countless hours organizing anomalies for you. What wasn't horrible? Making character badges available to everyone. Character badges are just decorative pixels on the scanner, and if people want to pay for them they gain no competitive advantage in doing so. Letting people buy a stack of R1s? That's a timesaver. Letting them buy a stack of X8s? That's pay-to-win. What else can Niantic do that's compelling for players but doesn't provide a competitive advantage? I can think of a few things, but perhaps both internal and external brainstorming would be useful to you. Perhaps you could create a contest and award a free supply of the item to whoever comes up with an idea that ends up being implemented? You have many intelligent and creative players, and you could leverage them to help solve your problems. I say that as someone who has spent four figures on in-app purchases with Niantic. I bought 200 toast beacons, in small batches, and spewed them all over midtown Manhattan to get the last 100K AP after I recursed. I considered doing L1-8 with beacons and rejected the idea as too expensive, and then my friend NinthAnt picked up the idea and ran with it. I once spewed hundreds of beacons in one day because we had a bus event and it was more fun to beacon everything than to fight for captures and mods. I *want* to give money to Niantic, but I want to do it in ways that makes me happy rather than feeling resentful about it. Doubling the price of frackers without adding value changed the happiness-resentful equation.
I'll admit that I'm a little bit cynical about Ingress and Niantic right now, due in part to the way that the transition to Prime was handled. I'm still waiting for feature parity with Redacted. Every time I play the game I find myself frustrated, either because something I want to do is unavailable, or because it's more difficult in Prime. Once Redacted retired it took me less than 60 seconds to encounter the first missing feature-- I wanted a screenshot of my stats as a memorial, but the feature never made it into Prime. Sure, I could work around it but having to jump through hoops rather than pressing a button didn't enhance my fun level.
I'm not going to whine and complain and downvote the app, but I will continue to politely and constructively (I hope) point out the ways in which I feel that Niantic has failed the player base, and where I can I will suggest ways that Niantic can do better. Here's a simple one: time and time again, Niantic has scheduled anomalies in ways that were problematic because they conflicted with local events and drove up the cost for players. Checking calendars before scheduling events would save situations where people don't travel to anomalies because hotels are $400/night, or flights are ridiculously expensive because they conflict with major holiday travel. A few minutes of attentiveness to these things could lower player frustration. Another example of Niantic not understanding the player experience: I once ran into Bill Kilday on an airplane a couple of weeks before an anomaly that I was POC for. He asked me, "Why did you schedule your afterparty on top of ours?" The answer is simple. We had to book our party space 2-3 months in advance in order to secure it. Niantic didn't give us an event schedule until much later, too late for it to inform our planning.
The bottom line, Brian, is that I do not envy you your current position. You're being asked to clean up after a long history of Niantic failing its users, and you're trying to pull a rabbit out of an extremely tattered hat. Please understand that while some of the downvoting on the app stores is players being jerks it's also a legitimate expression of frustration about the ways in which Niantic has failed to serve its customers. You won't be able to move forward and turn that around until you (both personally and the company) understand that and own it. You can't turn that around by replying to play store reviews-- you'll have to do it by re-earning the trust of the extremely dedicated players that have not yet left the game.
Comments
Doubling the price was a dick move, though.
Doubling the price of frackers without adding value
Brian explained this, although not at the time. "This wasn’t to make money directly ... but I felt they were too overpowered, there were too many in the game economy".
[Duplicate]
He did explain that, later, buried in a comment on Reddit. (If it was communicated elsewhere I didn't see it.) At the time it was just "Surprise! Double price."
And that is a textbook example of how to damage your relationship with your customers-- do something that is 100% negative for them with no warning and no explanation. Clear, timely messaging could have softened the blow and at least let players know that Niantic took the player experience into their calculations. Some people will always grumble, but if it's handled well a lot of people will just go, "Eh, that's annoying but I get why it's happening."
Although I dont agree with everything @Hosette has said I do feel that a team aspect is the best bit about ingress and would actually really like that in pogo etc.
Yes in pogo you have raids but an actual team competition like ingress with map domination. Sign me up
It kind of feels to me like team competition with more than two teams would become problematic because you could end up with teams forming an alliance to bully the third team. There's always been talk of a third team in Ingress and that seems to me like it would destroy the game.
@Hosette thanks for taking the time to write this up (as painful as it to hear unhappiness from a longtime player such as yourself). people are listening and are committed to a renewed and better ingress.
@Hosette thanks for taking the time to eloquently and succinctly express the frustrations many people have with the game. I also do not envy @Brian Rose. He seems to deeply care about the game and has to deal with all of our frustrations. I do hope him and his team can earn back the player trust and bring its "life support."
Largely agree with your assessment, I just want to add one more thing (or one more layer that aligns with what you wrote). The other thing that Ingress has that the other games do not is an incentive to explore widely. Pokémon and Harry Potter get me out of the house to my local park or my local mall. Ingress sends me up to an obscure campsite in the Sierras, a lighthouse, a ghost town, an island off the coast of CA. That is really my favorite thing about the game. Of course it is driven by the competitive aspect so I value that too but I largely value it because of where it incentivizes me to go. The list of "places I never would have known about except for Ingress" is long and the list of "places I might not have gotten around to going to without Ingress that turned out to be super awesome" is even longer.
This is an ongoing issue, the communication or lack thereof. What a lot of people miss is just how hard it is to actually find out what's going on right now in the Ingress community/Niantic, because there's no single unified source of information. There's posts on Social Media that are often light on details or confusing. Then there's follow-ups in random chats or on reddit or elsewhere; I'm not saying GMs shouldn't talk to players, but often those clarifying comments are never broadcast on official channels. As a result, you need things like Ingress news source feeds to find out exactly what's happening.
The fracker incident is a perfect example of that. If you're not plugged into reddit or the news feeds, you'd never know why the price change happened or what the rationale behind it was.
@Hosette I am at a serious crossroads. I feel you know me well enough to know I care deeply for the fame and community, as you do. However, we have been giving Niantic ideas F O R E V E R. At what point do we say, "Sorry, we've already given you lists and lists of things for years, work on that stuff and then you can come back to us and ask again?"
Also, they need to bring back the Ingress Report. Stopping that was probably the single worst decision they have made. The community doesn't know anything going on because we don't have that quick weekly wrap up. Right now they're dependent on a community who review bombs its own favorite thing to let new people know what's happening.
Niantic doesn’t owe us anything. It’s not our business where Brian Rose spends his time, and he most certainly doesn’t owe us an explanation for the decisions the team makes. I’m a fracker user, so I share the resentment in the price increase. Hearing an explanation for that decision has softened my resentment, and I’m really glad I read it, but I don’t think he owes it to me. It’s a free game, and I know where the door is.
I recall there being a 1 star campaign. I believe it was here. Someone had argued we should all 1 star the game in the App Store so as to motivate Niantic to do something. I don’t recall what. I hope the folks that participated have had a chance to read that it’s actually been hurtful to growing the game. We all know we need a larger player base.
The entire point of review bomb campaigns is to hurt the company and force them to address issues.
Hosette this is a fantastic post, I think you really bailed a lot of people's issues with Niantic and why they are frustrated while offering some great solutions or constructive things to work on.
You’re right. There are a lot of “bring back Redacted” statements that accompany those 1 stars though. That’s not an issue that is going to be addressed, and only serves as counter productive. We need more players. Hell, we want more players. Why aren’t we ever asking Niantic how we can help, but instead run down a laundry list of things they need to do for us?
Because the things Niantic does with or without player involvement have generally served to work directly against that goal - we have lost most of our players.
@AnimaIControI Many of us have offered Niantic our help and constructive feedback over the years, and continue to do so. My message that started this thread actually contains both constructive feedback and a suggestion for how Niantic can leverage user contributions in order to help make the game profitable. I'm lucky enough to be geographically close to Niantic headquarters, and I personally know several Niantic employees. I've had the pleasure of participating in Ingress events with John Hanke himself, I've had conversations with him about things that work well and things that are problematic. (I've also smashed lots of his resonators over the years.) I've spent the last six years being one of Niantic's most loyal customers, and I want them to be successful. I've even donated some of my professional expertise to them, gratis, in order to improve the player experience.
You are correct that Niantic doesn't owe us anything. At the same time, we do not owe them our support and loyalty-- that is something that a business has to earn from its customers. My dayjob is at a company that puts the customer experience at the forefront. Even though my role has me buried deep in the bowels of a very complex and technical service I am constantly asking, "What is the customer impact? How does this affect the customer experience?" Having that baked into the company culture gives the employees a universal yardstick by which they can measure their decisions.
Companies that do a good job of focusing on the customer experience earn the loyalty of their customers. Companies that do that poorly end up being the victims of downvoting campaigns. I tend to hold myself to high standards of professionalism and I would prefer to communicate constructively, but it's easy for me to understand why players would express their frustrations with star ratings. Niantic's path to recovering that should involve a lot of navel-gazing by the company and a customer-focused plan for turning around their reputation with Ingress players. I am, as always, happy to support Niantic in that effort.
In fact, I had a midnight brainstorming conversation with a friend last night about things Niantic could offer to its players that we would gladly pay for, and that we think would be popular but not skew the game toward pay-to-win. We are more than happy to provide those suggestions to Niantic, though I don't think a public forum is the right platform. (What is?)
A business should generate interest for a customer.
There is a distinct difference between features and benefits.
A feature is what something does.
A benefit is what it does for the customer.
How does the game currently benefit the customer? My understanding it was to create a community through competition.
We play games to give ourselves a time of our life to relax and have fun. There’s too much suffering in this world already. I don’t like seeing it in my game, corporate decisions or cheaters.
Very well said. Thank you.
Yeah a lot of people need to update their reviews, I did so last night. Unfortunately Google appears to have restricted the amount of characters you can use down to 500 which isn't enough to do any sort of proper review, and I still honestly cannot give the game more than 3 stars in it's current state. I really wanted to give it 4, but it's just not there yet.
Players have been trying to work with Niantic for years, but communication has always been bad and most feedback and requests seem to be largely ignored. Or at least the end result is people feeling ignored. Just look at how many questions and constructive feedback threads there have been on this forum alone, many with very important questions like about the recent anomalies that either go completely unresponded to or get one response about one or two things and nothing about everything else.
Add a 2x XP item in the store...make it last an hour or two...they will sell a lot of those...easy money
Sorry, disagree. We get 12x of those a year with Ingress FS. Not to mention all the other specials that give us a multiplier for the AP. 40 Million AP for Level 16 isn't that hard to accomplish if you play the game. Granted it may take you longer than others in an area that isn't as portal dense. There are many ways to boost your AP playing normally.
It should be 30 minutes like similar items in the other games.
The other games have bonus XP events too but also have items to give double for 30 minutes.
@ace It's comforting to see you saying this. I believe you folks are committed... @Hosette touched on a lot, all of it very accurate and very poignant.
I can't bring myself to delete the App even though I barely open the scanner anymore. I have hope that you and your team will breathe life back into the spirit of the game.
actually no, for FS u are forced to be at a certain place at a certain time, not everyone wants bother with FS, i sure dont.. there should be an item if i want go anywhere i can buy a xp boost like in pokemon go and they would earn tons of money on this.. where u think the big money comes in pokemon ? from the luckyeggs and incubators....
I get 0 with the nearest FS being a four hour drive one way. I also am not in a super dense area. Not everyone can get gold or even silver Pioneer within a 100km radius of home.
Why not host your own?
Too rural. Only around 4-5 weekly players in my scoring cell and adjacent cells. Our most active city where I play has a total population of 20k so it's not like I'm nowhere near civilization or something
I don't believe that one bit... sorry but a nice effort