Event Review – Niantic’s Ingress NL1331 European Tour (Edinburgh)
On a chilly clear evening in October 2017, the Niantic NL1331 van rocked up to the Wash Bar to mark the beginning of Edinburgh’s segment of the Ingress NL1331 European tour. Lasting for about three days with one main event, nobody was sure just what to expect as Niantic were not releasing many details about what the event would actually involve.
As it turned out, this could be because there actually weren’t that many details to reveal because the event didn’t involve very much. Before the event people could get a ticket for free, or could purchase a premium ticket for about £10 which would give them a special virtual badge on their ingress profile to say that attended, along with a physical goody bag of various ingress items like stickers, pseudo-coins, patches, a keychain, etc. Personally, I feel that I have quite enough random tat in my life as it is without needing to add even more to the mix, so accordingly I did not indulge in the premium package. Those who did get the goody bag reckon that the quality of the ingress swag was good, however.
When I got to the venue (slightly late) Niantic appeared to not have shown up yet, although their van was parked outside from the previous evening. The event began about half an hour or so late. Nobody was checking that we had tickets. Given the Ingress public image, I had rather expected there to be hot guys in suits with Matrix-style ear pieces and suchlike, but sadly this was not to be the case. Eventually the two Niantic employees showed up and a few things started to happen.
First they gave out the goody bags, then there was a little contest to compare statistics for various ingress achievements over the previous week and a few prizes were handed out for the winners. There were two in-game tiny missions which people could do by linking the portable ingress van portal to the ones surrounding the Wash Bar, which was quite entertaining as I decided to do those while everybody else was trying to blow up the portals, switch them to their own team’s colour then link them up. Those wanting an easy time of this could just wait until the next day and do them though, as the Ingress van remained in position for a few days before moving onto the next part of their tour. Everybody was herded outside so that Mr.Niantic could take a really crummy quality group photo (the one above) on his mobile phone. I’m one of the indecipherable smudges in the middle. Finally, there was a Q&A session, which mainly consisted of the Ingress representative giving very evasive responses to questions and looking a bit overwhelmed by being expected to give direct responses to questions like “When is Ingress 2.0 being released? Didn’t Niantic say that it would be the end of the year? Is that likely?”, when all Niantic had given him to work with was a load of flannel.
For the record, there is no sign of Ingress 2.0 yet and everybody still seems to have no idea when that will be rolled out for public consumption.
And that was basically it. The entire event. Most people had expected more to happen, some people were a bit disappointed, and I thought it was particularly unfortunate for the folk who had travelled quite far to attend the event. Fortunately for me, I just had to walk down the road a little bit to get there. I didn’t bother to go to the Glasgow segment of their tour, which took place about 5 days later, because I assumed that event would be equally as empty.
On the upside, it was nice that there was such a high level of attendance from players. I was able to meet a good number of players who I had never met in person, from both teams.
However, overall I would say that it was an outstandingly unremarkable event which Niantic could have done a lot more with. It seems very strange to me that they put so much effort into travelling around with this van, but put so little effort into creating a worthwhile and memorable event experience for participants. Just now they are over in Japan with their touring van, no doubt providing more shovelware event fare. I suppose it is a good low-effort money spinner though, if plenty of people are keen to spend £10 on some items and a virtual badge to say that they went. And most players do seem to be keen to do that.
