My first Field Test event! Reminded me of why I do love Ingress. It’s the community.
I almost sat this one out. With my busy schedule, and the other shenanigans going around. I wasn’t sure I really wanted another badge right now. But after seeing all my friends and folks I haven’t met, talking excitedly about the event and people posting messages about heading that way, I made the call. I was going to go try a new Ingress event.
Everyone met up for some lunch beforehand. There were advice and strats flying around, even between factions. There didn’t seem to be, what I worried about, a huge push to outdo others to get the “ELITE” version of the badge. There was much talk about Prime and since I’ve been working so much the past few weeks, I haven’t even seen the latest update. Kudos! There was much praise about it, or at least, a little less griping.
It was something new that we hadn’t done, and there were issues for sure. But all in all, it was a good event.
I just got home, and read the announcement that Andrew Krug made, which I believe was a very compassionate and smart move for them to make. I’ll let you read it in full instead of regurgitating it. https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/4301/field-test-medal-for-all-participants
It also reminds me that I wouldn’t have all of these friends that I have met through Playing Ingress if they hadn’t kept at moving the game forward even when it wasn’t making a profit. Thank you, Niantic.
There will be more monetization coming. I urge everyone to be vocal about what they disagree with, but also praise Niantic for the things they are doing correctly. It’s easy for someone (even a company) to hear the same thing over and over again and start discrediting the first murmurs as, Oh, it’s just the same agents who don’t want us to monetize anything. (just an example).
I’ll save my full commentary of the event for the next podcast where you can hear all about the gory details of how I almost didn’t get the badge, by only 400 meters.
With that said, I do want to say thanks to everyone who made the event what it was today. Locally, and to Niantic. There were many agents that drove far distances to be there. Thanks to Jess for keeping me company throughout the event. All in all, it was a good day.
And lastly, thank you Niantic, for also listening to the community and awarding the badge to those that earned it and thank you for creating the event.