Driving with two other agents through a typhoon to receive a global shard? Exhilarating, but...

Q: Congratulations on being selected as a Vanguard! This must be a very exciting time for you. Did you expect to be selected?

A: It’s funny to say, but I went through several stages. When I sent in my application, I felt doubtful. I knew I poured my heart into it, but I felt it was kind of rambling. After sending it, I knew it was a long shot, so I just forgot about it. When I got the email from Andrew, I thought to myself, “Of course I made it! I knew I would…” When they finally made the announcement public and I saw how many people applied, I surprisingly started feeling doubtful again. I thought it had to be a mistake because so many more qualified agents should have been selected.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself, where are you from?

A: I’m from the United States, but have lived in Korea for the past 13 years. I’m an educator and for the past 5 years I’ve been training teachers mostly at a local women’s university. In the US, I’m originally from Omaha, Nebraska, but went to high school in Houston, Texas, and university in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m odd, and that’s okay.

Q: Maybe you want to tell us something about your home community?

A: I started Ingress in Korea so Seoul is my home community, but I also spent six months playing Ingress in my hometown of Omaha (Nebraska), where I was able to form special bonds and learn more about the Ingress community. Omaha being a mid-sized American city, I was able to experience the Ingress community in a more intimate way. Playing in a massive metropolitan area like Seoul, especially when you’re just starting the game, can feel quite impersonal. I attended my first anomaly (Darsana) with Omaha agents, and was there for the very first few First Saturday events. After my experiences in Omaha, I make it a point to attend as many events as I can and make contact with as many agents as I can.

Q: How long have you been playing Ingress?
A: I wasn’t invited to the Beta, so I was a little bit late to the game (figuratively and literally). I started around May of 2014. Seoul didn’t have roads in the scanner until Via Noir though, so it felt like I started playing a whole new game when that happened, though.

Q: What motivates you to play for 3.5 years?

A: Well, as a noob, all I cared about was leveling. Thankfully, there was thoughtful game design that required more advanced goals to require social cooperation. After finishing the tutorial at level 16, I felt the power of the real game… the Ingress community. Meeting new agents and exploring how cultural contexts inflect the interactions and gameplay from place to place keep me going.

Q: Could you tell us the most interesting thing that happened to you thanks to Ingress?

A: Driving with two other agents through a blizzard for hours in the dead of night to layer my hometown? That was awesome, but no. Driving with two other agents through a typhoon to receive a global shard? Exhilarating, but that’s not the one, either. It would probably have to be my reception in Dubai, during Ramadan. I notified some agents that I would be visiting in the intel comms, and they rolled out the red carpet. Because it was Ramadan, they made sure I didn’t get into any trouble by snacking publicly. I was picked up and taken around by a diverse group of locals. They treated me to a well-appointed iftar (evening feast) after sunset, and then we went on a visually stunning night farming route. As that concluded, I was invited to ride along on an all-night fielding operation that I foolishly declined, due to jet-lag and tiredness. When I awoke the next day, I saw that these legends had fielded something like Al-Ain, Karachi, Peshawar (or something like that). Anyway, it was substantial, and I kicked myself for weeks about not rolling out and being a part of it.

Q: Your best or most interesting personal achievement?

A: This question makes me reconsider how much time I put into Ingress. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything terribly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. I can say that Ingress has inspired me to learn to manipulate and draw vector graphics to make BioCards. I’ve studied language more in order to have more independence on the ground (cats can’t really be herded, you know). I’ve even learned how to cut, bleach, and dye my own hair for those really special occasions. I’ve always been more a technical, by the book, letter of the law type of person, but I think my best personal achievement since starting Ingress has been an awakening of more creative parts of my brain. A frog may not be able to change its stripes, but an agent can change their archetype!

Q: What do you think should be changed at first to improve user experience?

A: For me, personally, the biggest user experience irritant is leaving the application to go to the web. When intel captures your gps fix and you switch back to the Ingress scanner (which now has to restart with the splash screen and everything), it is the absolute worst for me. If intel and OPR were tabs in the app...I legitimately think there would be a significant, measurable increase in my quality of life. Then, in Ingress 3.0 maybe as you set up your fields in intel, the necessary and available keys showed up in the map and when you tapped back into the scanner, the keys were on a “clipboard” or cache that made them immediately accessible. Also naming capsules (pls).

Q: For what purpose did you apply for participation in Vanguard program?

A: Honestly it sounds cool, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want to be apart of something they think would be cool? Besides that super obvious reason, I was interested in growth. Ingress has become a part of my life. In the personal parts of our lives, and the professional parts of our lives, it doesn’t feel good to stagnate. Well Ingress is… kind of the most public aspect of my life (I mean agents can see where I am every time I make an action, right?), and I’d like to learn new things and make new contributions in my public life as well. I’m not naturally a really social person, so a defined role like this allows me to focus and function in a way that is both comfortable and hopefully productive. I like hearing from fellow agents regardless of faction, and look forward to hearing how people feel and to sharing their great ideas and achievements with the wider community and those who listen at Niantic.

Q: Is there something else you want to tell us about you or your vision for Ingress?

A: I’m all in on AR gaming. I was never a computer gamer, and stopped being interested in console gaming as an adult, but AR lit a fire in me. I love the potential Niantic has to port out their framework for lots of beloved properties to give us more interaction and immersion into their worlds. I missed the Pokemon boat as a child, but AR gives me a nominal interest in the world. I love George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series and dream of an AR version of the world. I don’t know much of anything about Harry Potter, but I can imagine the houses of that universe and the differences in gameplay they could inspire in AR. Original properties that are developed alongside the AR world, where this type of interactive media could be the new “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Whereas before people would passively watch a program like “American Idol” and call in to influence the results, now they’d have to get out in the world and do something in order to influence the result. This interactive Vygotskyan paradise is the future of both gaming and programming that I want to see.