from The San Jose Mercury News

With Endgame: Proving Ground, Google’s Niantic Labs aims to improve on Ingress formula

by Gieson Cacho

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Google’s Niantic Labs specializes in video games that revolve around the real world. It’s a heady space that mixes elements of massively multiplayer online experiences and augmented reality games. Ingress was the first example. It was a science fiction title that pits two factions — The Enlightened and The Resistance — against each other as they vied for real-life landmarks that contain portals.

The core gameplay concept was fine. It lured gamers outside, where they used the GPS on their mobile phones to locate important touchstones and battle rival factions for them. The only issue I had with it is that the systems were too complex and the fiction too complicated. There was a lot to digest and learn.

With Niantic’s upcoming project, Endgame: Proving Ground, the developers aim to fix at least one of those problems. They are teaming up with authors James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton whose novel Endgame: The Calling was released in October. The book, the first of three in the works, has been optioned to be a film. This sets up the franchise to be a transmedia project with different hooks into the universe and the mobile game is going to be one doorway into that.

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