CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

On e of the main reasons I started playing Ingress was because I needed to work up some extra incentive for exercising—yuh know, because better health just wasn’t enough… Anyway, the missions in Ingress have given me a reason to travel distances I wouldn’t usually have travelled, and to visit places I wouldn’t have visited. They’ve helped me orient to new locations, and learn new bus routes, and they’ve given me a reason to get out besides having to do so because it’s good for me. What are missions, you ask? Well, missions are a series of portals grouped together that you have to visit and take a specific action at. Every portal is linked to a real-world location, and every action is taken through the scanner. Once the scanner logs that the action has been taken, it’s ticked off the list. When all the tasks have been completed, you’re awarded a mission medal to mark the fact you’ve completed that mission. Is there an agent badge linked to missions? Yes, the Spec Ops ...

I don’t always write in specific forms of poetry, but I like to try and master the older styles of poetry because it teaches me discipline—like writing word-limited flash fiction. It teaches me to think about my words, and my word choices. It makes me think of alternative ways to say something, rather than to just change the poem form to suit. It’s easy to be creative when you don’t have to obey the rules, but only when you strive to achieve your goal within a somewhat restrictive framework can you truly be creative. This is because restrictions make you think. You can’t just go from Point A to Point B in one easy step; you have to figure out a viable path. As with real life, when there are obstacles to your path, creativity can spark a new solution you would not have thought of otherwise. Restrictions bring about discovery; they force solutions to be found that might not have been uncovered otherwise, and these discoveries feed into the array of tools that can be applied to o...