CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

Mission Day showed me just how unfit I've become, so, this week, I'm trying to get my walking habit back on-line - and what better way to do that, than to take on an easy mission through the centre of Canberra? Created by Resistance agent, Frostbeast, this colourful 12-mission banner walks you around the city centre, and features were as follows: Time to Complete:   The average time for each mission is around 10 minutes, although some are much shorter. If you’re taking the time to glyph-hack, capture, fully deploy, link and field, then these times will be much, much longer due the portal density of the area. Complexity:   This is a very straight-forward mission series, with easily accessible portals, but, as noted below, you should be wary of hacking portals not included in the mission you’re on. Terrain and Location Notes: Location Accessibility: You can travel to the mission area by bus, although there is plenty of parking, if you prefer to travel by car, al...

Today, Ingress announced that the Guardian Medal was being retire d - and I am glad. Of all the medals, this one has been behind most of the angst and stress I have seen in fellow players,  and I am glad to see it go, because of this. It has also been the main means I have seen players use to taunt their opposition, and not in a game-friendly way. Of all the medals, this one has also puzzled me the most, just from the point of view that, if no player can truly 'own' or 'lay claim' to a portal, why was there a reward for doing so for a long period of time? And, of all the medals, this one did not really require skill or teamwork to achieve (although I would argue that teamwork plays a great part in longevity, and smart selection occasionally helped, while remembering to recharge was an essential skill, too). However, those three points aside, what this medal mostly required was persistence in seeding portals, and a lot of dumb luck. For example, given the high...

I finally walked my 2,500th Ingress kilometre, today. I would probably have walked it sooner, but… pokemon. And now, because I play these games side-by-side, I can focus my walking on MORE pokemon, even as I try to level up my other ingress medals. ALL the fun, right? It’s time to move.

I play both Ingress and PokemonGo. They brighten up my walk, give me an incentive to get out and about (although, some days, that incentive is stronger than others), and help me break the cycle of negative thought that was helping perpetuate depression. There’s nothing like having to think strategically, or identify what that buzz was and if you’re going to catch it to nudge you out an unhealthy thought cycle, even temporarily. So, in jumping back and forth between games at regular intervals, I noticed that where there were patches of xm on the Ingress scanner, there were usually pokemon that hadn’t shown up on the radar in the pokemon scanner. Cool, right? Check this out. No pokemon near the local stop… and the closest one’s you can see in the scanner are for a stop that’s a couple of hundred metres away. Not a pokemon in sight, but Ingress shows this bubble of xm a short way up the walking path.   The first time, I walked u...

Finding Time to Play: When do I get time to play Ingress? Since I switch between it and PoGo on my morning walks - although I'll admit to giving this game priority for allowing myself to stop... unless I've run out of pokeballs and need to collect more. Generally, the goal of the (mostly) morning walk is to get as many kilometres covered in the 30-45 minutes I have for walking, before the real-world demands some attention, which means whatever pokemongoing or ingressing that happens has to happen without me having to stop. I do, however, allow 5 minutes of exceptions, such as capturing a gym, or portal, but, after that, too bad, what I find is what I'm stuck with, no matter how much I want to change it. Weekends, when I have more time, things are different and I get to stop more, but I must still hit a minimum of one hour's walk on the health app before I can go home and do something else - and, I still to impose a no-stopping rule when I need to get things done. ...

Why PokeGo? I like walking - and I like playing games while I do. I like Pokemongo because I don't have to have my head down in the phone to play, so I get to see the birds and say hi to folk I meet on the track - and, apparently, walking is good for me. Go figure. What I hate is actually heading out the door. Having gamer goals  makes that a little easier. I can do it without the extra incentive, but I'm really glad I don't have to. The other thing gaming while I walk does, is to help me break the cycle of going over things that make me depressed. It's hard to stay in a depressive thought cycle when your phone buzzes, and there's a new pokemon on the screen, or an old one, or a raid starting up nearby, and then there's always something happening in the way the game works. I like that; it's interesting. And there have been a lot of new things happening in the game. I just have to write up the reports and remember to blog what I've noticed. I am w...