Google’s Ingress mobile game now supports user-generated missions

Google’s augmented reality game Ingress started out as a closed beta title, way back in 2012. Now officially up and running, the game has been downloaded by over 7 million players in the past year. In an effort to keep things fresh, the game’s developer Niantic Labs added a new feature to the title today that lets its community members create their own missions to challenge other players.

If you’re scratching your head trying to figure out what Ingress is, it’s a sci-fi game where two teams duke it out in fictional environment that is intertwined with the real world via mobile devices. The addition of user-generated missions can result in scavenger-hunt missions using pre-established and new waypoint portals represented by landmarks and specific locations.

“I think it’s like a whole new game within Ingress,” John Hanke, the head of Google’s Niantic Labs division in San Francisco told VentureBeat “Users can generate missions and go on them anywhere in the world. We view this as a global discovery tool. It’s a little slice of Minecraft inside of Ingress.”

Google has been developing new missions internally, along with a select group of pre-approved players. Everyone else has to be ranked at a level five or higher in order to start creating new content. Additionally, Google will be launching an e-book version of the Ingress story on October 6th. The new custom mission feature is now available to Android players, with iOS support set to debut at a later time.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIWrOvHogg?list=PLDEUWItbkQ5_mkMO56STfp_JDzDiPrPUM]