Daniel Bartlett thinks nothing of driving halfway across the UK to visit places that aren’t really there. Most of the time he’s out to scupper enemy plans. A couple of months ago, he made a 500-kilometre round-trip from London to defend an alien portal at the lifeboat station on Cromer Pier, on the east coast of England.
In between scoffing a portion of chips and an ice cream, he coordinated with around 50 people at other key coastal positions from Scotland across to the Netherlands. Over the course of an afternoon, they took control of the North Sea, turning it from blue to green.
Barlett has been playing Ingress for two and a half years. Released in 2012 by San Francisco studio Niantic, the game layers a sci-fi world navigated by smartphone over the actual one. Players join one of two factions – green or blue – and compete in a global tussle for territory by taking control of virtual portals hidden in plain sight. Cromer’s lifeboat station is one of thousands.
To read more, click here.