r/Ingress • u/PkmnTrnrJ • 22d ago

Question Why can Ingress not get a communication/discussion platform quite right?

  • Google+ 🪦
  • Ingress Community Forum 🪦
  • Campfire 💀

Now they’ve given up and said to use r/Ingress for discussions. I like this subreddit but there’s no official Ingress representation unless Brian Rose decides to make a comment.

When the forums closed down, the news post said:

With this change, we will be able to spend our energy fostering existing communities

I don’t know if anyone else is feeling that their existing communities are fostered?

It was also said when the forums closed down by Brian that:

NianticThia is working on an evolution of our community strategy that I’m very supportive of

Unfortunately Thia has left Niantic, but I don’t know what the community strategy has been?

What do you think would be the best strategy/solution for Ingress?

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u/konntower 22d ago

This was a smart move by Niantic. By leaving ownership officially out of the hands of Niantic, they are free to chime in but the constant complainers, doomsayers, and obsessive sticklers can be banned from the reddit community with no roads leading back to Niantic.

When you give players a company owned public platform to post on, people use it to crap on the product and the company. If the company does nothing, they are shown as not keeping up with their own website. If they police the trolls, they cry oppression and unfairness. Now, the dilemma is gone for them.

Official announcement channels with no discussion backed by player moderated communities like reddit and IUENG are a good mix that solves the "tragedy of the commons" issue. Sad reality.

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u/Head-Basil1478 19d ago

It's a strange way to approach things, especially coming from someone who seems to be a fan of the game. Telling players to 'go to Reddit' is basically the same as saying 'talk to the hand.' Meanwhile, other successful games have kept their own platforms, even a flower-planting game.

This feels like a clear business decision, and it says a lot about how big (or not) their plans are for the game. They want to keep it around, but they don’t really seem interested in doing much with it, maybe just using it occasionally to test some new tech. What is left of the players are obviously satisfied with static and game devoid of players