How Niantic designers tackled Ingress Prime reboot

Before there was Pokémon Go, Niantic got its feet wet in the location-based gaming market with Ingress. And last week, the company returned to the world of its first sci-fi game with a reboot title, dubbed Ingress Prime.While Pokemon Go has more than 800 million players, Ingress was no slouch with 20 million downloads. And because Niantic owns it outright, it can be as experimental as it wants to be with Ingress Prime, which will also be another massively multiplayer game where two factions fight for control of virtual properties at real world locations such as public landmarks.The original came out in 2012, but the new title has better narrative features, a companion anime TV show, augmented reality, and more support for live events.I was in a small group of press that got a full download on Ingress Prime. After that, we had a chance to ask questions of the team, including Niantic CEO John Hanke, senior engineer Niniane Wang, product manager Scot Frank, and marketer Andrew McIntosh.