Side note -- I went to a great talk by the Grey Area (Shadow Cities) guys at GDC, and one of their big takeaways was that you need to enable competition between people who aren't geographically near one another. Otherwise you don't build a critical mass of players.
I can't tell from the available material if Ingress gameplay provides for satisfying solo play, but if it doesn't they're going to hit the same issues Grey Area did originally.
Not the first to, shall we say, draw extensive inspiration from shadow cities: http://qonqr.com/
There is so little shame in the industry anymore, but it is admittedly a very difficult task to be creative in a gaming startup.
Competition is a good thing I guess. I'd hate to be competing with Google though. Their fanboi base is suffuse with a devotion that borders on unquestioning faith which plays well in the gaming segment where the hard part is initially attracting critical mass for the underlying game dynamic to be fun.
No, shadow cities predates that game by over a year, but it remained a fairly European presence at the time. And the games are fairly distinct, that looks to be simply a "squatting" game with little strategy.
Look at the other 2 games linked and you find they are not only disturbingly similar in game mechanics but the graphics are also fairly derivative.
