It’s capture the flag for tech geeks. Or graffiti tagging without the spray paint. Or a new way of viewing your environment, foreign or familiar.

However you want to characterize it, the Ingress multiplayer online game has gotten tech-savvy participants out of their ergo chairs and outdoors into neighborhoods, parks, city streets, country roads and the rest of the world. And they’re even pausing occasionally to look up from their cellphones and tablets and appreciate not only what they’ve found but what it took to get there.

"It’s a game that you can’t sit at home and play in your underwear," said Paul Lawler, 59, who teaches information technology and tourism topics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. "You have to go out and do things."

Ingress is a downloadable game played on smartphones and tablets. Created by Niantic, a Google subdivision, it’s based on geocaching — a treasure hunt using mobile devices equipped with Global Positioning System technology. Ingress takes the game a step further by introducing role-playing against a fictional back story about an energy source called "Exotic Matter" that is leaking from another dimension into our world through "portals." Portals are actual landmarks, often public artwork or buildings that can be identified by their GPS coordinates.

Players are dubbed "agents" for either the blue "Resistance" or green "Enlightened" teams and lay claim over the portals, battling it out with a faux arsenal of weapons with fearsome-sounding names such as "pulse burster" and "resonator." Though one team can build a digital defense around a portal, the other team, with the right tools, can break down those defenses and claim the portal. Portals often change hands several times during the course of a day.

The turf battle takes place not in real life but within the confines of the online game.

Neither side is considered good or evil, and while there might be some good-natured digs when opposing factions show up at the same portal, there’s very little action. In fact, there doesn’t appear to be much going on at all during the game.

"When we get together to play, it looks like a bunch of people standing in a park looking at their phones," said Ryan Ozawa, 39, co-host of Hawaii Public Radio’s "Bytemarks Cafe" and an avid Ingress player. "I’m sure the cynic in you would go, ‘What is wrong with these people? They’re in this beautiful park with all these statues and they’re looking at their phones.’"

The beauty of the game is in the camaraderie — the shared experience of being outside, on the hunt, observing and noticing their surroundings, gamers say. The technology requires a player to get within 40 yards of a portal and not to be traveling at more than 35 mph to claim it, discouraging drive-by skirmishes.

Lawler said the game fits right in with his interests in technology and travel, while providing some pleasant surprises as well.

"I’ve been to places on the island I never would have never seen," he said. "I’ve lived here 35 years, and all of a sudden I come across this art in public places, or a statue or a memorial that I never even knew about … . Specifically, I never realized how much art there was on the UH campus. There is artwork everywhere."

Many of the portals are, indeed, works of art, such as Skygate, the huge tubular sculpture near the Frank F. Fasi Municipal Building downtown. Several nearby buildings are also portals. The game originally drew on public databases to develop a list of portals, but now players can nominate specific locations.

Gamers also use Ingress as a motivational tool to see the island. It’s a point of pride to have ventured far from one’s home stomping grounds to do battle over a portal, no matter how temporary victory might be.

"Kaena Point is a hotly contested portal because it’s hard to get to," said Ozawa, a Resistance member. "Kuliouou, Punchbowl cemetery, North Shore, Turtle Bay, a lot of these portals are way far out. So if you’re completely crazy about it, you’ll get in your car or on your bike and go massive distances to play this game."

Ozawa often brings his entire family, each equipped with mobile devices, to play Ingress, but he also pays close attention to the portals near his office at Dole Cannery in Iwilei, reclaiming them in case someone from the rival Enlightened team takes it.

Although the appeal to techies is obvious, Ingress seems to appeal to others as well. Janelle Oshiro, a 38-year-old homemaker, got interested in the game through friends and found it to be a good way to get out of the house.

"It’s my way of letting out my aggression. I have been to a lot of places that I’ve never been to before, just trying to hunt down your portals," she said. "I’ve trucked out to Kaena Point with my daughter. I’ve actually lost a couple of pounds and inches doing this."

Jordan Silva, 28, director of technical services at Integration Technology, a downtown tech company, enjoys interacting with others as he plays Ingress. "There’s really boring parts of this game … if you’re playing by yourself," he said, "but if you get together with a lot of people, it’s a lot of fun because you’re hanging out with your friends, and you can just hang out and chat and plan. There are times when we’ll just order pizza."

He also likes the friendly competition the game engenders. Just to spice up the game for him, Silva chose to be an agent for the blue side because one of his co-workers is a green agent.

"Competition is good," he said.

Silva also tracks the movement of green players such as John Hyrne, a systems administrator at Tripler Army Medical Center. "I pretty much always know where he is playing at any given time because it’s important to know where he is, because he leads the other team. … So if he’s out where he’s not supposed to be, there’s probably something going on."

Hyrne, 45, said he learned of Ingress through brief bulletins and clues that Google released before final testing of the game starting in November 2012. "I got all my friends started, they got all their friends started, and the game took off," he said. "It’s been strictly viral."

Locally, Ozawa estimates up to 300 people play on a regular basis, and elsewhere, the game has spawned a huge international community of Ingress players. The Ingress app is offered at the moment only on Android OS devices, and when the anticipated rollout out of an I-OS version for Apple devices happens later this year, the number of fans is likely to climb.

Local players have often encountered tourists battling for a portal, and the Hawaii gamers are known to play when traveling. With coordinated efforts by members of the same team, portals can be linked together, enhancing the feeling of bonding.

"It’s a global game for sure and some cities are completely bonkers for it," Ozawa said. "The playground for Ingress is the entire planet."

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Visit Ingress.com to download the app and learn more about the game. There are also Google Community, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and websites for local players on both teams.