I know that there's a story/mythology around Ingress and that the people running it stage events that are supposed to carry the story forward. I just haven't paid any attention to that part of things, so I don't know a lot of details. It is set up to be a struggle over the future of the planet and of humanity in general.

In practice, people from both factions interact with each other in a reasonably civilized way and sometimes do projects to make pretty patterns with portals and links. I'm sure there are people who get obnoxious about it in the way that people can get obnoxious about, say, dedication to a particular sports team.

My guess is that the folks running this will draw it out as long as they possibly can. It's a business (I'm not actually sure how the model works. I know that it's possible to buy stuff for use in the game, but I only have the vaguest idea of how that works or what might be available. That tells me they're not pushing very hard to sell stuff to participants because I've been playing, casually, for months.)

The folks running the game are, from what I gather, about to (or already have?) open up a similar game that's connected with Pokemon and affiliated with the company that owns that. It's possible that they'll end up putting more resources into that because, I suspect, it will be more profitable.