Location based gaming isn’t anything new.  Take a look at the wikipedia page for location-based game to see a wide variety of games dating back to around the turn of this century.  But, what are all these games missing?  Hint: it starts with an i and rhymes with dry scone.

I honestly think the iPhone, with it’s GPS enabled functionality combined with it’s google maps app, may revolutionize the location-based gaming genre, and even bring it into the mainstream.  The barrier to entry for these games is that you need 1) a GPS device and another device or format for interacting with the game or 2) a business-class phone running Windows Mobile or Symbian-OS.  The types of people that fit these two scenarios are a small fraction of the types of people that want/have an iphone.

Here’s a braindump of silly/fun generic location-based game for the iphone that’s been swirling around my head for the past few weeks.

• The iphone user downloads an app from the app store.
• They register and sign up for a team.
• There are two teams – doesn’t matter what they are.
• Players simply go to different locations and ‘capture’ them for their team.
• Capturing could be as simple as pressing a button, sending GPS coordinates to a server, reverse geo-locating that address and storing it in a database.
• Opposing teams can capture each other’s locations.
• First team to 500,000 locations wins
• There is a companion website for the game that shows activity, history, a map with the team’s locations, etc.

Obviously, there are some quirks that would have to be worked out.  A location would have to have a more specific and larger definition than ‘any GPS coordinate.’   There may have to be a cooldown on a location to prevent high-traffic locations from continuously changing hands.

Also, this provides the foundation for more complex and interactive location-based games.  There could be more than just 2 teams, or an infinite number of teams that players define.  There could be more complex rules for capturing a location.  A location may have to be ‘won’ by a game of tic-tac-toe or chess against a live person or a computer.  The game could have a theme or be branded as a fun compliment to a mainstream console or PC game.

Really, the possibilities are endless!  I’ll have another post in the near future with more details on an iphone location-based game we may or may not be working on at Figaro