Location Based Gaming and the iPhone
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




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