There has been an explosion of location-based games and location-based social networking sites. I have been trying out a few of them because I think there are some interesting possibilities for interactions based on the serendipity of location.
As a parent, I think my life may be too mundane for these games. I hate to burst your bubble, but being a contributor to GeekDad does not turn you into a jet-setting, club-hopping superstar. My day is a mundane routine of work, picking the kids after school, commuting, errands on the weekends and some kid activities.
BrightKite
I started using BrightKite because a few connections invited me. It was an interesting mix of communications and locations. But it never caught on beyond that small group of connections.
I gave up using BrightKite after it kept insisting that the Boston restaurant where I was eating was actually 20 miles south of the city.
Foursquare
A year later I ran into FourSquare. It added gameplay to location publishing.
I’ll confess that Foursquare brought out my competitive streak. I wanted to get the “mayor” title for the places I frequented. I started mixing up my routine and went to new places just to become the mayor of more places. That earned me a Super Mayor badge. I even started going to the gym more often so I could get the Gym Rat badge.
But then the mundane took over. I was still going to the same places and kept my reign as mayor of most of them.
It was interesting, at first, to see where my connections spent their time. But then the mundane took over. Patrick was at Penn Station again. Ken was at Peet’s Coffee again.
Gowalla
I also dabbled with Gowalla. It seemed just like a FourSquare clone. (Or is FourSquare a clone of Gowalla?)
I didn’t find the gameplay as interesting because it did not bring out my obsessive, competitive streak. Fewer people I know were using it, so that also made it less interesting.
Like Foursquare, Gowalla can publish your location updates to Twitter and Facebook. I’ve come to realize that the gameplay of publishing your location in Gowalla or Foursquare is generally not very interesting in Twitter or Facebook. It just showed the mundane.
Own This World
Earlier this week I tried out Own This World. The game’s creator, Big Nerds in Disguise, sent me a free copy. They pitched it as a fun cross between Risk and Foursquare.
The object of the game is to conquer territories based on your location in the real world. As you move from territory to territory you acquire troops and resources that will allow you to conquer territories or attack other players. There is also an option buy your own world to play with your friends.
Hearing “Risk” caught my attention. The game has always been a favorite. My college roommates and I had an obsession with game, often playing deep into the night. Typically, Ed would take over Australia and build up an enormous army in Siam while the rest of us battled for territory.
In Own This World, you build up troops just by being inside a grid on the map. They use a Google Maps mashup. You can attack anyone else with troops in the grid of your current location. If you have the most troops, the grid is yours.
Boston was largely vacant so I started building up my troops throughout the metro area. Actually, it was just more of the mundane. I built up troops just by going through my routine travels of the day.
Most of Downtown Boston is in one grid and someone else initially owned it. They only had a few troops. I amassed a legion just by sitting in my office. I also walked across the street, putting me in another grid which gave my dominion over Boston Harbor.
Giving my competitive streak, I took a long way home on my commute and brought some grids in Newton and Waltham into my dominion.
Will it or any of these location based games be able to overcome the mundane? I don’t know, but it gives me something to do while standing in line waiting for my coffee.
