OK, so you’re a Foursquare user and you’re the “Mayor of Starbucks” in Hackensack… Whatever!
Maybe you use Gowalla and you’ve just traded a virtual ‘kettle’ for a virtual ‘bowl of noodles’ at the Sewage Farm in Cleckheaton… Who cares?
Wouldn’t it be more fun searching for some real treasure? Geocaching could be the answer.
Location-based mobile games are hot right now. Foursquare, Gowalla and others encourage you to “check in” at various locations using smartphone apps in order to earn points or trade tokens.
However, when the novelty of wearing imaginary Foursquare mayoral chains whilst ordering your skinny latte wears off, what are you going to do? When you’re really hungry, but those virtual noodles from Gowalla fail to satisfy your appetite, where do you look?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could search the world around you looking for real hidden artefacts? With Geocaching you can do just that. It’d be cool if Foursquare, Gowalla or one of the other location games could build this in to their apps.
Like, Foursquare, Gowalla and the current crop of location based games, it’s all about being mobile and making the most of the GPS in your phone or Sat Nav device to find hidden items. The difference is, these items are for real… and they’re all around you!
Geocaching is a global phenomena that’s been steadily gaining popularity since its launch in 2000. In almost ten years, over 3 million participants have hidden and searched for almost a million items around the globe. What’s more, they’re all waiting to be found… by you.
Even better, if you’re an iPhone user, there’s an app from Geocaching.com, the largest GPS cache hunt site, to make it even easier. Using the app you can search for hidden treasures near to your current position and navigate towards them.
When you get to ‘ground zero’ you hunt around for the hidden ‘cache’ which can be anything from the size of a coin to a sandwich box. If you find it, sign the paper log inside it and there may also be a few items inside to trade with other geocaching fans.
Using the app or the Geocaching website, you can provide updates regarding your find before moving onto the next one. What the app and the site currently lack is any integration with social networks, which might be just the thing a Foursquare or a Gowalla could introduce to the equation.
In the meantime, there’s a health warning that goes with geocaching. People have been questioned by the police for snooping around suspiciously looking for hidden booty, so if you’re interested in geocaching, read up on the do’s and don’ts on geocaching.com or the wiki, before getting started.
Hey, am i wrong or does Gowalla do all this?
You are because Gowalla doesn't lead you to RL items that other users hide.
If you're into actual treasure hunts then geocaching is for you, otherwise stick to the virtual world with Gowalla (for stamps/items) or Foursquare (for badges/mayorship).
Gowalla gives you little incentive to check in. I tried it for a while and got bored with picking up Lego Bricks everywhere I went.
I definitely have a sense that the location games are on the cusp of something – but as you point out the offerings are too immature to have lasting value, yet. Maybe there is traction in blending Foursquare or Gowalla with Vouchercloud – checkins at specific locations reveal vouchers for those stores / sites. This could be expanded to all sorts of incentive marketing – e.g. every 1000th Incase item that is seeded into Gowalla is a voucher for a real one. That would encourage more participation and allow the developers to build revenue streams.
I didn't realise that was possible
were not the OSM , Ushahidi , CrisisMappers, Crisiscommons communities the only ones that donated
a real contribution to our compassionate LBS web ?
Hence this LBS tribute interweaving pearltrees , bliin , qik and twitter interfaces:
http://bit.ly/btS3I7
Hi, the true power of Foursquare (imho), is when the virtual mayorship is combined with real world rewards – THEN the fun begins :)
We've already done some experimenting with virtual goods being redeemed for real world items such as Incase Backpacks and iPods. You're going to see us do more of this in the future. By allowing folks to redeem the virtual for the real we can eliminate the “digging around Ground Zero” issues which is not going to be a comfortable experience for many people.
We're definitely fascinated by the sense of exploration that geocaching invokes. Our goal is to bottle that up in a way that scales for everyone.
Interesting Josh. Thanks for commenting here. Agreed, the 'digging around Ground Zero thing' is all around confidence, but that sense of converting the virtual into the real is very attractive.
You're welcome. You coming to SXSW?
Admittedly we're late to the “social” aspect of location, since our origins come from the standalone, non-networked GPS. But our first application on the iPhone (and soon Android) has definitely made us aware how powerful the network can be. Expect some interesting things from Geocaching.com this year.
Not at SXSW this time unfortunately, but The Next Web's Editor-In-Chief, Zee will be there.
That sounds interesting Jeremy. Thanks for the comment.
Google will soon be rolling out their QR coded window decals for local establishments. Look for that to be an opportunity to expand Google Latitude to add game elements, or at least cerainly coupon/reward offers. Maybe the existing LBS players can co-opt these codes somehow.
I know it's not geocaching but it's another thing to work with.
OMFG! You're finally talking about the best thing in the WORLD! About frickin time.
Carry on.
Wow.. did FS or GW pay for this article? Almost every paragraph mentions them.. How about a shoutout to the other apps such as AltNewWorld.com or the other check in applications out there? How does it help your users to always read about the 'other' apps. Show some love!
I do not think, tangible items, are going to make some of these games more successfull.
First of all tangible means not scalable. Success of having 3 million players in 10 years (geocaching) would be failure in the virtual/social world.
Another thing is, people put a lot of effort to have more followers, end up in the explore, have their blog mentioned somewhere in the list of top N of something. They treat these virtual things (like link on some website, number of followers) as very tangible achievements.
In XXI century virtual is new tangible.
By the way there is also http://www.kubalo.com, location based game, where you can win your ticket to the next web conference.
That's funny. After 10 years we've found it is very difficult to move from the physical to the virtual and have the same experience. The eureka moment of finding a geocache is difficult to replicate with a virtual object, no matter how well designed it is.
We've built a sustainable business with geocaching, so I'm not sure how you would define that a failure.
The check-in models don't hold my interest that long, which is why I have always liked geocaching much better than its waymarking companion. But in addition to caching, I have enjoyed the ispy app from splitp. It allows users to post a picture of an object, large or small, within a given search area, equally large or small. Its up to the player to find the object and post a picture of it. There is definitely a “eureka moment” to the game, as Jeremy described with caching. Ispy is fun if you like to poke around an area, discover quirky things, or look at things in new light, but it still needs more players to really hit its stride. In many areas you might be creating more games than playing them. Still, it has more creative potential than checking in and a little bit better suited to the iphone's present capabilities than geocaching (which works much better with a dedicated gpsr).