The rise of geo-sociality in games
Have you already heard about the unfolding $ 12.7 billion market war in which Facebook lost the first round ? Welcome to the era of geo-social services and games. On the one hand, this blue ocean is fueled by the advertising market - real-time ad targeting here-and-now gives you even more options than information from your Facebook profile. On the other hand, large retailers and small businesses, who are not satisfied with the effectiveness of existing marketing channels, are actively interested in the geo-social market.
It would seem, but what have the games? But Foursquare, the leader among checkin services, has grown rapidly, including on the game mechanics of achieving and maintaining the status of "mayor." Geo-social games can be the point of the most rapid growth and so surviving the second youth of the mobile entertainment industry. For one of my personal projects, I did a review, which I want to share with you.
All geo-services are built around the check-in - the user advertises to his friends or the whole world exactly where he is right now. Chekines do not occur according to geographic coordinates, but in relation to places and events - at Starbucks on Tverskaya, at a Ranetok concert, or in their cozy room. And, of course, you can check in quickly and everywhere from a smartphone, usually within a radius of 500 meters from the physical location.
')
The branch patriarch and the progenitor of the mania of the struggle for mayor's office - who most often check in at the facility, he becomes the mayor. For the user, the service allows for “local” communication in the context of a store, restaurant or any other place, and quite obvious socializing. The main goal - to give live information about local institutions near the place where I am now.
The chip: the ability to create your applications on top of 4SQ and use an open API, including a database of objects and businesses.
Worth borrowing: very convenient profile management, friends.
The main competitor of Foursquare, who made a bet on collecting items for Chekines. The company's business model was in the convergence of real and virtual goods, the next step to the games after the role-playing elements of the mercy of 4SQ. Gowalla was technically the first geo-social service, and the very first company to discover the most important myth of the location-based industry: in fact, the user does not want to be geo-bound . So it was possible to check-in at Gowalla anywhere, even on the moon. A year ago, this feature almost tipped the scales against Foursquare, but alas - the team was sold to Facebook, and the service will be closed.
Chip: a suggestion to the user of a guide around the city, collections of recommendations
It is worth borrowing (while the service is still available!): The mobile interface is very clean, pleasant, responsive.
Sharpened interaction with local businesses geo-information application. There are interesting game pieces - adventures, tasks, treasures. The developers got a strong and good interaction with reality. The idea is to make a game adventure in the real world, with real places, products and companies. For businesses, the service provides many opportunities to attract traffic. All game tasks are related to actions in the real world.
Feature: The ability for people to create “tracks” themselves - sets for check-ins and give out prizes for them.
It is worth borrowing: simultaneous actions with friends and the active use of an accelerometer for action.
Successfully launched in the states service for customers based on the fashionable topic of business gamification. Shopping turns into a collection of awards, went to the store - got 25 buns, scanned the barcode of the product of the day - got another 100. Buns are exchanged for gift certificates, Facebook credits, Sony TV or XBOX 360 console.
The chip: like the group, the service capitalizes itself first and foremost
Worth borrowing: task chains and collection of collections of goods in real stores
There are plenty of other services besides the four winners, in which I did not find anything interesting except the standard set “check-comments-friends” or “check-discounts-offers-rewards”. Therefore, in one line, for reference: Bizzy, Buzzd, Loopt, Aka-aki, Rummble, InCrowd, Geodelic. In addition to buying Facebook in the industry, Gowalla also had some sluggish exit: Whrrl (bought by group), Where.com (bought by eBay), Brightkite (bought by Limbo). I called them lethargic because all the cases are the purchase of a team and usually the closing of a project.
According to most observers, geo-services lacks the traction that is so fashionable in a start-up environment, which is clearly shown by the experience of the hidden Facebook Places - the mass user does not understand the meaning, usefulness and fun of chekines. And the current generation of geo-services may remain the lot of freaks. Games are intuitively attractive to users, and it is possible that the games will have to bite off the lion’s share of the pie at $ 12.8b, from which I began the review.
The new generation of games is actively using the real world in its mechanics - a map (most often Google Maps), places and objects (Foursquare, Google Places), real player location and movement (GPS), data from the real world - weather, real estate prices, a stroke -codes of goods. And the most interesting of these projects are online, allowing people to populate the virtual-real world with real people, with whom and against whom it is much more interesting to play. Geo-social games are not similar to ordinary games, due to the uniqueness of the world and mechanics to interact with reality, or to "social networks" with their extremely casual gathering and mandatory daily spam for friends.
Perhaps the most unusual and visually impressive project. The only game with its stylish implementation of a three-dimensional map of the world based on OpenStreetMap data. The game is hardcore and made by real programmers, so that the furious complexity and curved interface are attached, but everything is done with a soul and you can forgive a lot. Interestingly, the guys decided to leave a fairly rigid geo-binding to the current location. The flight from Moscow to Helsinki for example and back takes 2 days, which actually limits the playing space to its current city.
On the mechanics of the game - a classic MMORPG, where you have to pump over tasks and monsters. But both the world and the interface are very original, not like anything that exists. Sociality is done right - from the very beginning everything is divided into friends and enemies, the conflict of world war is put at the forefront. Groups, guilds, tournaments - all as it should. Monetization looks very weak (and this trend will be further in all games in the review), but due to the uniqueness and gameplay and genre, I think no one yet knows how to do it correctly.
Chip: gesture control - helps a strong immersion in the game
Worth borrowing: very beautiful styling of the game interface and site
Full-fledged big MMORPG with its combat mechanics, craft items, classes and special abilities, guilds and chat. The real world map is essentially used for the background, there is no interaction with it. Some objects in the game appear near parks or rivers in the real world, but in general, the connection with reality is weak.
Chip: players can build entire cities
Worth borrowing: standard google map zoom is available only after learning game skills
Creative rethinking of the ideas of the desktop “Monopoly” - we buy establishments, develop them, check ourselves and call others - we collect profit. Very casual gameplay with a friendly interface. All places are real - from Google Places, every checkin gives the player some awards, there are a lot of checks, and they are restored as energy - everything is correct. World map is not used, only the list of institutions. Alas, the tabletop Monopoly is a real celebration of friendship and socialization, and here sociality is very poorly made.
Chip: perfectly integrated bar codes with real goods
It is worth borrowing: depending on the player’s location, he is given different branded products.
Chekina come to Grand Theft Auto - now you can rob a real Citibank on the corner of Broadway and Second. An interesting combination of elements and social network mafia mechanics seasoned with geolocation. Alas, but the game is full of fatal flaws. Manually collected world map and base of places for check-ins has a 500-meter hard georeferencing to the real location, which greatly limits the gameplay - in such a respectable city as San Diego I get into areas with no objects at all, where there is absolutely nothing to do. Secondly, the alien interface does not allow to play calmly. I would like the founders of the company - all veterans of Playdom and SCEA - to change their minds and remake everything correctly.
Chip: global tournaments - west versus east, iPhones fight with androids, urban quenchers are rural
Worth borrowing: interesting battle mechanics - slot machine with loss of results
Under the cover of a nice interface and quite game screen savers, tasks, buttons there is no game at all, but a geo-oriented social network for visuals. The essence is simple - we make a cozy photo of your favorite cat, in two clicks of the photoshop to it is a funny android, write 140 characters of comment and send the robot with this photo to travel. Somewhere on the other side of the Earth, a robot is found, charged with batteries and rejoiced to your cat by sending his little dog back. But not the fact that the dog will reach the addressee - the robot ends up having energy, and someone good must find it and charge it. Such a letter in a bottle traveling the world. The latest news in the blog is dated February 2011, so look soon - they can close it.
Chip: hard georeferencing - you need to physically move around the city to collect batteries for robots
Worth borrowing: a very nice interface for scanning a card and pulling batteries
Grow grass, build restaurants, kill zombies. Yes, of course, the creators of this masterpiece smoke a lot, but at the same time they managed to take two completely unrelated game mechanics and combine them into a completely meaningful game. A classic farm (sow-water-collect-sell) and a simple arcade with graves, zombies and brains. Grass is needed for money, money - for a restaurant where health is restored after fighting zombies. All restaurants are authentic - from the Yelp base, you can only navigate around the USA and Canada, but absolutely without any restrictions.
The chip: an experiment with porting to Facebook - will the social network farm audience accept the game?
Worth borrowing: high-quality overlay over guglokart, giving a sense of the game world
Projects that you can spend a couple of minutes:
Turf Wars (iOS) - Mafia from social networks, shifted to the real map
Bounty Island (iOS) - standard digging from social networks with a map
QONQR (iOS, WP7, web) - Wargame on the map of our world, with the capture of cities
Merchant Kingdom (iOS) - now you can rob cows in Google Maps!
Beebble (iOS) - a casual game about bees in big cities, killed by a completely hellish interface
Geopoly (iOS) - a good economic strategy in the alpha version
BigShot (iOS) - another mafia
Projects that you shouldn't look at: Gbanga, GEO Hunters, Own This World, WarSquare, Travelers Quest, Home Invasion, TapCity, MayorWar, Oust.me, Besyde, Mobzombies, ForsqWar, Stinktopia. Separately, I note MyTown 2 - after the change of the founder and CEO to a financially savvy veteran from Electronic Arts and Hasbro, instead of the next innovative game, studio Booyah made a more than dull clone of CityVille.
Speech by Keith Lee, former CEO of Booyah (MyTown) at the DICE conference:
www.g4tv.com/videos/51311/dice-2011-rewarding-lifes-challenges-presentation
Discussion of the design features of check-games from the authors of Dokobots:
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7038
And slides to it: http://dokobots.com/media/Dokogeo-BeyondCheckins.pdf
Many materials from the Where 2.0 conference:
http://whereconf.com/where2011/public/schedule/proceedings
In short - there is demand from the business, there is a huge interest of investors, there are more than a million early adopters. But so far there are no products combining a strong and demanded connection with reality, deep gameplay and good loyalty, and thoughtful user experience on a variety of platforms. Plus, no one has yet invented a good monetization of geo-oriented gameplay. Startups - dare, this ocean has not yet been mastered by anyone.
It would seem, but what have the games? But Foursquare, the leader among checkin services, has grown rapidly, including on the game mechanics of achieving and maintaining the status of "mayor." Geo-social games can be the point of the most rapid growth and so surviving the second youth of the mobile entertainment industry. For one of my personal projects, I did a review, which I want to share with you.
Geoservices
All geo-services are built around the check-in - the user advertises to his friends or the whole world exactly where he is right now. Chekines do not occur according to geographic coordinates, but in relation to places and events - at Starbucks on Tverskaya, at a Ranetok concert, or in their cozy room. And, of course, you can check in quickly and everywhere from a smartphone, usually within a radius of 500 meters from the physical location.
')
Android, iOS and all mobile platforms, web
The branch patriarch and the progenitor of the mania of the struggle for mayor's office - who most often check in at the facility, he becomes the mayor. For the user, the service allows for “local” communication in the context of a store, restaurant or any other place, and quite obvious socializing. The main goal - to give live information about local institutions near the place where I am now.
The chip: the ability to create your applications on top of 4SQ and use an open API, including a database of objects and businesses.
Worth borrowing: very convenient profile management, friends.
Android, iOS, web
The main competitor of Foursquare, who made a bet on collecting items for Chekines. The company's business model was in the convergence of real and virtual goods, the next step to the games after the role-playing elements of the mercy of 4SQ. Gowalla was technically the first geo-social service, and the very first company to discover the most important myth of the location-based industry: in fact, the user does not want to be geo-bound . So it was possible to check-in at Gowalla anywhere, even on the moon. A year ago, this feature almost tipped the scales against Foursquare, but alas - the team was sold to Facebook, and the service will be closed.
Chip: a suggestion to the user of a guide around the city, collections of recommendations
It is worth borrowing (while the service is still available!): The mobile interface is very clean, pleasant, responsive.
Android, iOS
Sharpened interaction with local businesses geo-information application. There are interesting game pieces - adventures, tasks, treasures. The developers got a strong and good interaction with reality. The idea is to make a game adventure in the real world, with real places, products and companies. For businesses, the service provides many opportunities to attract traffic. All game tasks are related to actions in the real world.
Feature: The ability for people to create “tracks” themselves - sets for check-ins and give out prizes for them.
It is worth borrowing: simultaneous actions with friends and the active use of an accelerometer for action.
Android, iOS (not available in Russia)
Successfully launched in the states service for customers based on the fashionable topic of business gamification. Shopping turns into a collection of awards, went to the store - got 25 buns, scanned the barcode of the product of the day - got another 100. Buns are exchanged for gift certificates, Facebook credits, Sony TV or XBOX 360 console.
The chip: like the group, the service capitalizes itself first and foremost
Worth borrowing: task chains and collection of collections of goods in real stores
This service, like some others further in the article, is not available from Russian phones. So for iOS, you will need dancing with an American iTunes account, and for android, only root and breaking into the region will help. I did it easier - I bought the second android right in the states :)
In conclusion about geo services
There are plenty of other services besides the four winners, in which I did not find anything interesting except the standard set “check-comments-friends” or “check-discounts-offers-rewards”. Therefore, in one line, for reference: Bizzy, Buzzd, Loopt, Aka-aki, Rummble, InCrowd, Geodelic. In addition to buying Facebook in the industry, Gowalla also had some sluggish exit: Whrrl (bought by group), Where.com (bought by eBay), Brightkite (bought by Limbo). I called them lethargic because all the cases are the purchase of a team and usually the closing of a project.
According to most observers, geo-services lacks the traction that is so fashionable in a start-up environment, which is clearly shown by the experience of the hidden Facebook Places - the mass user does not understand the meaning, usefulness and fun of chekines. And the current generation of geo-services may remain the lot of freaks. Games are intuitively attractive to users, and it is possible that the games will have to bite off the lion’s share of the pie at $ 12.8b, from which I began the review.
Geo-social games
The new generation of games is actively using the real world in its mechanics - a map (most often Google Maps), places and objects (Foursquare, Google Places), real player location and movement (GPS), data from the real world - weather, real estate prices, a stroke -codes of goods. And the most interesting of these projects are online, allowing people to populate the virtual-real world with real people, with whom and against whom it is much more interesting to play. Geo-social games are not similar to ordinary games, due to the uniqueness of the world and mechanics to interact with reality, or to "social networks" with their extremely casual gathering and mandatory daily spam for friends.
iOS (not available from the Russian app)
Perhaps the most unusual and visually impressive project. The only game with its stylish implementation of a three-dimensional map of the world based on OpenStreetMap data. The game is hardcore and made by real programmers, so that the furious complexity and curved interface are attached, but everything is done with a soul and you can forgive a lot. Interestingly, the guys decided to leave a fairly rigid geo-binding to the current location. The flight from Moscow to Helsinki for example and back takes 2 days, which actually limits the playing space to its current city.
On the mechanics of the game - a classic MMORPG, where you have to pump over tasks and monsters. But both the world and the interface are very original, not like anything that exists. Sociality is done right - from the very beginning everything is divided into friends and enemies, the conflict of world war is put at the forefront. Groups, guilds, tournaments - all as it should. Monetization looks very weak (and this trend will be further in all games in the review), but due to the uniqueness and gameplay and genre, I think no one yet knows how to do it correctly.
Chip: gesture control - helps a strong immersion in the game
Worth borrowing: very beautiful styling of the game interface and site
Android, iOS, Chrome WebStore
Full-fledged big MMORPG with its combat mechanics, craft items, classes and special abilities, guilds and chat. The real world map is essentially used for the background, there is no interaction with it. Some objects in the game appear near parks or rivers in the real world, but in general, the connection with reality is weak.
Chip: players can build entire cities
Worth borrowing: standard google map zoom is available only after learning game skills
iOS
Creative rethinking of the ideas of the desktop “Monopoly” - we buy establishments, develop them, check ourselves and call others - we collect profit. Very casual gameplay with a friendly interface. All places are real - from Google Places, every checkin gives the player some awards, there are a lot of checks, and they are restored as energy - everything is correct. World map is not used, only the list of institutions. Alas, the tabletop Monopoly is a real celebration of friendship and socialization, and here sociality is very poorly made.
Chip: perfectly integrated bar codes with real goods
It is worth borrowing: depending on the player’s location, he is given different branded products.
Android, iOS (not available from Russia, the game world is limited to the USA)
Chekina come to Grand Theft Auto - now you can rob a real Citibank on the corner of Broadway and Second. An interesting combination of elements and social network mafia mechanics seasoned with geolocation. Alas, but the game is full of fatal flaws. Manually collected world map and base of places for check-ins has a 500-meter hard georeferencing to the real location, which greatly limits the gameplay - in such a respectable city as San Diego I get into areas with no objects at all, where there is absolutely nothing to do. Secondly, the alien interface does not allow to play calmly. I would like the founders of the company - all veterans of Playdom and SCEA - to change their minds and remake everything correctly.
Chip: global tournaments - west versus east, iPhones fight with androids, urban quenchers are rural
Worth borrowing: interesting battle mechanics - slot machine with loss of results
iOS
Under the cover of a nice interface and quite game screen savers, tasks, buttons there is no game at all, but a geo-oriented social network for visuals. The essence is simple - we make a cozy photo of your favorite cat, in two clicks of the photoshop to it is a funny android, write 140 characters of comment and send the robot with this photo to travel. Somewhere on the other side of the Earth, a robot is found, charged with batteries and rejoiced to your cat by sending his little dog back. But not the fact that the dog will reach the addressee - the robot ends up having energy, and someone good must find it and charge it. Such a letter in a bottle traveling the world. The latest news in the blog is dated February 2011, so look soon - they can close it.
Chip: hard georeferencing - you need to physically move around the city to collect batteries for robots
Worth borrowing: a very nice interface for scanning a card and pulling batteries
iPad, Facebook, web
Grow grass, build restaurants, kill zombies. Yes, of course, the creators of this masterpiece smoke a lot, but at the same time they managed to take two completely unrelated game mechanics and combine them into a completely meaningful game. A classic farm (sow-water-collect-sell) and a simple arcade with graves, zombies and brains. Grass is needed for money, money - for a restaurant where health is restored after fighting zombies. All restaurants are authentic - from the Yelp base, you can only navigate around the USA and Canada, but absolutely without any restrictions.
The chip: an experiment with porting to Facebook - will the social network farm audience accept the game?
Worth borrowing: high-quality overlay over guglokart, giving a sense of the game world
Projects that you can spend a couple of minutes:
Turf Wars (iOS) - Mafia from social networks, shifted to the real map
Bounty Island (iOS) - standard digging from social networks with a map
QONQR (iOS, WP7, web) - Wargame on the map of our world, with the capture of cities
Merchant Kingdom (iOS) - now you can rob cows in Google Maps!
Beebble (iOS) - a casual game about bees in big cities, killed by a completely hellish interface
Geopoly (iOS) - a good economic strategy in the alpha version
BigShot (iOS) - another mafia
Projects that you shouldn't look at: Gbanga, GEO Hunters, Own This World, WarSquare, Travelers Quest, Home Invasion, TapCity, MayorWar, Oust.me, Besyde, Mobzombies, ForsqWar, Stinktopia. Separately, I note MyTown 2 - after the change of the founder and CEO to a financially savvy veteran from Electronic Arts and Hasbro, instead of the next innovative game, studio Booyah made a more than dull clone of CityVille.
What to see and listen to the topic of games
Speech by Keith Lee, former CEO of Booyah (MyTown) at the DICE conference:
www.g4tv.com/videos/51311/dice-2011-rewarding-lifes-challenges-presentation
Discussion of the design features of check-games from the authors of Dokobots:
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7038
And slides to it: http://dokobots.com/media/Dokogeo-BeyondCheckins.pdf
Many materials from the Where 2.0 conference:
http://whereconf.com/where2011/public/schedule/proceedings
Why all this
In short - there is demand from the business, there is a huge interest of investors, there are more than a million early adopters. But so far there are no products combining a strong and demanded connection with reality, deep gameplay and good loyalty, and thoughtful user experience on a variety of platforms. Plus, no one has yet invented a good monetization of geo-oriented gameplay. Startups - dare, this ocean has not yet been mastered by anyone.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/136419/
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