Ideas

Just to confirm the 30 RPs claim with this uneditable comment (if it is needed for any arbitration in future).

I think you have been very creative and generous here in inviting members to help complete an embryonic idea and sharing the RPs unfront in this manner.

A point to bear in mind is that there are theoretically another 75 RPs allocated for the authoring of an idea. I really don't know how CH decides on how they are awarded but if there was some guideline given by CH then that may offer additional flexibility in incentives too.

In GWABS for example, two authors of merged ideas got 75 RPs each for the GWABS project, according to Teri in one of her forum post.

This is a great idea. I would add that it should be pitched to the phone companies as an add on cost to their basic service (like an extra .50 a month or 1.00 a month for unlimited playing of the game. Every time I see someone in an airport or anyone else waiting in line for something playing with a gameboy or other device I could definitely see this type of thing working!
. Connect the dots of other GPS locations in different colors creating mandelbrot drawings that can be saved on the GPS appliance for skins.
. Create a game that lets people guess how many elevation changes will occur over a certain route by say 10 or 20 degrees and give points for those who get closest.
. Create an additional game that randomly selects a GPS range of points and allows submission of an identifier that is put into a pool for prizes for those that cross into that range in a certain time period.

I'll take whatever points you decide Deckard if this thing flies. I'm into it!

http://www.cambrianh...4uDMrI2#comment-4670

I posted the same idea AFTER you posted yours. Ooops. Gotta vote you up. I'd be crazy interested in this but don't have spare cycles.

How about a good old-fashioned game of RISK?! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_(game)

You can apply it to the whole world, but why not only a city? And a city with sufficient concentration of GPS devices to that. For example, London.

People register online and chose camp. It can be ideological (you feel like a human, a troll, a fairy or a harry potter)... or it can be server-assigned, to allow for the best spread (red, green, blue...).

You have a map (of London) divided into districts (counties).

You have people fighting battles by throwing dice when they meet on an outdoor spot (with the little help from the GPS system). The dice are "thrown" over Blue Tooth. The battle report is instantly sent to the game server via GPRS where we all watch the battles.

The attacker (who has advantage if the dice roll to the same numbers) is the one who fires the first! If there's no fire back in 10 seconds, the attacker instantly wins the battle (provided that the both parties are pingable).

There may be mass battles (there are different possible solutions for such battles, the constraint being my lack of knowledge at the time of writting as to what the blue tooth tech may/may not provide :)

The control over the district/county gets the army that has won the most battles in certain timeframe.

Those who rule the county have an advantage inside the county: while in playmode, their location is stealth if they are not noobs. Or maybe, their location is given out less frequently!

The problem that needs to be addressed is how to discourage human-to-human violence. One way to do it is to establish that a cup of tea is going to be drank after each battle has been had :)

One other problem is when does the game finish?

(claiming 20 RPs for this mini-idea).

If there were a way to force users to wear LARP-style costumes I would LOVE this idea.

I'm tickled by the idea of passing a guy in a homemade mage costume, furiously screaming "Lightningbolt!" at his Blackberry while grocery shopping

Great idea - no one has really tapped into the true power all these GPS connections are going to have.

Back in the day (like this time last year, I think) there was a handheld that died named the gizmondo. It had a game named Colors where you would turf battle in real world against other people's gang or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_(video_game)

If I went to my favorite park downtown and sat there with my Gizmondo and fired up the game Colors, I could have a shootout with the defenders that a previous person that came to this same park had setup. If someone else had their Gizmondo in the same region, you'd have to battle pvp with the winner taking this region and points going to the gangs that owned the most real world turf.

Interesting game idea. Gizmondo died a silent death, but I think this game would have been a "Guitar Hero" if it had a system to release on.

hrm, looks like the comment system breaks urls with parens in them. Here is a link if the previous one doesn't work for you guys.

http://www.gamespot....on/colors/index.html

Deckard, I love the creative way you solicit comments and suggestions!

It's a terrific idea, with endless possible variations.

There has been academic research on pervasive, or location-based games, some funded by the European Commission. There is even a conference: http://www.pergames.de

I have a feeling there is or there will be some competition, but also that there is room for it.

Some of those games require some labor-intensive organization and monitoring: gamemasters that place clues in some locations, intervene to steer the game, etc. We clearly don't want that. Unless all of it is handled by the participants themselves: player A's goal is to place some object in some location, player B's task is to retrieve it, etc. The game needs to be designed for a specific area though.

I imagine that other games would only depend on the relative locations of the participants, what they are doing, what they are wearing, etc. Probably the simplest to setup.

So, how many RP do I get ? ;-)

I'm from Canada, and at least here in Ontario, phones really do not have a lot of features. They really suck.

Very few phones at all even have GPS features, so none of us could actually even participate in your game. Furthermore, data rates are unbelieveably high here, so unless you have the power to get most cell companies to agree to a flat rate on your game, there is a slim chance people would pay the regular data usage for your game, at least here in canada where its a gazillion dollars a meg.

Just my thoughts...

I don't think even a multi-billion dollar cellphone corporation could pull this off without a lot of trouble.

What you'd get is a few groups all over the world where them and their friends buy it. That can be fun and all for a little while but the whole point of the game is to track down and meet opponents, no? That's where the innovation is. Groups of friends can just go over to each other's houses and fire up a console, so it'd be all about the strangers.

The chances they would ever encounter anybody else who played the game in the first few years would be very slim, and nobody is going to wait around. The game will have died out by the time it even had a chance to get popular.

I like the idea of a multiplayer game with your cellphone, but your idea would require the game to actually start out with millions of players, and that'd be pretty difficult to do.

Cory_Ross,

There is lots going on in the densely populated areas. A game like this would be for the people living on the big islands-in-the-net, where you could do much more than in Clearfild, US, St. Agatha Ca, or Skopje, MK.

There are problems, but they are of a different sort. There is a thread somewhere in the forums speaking about the real problems laid out by people dealing professionally with this issue.

Deckard

The issue of privacy can be addressed using relative location.

For example rather than using the real location, a virtual fantasy map (Ie monopoly board) can be placed over the real space in which you play. If, for example, there is a virtual tree in the dead center of the fantasy space, every player would be relative to that tree.

This means players in Calgary could play with players in New York, for example. The absolute location would not be given away but the game play would be identical.

It also means players in small towns could also play...even if there is no other players in that small town.

It also allows for rich virtual playgrounds ( ie game space) in your own environment.

KnowledgeWhere Inc. (www.knowledgewhere.com) is doing this now and has a multiplayer platform to do all this successfully.

LivePlanet (www.liveplanet.com) (founders Matt Damon and Ben Afflect) is creating a game called Phone Tag using the Knowledgewhere platform. It premiered at last May's E3 show.

I think this is the future of mobile gaming!

This has already been done, albeit not with phones, but with Google maps and a risk-like system.

Maybe you have something here. The key to making it a success would be tapping the teenage market, I think. So how would this appeal to them? It seems to me it's very, very nerdy.

this isn't a game suggestion but something that if it were developed i would use and find infintely more interesting than the MMORG's...

make it so i can put my phone in broadcast mode and have it update a server with my location. 20 of my friends are all on my buddy list and when their phones are in broadcast mode, we both receive notification when we are in proximity so we can meet up when we're out.

I know this is similar to what the dodgeball.com site is trying to achieve but with their system you have to manually check in via sending a text message with your location. The killer app for this LBS phone service is being able to automate that discovery and set a proximity threshold so you can have spontaneous chance encounters with your friends. this could either be a sustainable paid service or an acquisition play from someone like dodgeball if you built it and made it simple enough to get going with. make hooks so it scoured your gmail contacts or outlook contacts and prepopulated your buddy list and sent txt msg invitations to join the service.

sean

I Think this is awesome. U should make it a game like There.com, cause chicks luv it, there addicted 2 it. u can get money on it tht way 2, by charging for close and stuff, which u no chicks will luv, and buy. but hey, thts just my oppinion. ;)

Make the game free, but use premium or reverse charge SMS to activate game features, buy virtual objects, new lives, etc. If the game is addictive enough, this is bigger than ringtones!

Both of these ideas are awesome, but this is the one that will bring more money. I'm note sure I understand why you have to continuously qualify your idea (I only claim "RP" or this post only edited once, etc).

I love maps, love my GPS, though it isn't part of my phone (another Canadian).

I don't think this idea has become focused enough yet to advance from IdeaWarz straight to production.

I would like to see it go further, but this is still looking extremely open-ended and conceptual.

Raises the question of how developed the winning ideas should be by the time they win - that's a separate discussion.

Oh how I love optimistic ideas! I think the idea is great!

A feature out of my box:

Just like in the Super mario games you can put virtual 1up!'s on real locations...

Just like in stratego you can leave virtual landmines on real locations to harm the other players in the game

Autonomicpilot,

At the time this idea was submitted to CH, there was an ongoing discussion about the ways the ideas can be pitched and voted for. So i wanted to experiment never thinking that the idea would have more success on substance than on form. I admit it looks a bit strange from the distance, but i committed not to change the text, so i didn't even edit.

I have to say that I think this idea is much too vague. Even claiming partial-credit for something this vague shouldn't be allowed. It's like saying, "let's make a video game for a PC, and I'll only take 30% credit for what we come up with!" The complete success or failure of this entire genre will be in the exact gameplay, not in the fact that it's location-based. Don't get me wrong, being truly location-based will be a huge selling point, but it's the gameplay that will skyrocket or tank the concept. As it is, this idea isn't complete enough to even vote on in my mind. We should have multiple people pitch much more complete location-based game ideas, as some have in the above comments.