Ask HN: We're building a real-life, location-based MMORPG. Will you play? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: We're building a real-life, location-based MMORPG. Will you play?

16 pointsamithgeorge27 comments

Dear HNers,

Here's what we intend to have when we're ready - a game that borrows elements from World of Warcraft, Foursquare and Mafia Wars, playable through the browser and eventually via a mobile device. No graphics engine for now, we're thinking compelling visuals + text.

Chapter 1 - Architecting the world: We pull in your check-ins from a popular location based service (Foursquare/Gowalla/Facebook) and reward you for checking in (with virtual currency and 'artifacts'). We build a mystical, medieval universe atop these real places. You then compete to purchase these venues and start upgrading them, fortifying them for the impending onslaught. (Yup, this bit has certainly been inspired by Booyah's MyTown, but it's also pretty much where the similarity ends). [Status: Nearing completion]

Chapter 2 - Learning the ropes: You begin exploring the universe through your check-ins. Play simple browser-based, click-driven missions to earn more currency / XP / karma / health. Head out into the world, either alone or with a band of cohorts to complete quests that require you to carry out recon / defend your properties / deliver packages / sabotage or booby-trap venues / attack other users and properties. [Status: 3-4 months away]

Chapter 3 - Choose your Adventure: Races/allegiances that reflect you and your style of play. Richer gameplay that you can influence (think swarm badges in Foursquare). And much more that we haven't thought of yet.

- Overwhelming is a mild word for how daunting it'll be to string together a playable MVP for this, so if you think you'll play, please let us know - IT'LL SPUR US ON!

- Please give us suggestions for gameplay elements you'd like to see. What we really don't want is for this to end up being another mindless social game.

Thanks, but I'm already playing a real-life location-based MMORPG which takes up most of (or rather, all) my time.

I'm playing that one too. And it pays me to play it! ;)

Inevitable reply is inevitable. ;(

you play FirstLife too?

We build a mystical, medieval universe atop these real places.

Please, not another one. Although it is the most popular trope, and thus probably has the greatest potential market, that also makes it difficult to differentiate your product. There are lots of alternatives - secret societies, Cthulhu mythos, robots/AI, or some Diamond Age type fusion of several genres.

Browser playable is good, but if you have location based checkins I think the mobile app (or rather, mobile version of the browser page since you're text-oriented) should certainly be available from the beginning so people have access to it when they're bored or with friends. It doesn't have to be be exhaustively capable.

Yes I would definitely recommend something other than mystical/medieval.

In the university I studied, students organized different games played trough the year. It is a good method to help people socialize and know each other in the first year.

One of these game was called hitman. Every student who wanted to play had to provide a picture of himself and was registered as player. Then each player was given a random photo of another player and a small trumpet in paper that rolls out when we blow in it. So evry player was a hitman and a target of another hitman at the same time.

The hitman had to "kill" the person on the photo that was given to him. Killing was done by blowing the trumpet and touching the person with the rolled out paper.

Of course it was forbidden to kill anybody during lessons. The task was made more difficult by allowing someone to be immune to killing by holding an open umbrella above his head.

The hitman had thus to first locate its target, spy him without beeing recognized as his hitman and find the best moment to kill the target. Witnesses must be present to attest a valid killing. The last target to survive was the winner.

I didn't play the game so I don't know the details, but it was very funny to see these students walking around with open umbrellas, even inside buildings, and all the trumpet noise. It was also funny people talking to each other trying to figure out who is ones hitman. There was enough players to make it very hard to know, even at the end of the game

This is an exemple of game that was socialy usefull and fun. Organizing, providing the equipment and managing the game could be a business. Sell it in a box, one box per player. The umbrellas might be a bit dangerous for the eyes, so funny big umbrellas without metal in it, just for the game use, could be better and even more fun as well as justify the rent fee.

This was more then 20 years ago (this hurts). There are many ways one could imagine to change these rules today in the way the killing is performed. Since most people have today phones with numeric camera capture devices, killing could be changed into taking a picture of the target in a particular condition. For instance one variant could be called paparazzi where the hitman is a team of two players of opposite sex randomly combined that will have to cooperate. The killing could be taking a picture of a stolen kiss on the cheek or a photo bombing which could become a parallel contest. Replace the umbrella by a big colorful hat or anything alike which attracts attention and is funny. Those games should of course always respect the law, culture and rules of the place and require explicit (signed) prior consent of the players. The target should then be implicitly given ownership of the photo by game rules and be able to decide of their use. People should never be/feel constrained to play the game.

So the first fundamental rule of such type of real life games should be respect of the players and social context.

In the virtual worlds (i.e. WoW) one can erase the avatar and create a new one from scratch. In real life this is not possible, and interferences with other activities (family, study and professional) may become devastating by accident or youth naivety. Organizers should take their responsibility very seriously. Otherwise the limit is just imagination. The first aim of such type of game is to be fun and provide good laughs and catalyze social contacts.

In some contexts where ostensible extravagant behavior is not tolerated, i.e. army, business, the game could be changed into assigning a random secret (i.e. word) to each player with the hitman playing then as a spy that has to find out that secret by any means (except water boarding of course, although...). This could be a good game to entertain people and be useful by training their vigilance to what they say and where, etc.

The business idea could then be to provide a web service to manage the game, assign random secrets (i.e. word, object, concept) and a mean for the spy to check his finding with eventually a limited number of tests. This type of game could help socialize but also contribute to train people to hold defense/trade secrets.

Have fun...

I'll play for sure.

I've been tossing the idea of a game layered on top of reality around quite a bit. The pitch is "imagine a group of WOW players exploring a real cave in Yosemite National Park and fighting against a real invisible dragon for loot.". The world is great, there is no reason to invent another one.

In more abstract (and less crowd-pleasing) terms, I believe that such a game can give a motivation for changing people's behavior (for better or worse). If I have a boring commute to work on foot, then I can just go on a "quest" to work, which will be reflected in my profile. The quest could even be charitable. Maybe there will even be an API for quest-givers, who know ;)

The real fun begins when you include group dynamics. Imagine getting a quest to capture the dangerous thief kind of Alcatraz, but unfortunately he is so obese that you need at least four people to carry him away. Would you ask strangers to join you on your quest? ;)

Check out this great related TED talk by the guy who runs SCVNGR: http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_t...

I think thee idea is a little ahead of the curve, but in a few years (call me crazy!) something like this has the potential to be the defining game of a generation.

Keep us posted on your progress.

P.S.: I second the "no fantasy" sentiment. Fairies and dragons don't work for everyone.

I did some brainstorming on this idea a couple months ago: http://mohrslaws.blogspot.com/2010/02/reality-as-genre.html

The subsequent discussions led me towards imagining a game that was a sort of cartography sim. You explore the real world, and as you go along, you reveal (/create) an alternate world. The key to keeping it from being another annoying mindless social game, I believe, is to emphasize checkins at more physically varied places, instead of many checkins at existing locations. In short, make it more like geocaching and less like foursquare.

On that note, the people that are likely to do this kind of adventuring aren't generally the type who want to sit and grind or be over-involved in a game world. So make it easy to check-in, take care of some things, and get on with your life. The satisfaction will come with seeing what comes of your activity as you get deeper into the game.

The key to keeping it from being another annoying mindless social game, I believe, is to emphasize checkins at more physically varied places, instead of many checkins at existing locations. In short, make it more like geocaching and less like foursquare.

I can imagine that it might be annoying, though, if it was arbitrarily decided that the spot on the street outside my bedroom window was Candy Mountain and suddenly started getting dozens of people showing up every day to check in.

You may have lots of users and I wish you all the success, certainly looking at the Foursquare leaders in London either they are cheating or they go to a hell of a lot of places and check in everywhere.

Also games and trip creating location services like SCVNGR and Gowalla seem to be picking up speed, so maybe you will have a market.

However personally I will only checkin for the following reasons: [+] I want share a place I like such as a restaurant with friends and this is an easy way [+] there is some discount e.g. free coffee in a place I like and go frequently that I can build upto by using something like checkmate for iPhone

I certainly do not have the time nor inclination to go around lots of different places and checkin for a game. And that maybe a problem for you if more people are like me because I like world of warcraft and used to play it quite regularly.

Gaming Foursquare with Perl: http://compbio.cs.uic.edu/~mayank/4sq.html

Just created a twitter handle so we can keep in touch and share updates with everyone who's interested.

http://twitter.com/locationmmorpg

We'll come up with a better name real soon.

In Japan, these kind of games have been popular for at least a couple of years.

One I know of is "Keitai Kunitori Gassen" where players check-in to different regions of Japan to get points and take them over. They have enough money to advertise the game on the trains. The interesting thing is they have hardcore users who will travel all around Japan to check in to locations. This actually ties into part of their business model, where they are paid by businesses to hold special events at certain locations. A couple years ago, they said they could get a couple thousand people to go to a location just by holding an event there.

Sounds fun, but the world's first? Isn't http://www.parallelkingdom.com already doing this?

Thanks for the link! Edited the title of our post. Here's what we think will set us apart: 1) We plan to build this on top of LBS APIs so you can get into the game with minimal effort and check-ins via your favorite service earn you points. 2) This will primarily be browser playable - we don't want to be yet another mobile app jostling for your attention when you're out there in the real world.

Ah, ok. I've had similar ideas as well. But a game more similar to http://tribalwars.net or http://lordofultima.com on a real map.

Good luck, let us know when you have something we can play.

Whenever I see someone claiming a 'first' I wonder if they really did their research or if it's just the fact that anybody that has an idea automatically thinks that because it's new to them it is new to everybody.

Another example to look at:

http://www.appsafari.com/games/10766/kingpin-game/

Kingpin, ... is a new addition to the foursquare client family. ... Users can accumulate points, collect badges to store in vaults, and become mayor (boss in Kingpin) of places they regularly frequent. .... Kingpin has all the nifty features of foursquare, but it raises the stakes by allowing users to attack local bosses.

Sounds interesting, but I'll probably forget about it before you finish it. Do you have a landing page where I can sign up to get a reminder email and/or updates?

Just created a twitter handle. @locationmmorpg

Do you have a web site, mailing list or Twitter account?

@locationmmorpg on twitter

Sounds like SPOOKS!

If it catches on, then it might be a precursor to something like SPOOKS.

Sounds cool. God speed. I don't play MMOs at all tbh though :(.

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