The multiplayer game that uses real-world environments as its playground is now even more accessible — as an app on our wrists.
Source: www.cnet.com
Do you still play Ingress? I just uninstalled it. It took so many years before it was available for iOS that most of the people I knew who were raving about it were getting bored with it.
Once had it installed and started trying to learn how to play it, I didn’t have time to play it when I was in the city running between bus stops and meetings with only the time between the meetings to turn the app on and wonder what I was seeing.
Having spent many years immersed in location based services including location based games, I am very passionate about the concept of AR for education, tourism, retail business, tourism and entertainment and the watch is a powerful next step even if it is a much smaller screen interface.
What is really frustrating is that the businesses that stand to benefit the most are pretty much oblivious to it. The potential in areas such as tourism is huge and its surprising really that even Google haven’t invested in something that could generate significant sums of advertising dollars while introducing people to their customers.
I thought La Mosca might have been able to make that next step, because they have all the ingredients to grow urban tourism to youth markets, even domestic tourism, but it seems like crossing the chasm is just too big a leap.
Why would a city not want people running around having fun, spending money, using public transport, visiting retailers and attractions and increasing the GDP? I guess they do, they still don’t get how Augmented Reality Location Based Games can do it.
I often promote the book by Jeff Jarvis, called ‘What Would Google Do?’ In this case perhaps Google should read it and think about what going the next level in LBS with gamification (yes I know all about Waze, I am ranked as a GrownUp Warrior: 1,435).
One day when people start playing LBS AR games that drive people into the cities at the times we want them there, upping the revenues and success of the businesses that want them, the people examining the spreadsheets will be asking why didn’t anyone tell us about this before? I’ll be saying we did, at least 10 years ago. Remember, back when we had stores like Borders and Sounds Music?
Imagine in a city like Auckland which seems to have a cruise ship in dock every second day in summer, if people of all ages were having fun using their mobiles to experience all the great retailers, restaurants, bars and entertainment and getting rewarded the more they did and saw, could have fun with each other, way-find and go back and tell the rest of the world how easy it was.
Why are sometimes the easiest and obvious things so hard to get over the line?
See on Scoop.it – Location Is Everywhere
SoLoMo Consulting 