Geocaching Mentioned In Game Developer Magazine

[+Tidalflame]

So I know Geocaching gets featured in the press a lot, but I thought this one was pretty interesting and I don't imagine many people will know about it.

 

Geocaching was recently mentioned in Game Developer magazine - a magazine which covers, what else, video game development (programming, design, art, etc.) It's not a whole article or anything, but I still thought it was an unusual place to see Geocaching mentioned... On page 40 of the September 2005 issue in Noah Falstein's article, "Don't Cell Out," there's a little blurb about Geocaching...

 

"I've since learned that even if a developer is willing and interested to make a game for one specific model of phone to exploit its capabilities, another type of fragmentation - that of the many cellular carriers who provide distribution of games - means that many of these carriers won't even accept a game unless it can run on nearly all phones. So that means that your killer idea for a geocaching game using GPS may not be picked up by any major carrier."

 

So, I guess Noah must be a cacher... anyone have any idea what his user ID might be? I don't want to sound stalkerish, I just think it's a really cool reminder of how broad the spectrum of cachers is...

[+omegabane]

Can't offer you much insight into Noah or his caching habits, but I can say that Geocaching has been inspirational to more than one person in the world of gaming.

 

I have a friend who is currently working on a new breed of interactive games called Alternate Reality Gaming (essentially, it combines aspects of video games, digital sources, analog/physical sources and something like RPG - that is, the player is not just controlling the game, they are a physical and active part of it). When I pointed out geocaching to her, she decided it was a great model for parts of her research. While I doubt that Geocaching alone would ever make a very good videogame - or any type of game beyond the game it already is - it certainly seems to have many elements that could be inspirational to developers of other games and game types.

[+Pioneer 'n' Tiff]

I work for a company in the gaming industry, which deals in part with the previously mentioned ARG.

 

Product due for release in 2006, whilst it does not have geocaching "perse", it does utilise the concept (given the history of the game) as the basis for a number of missions with multiple avenues, thereby not restricting the outcome to one finite objective, or forcing the player to take a linear path.