Location based games are upcoming. Foursquare let’s you check in into locations and earn badges. Waze helps you navigate and implements a game element depending on how many miles you’ve driven. But the big problem with these two games is that you don’t need skills to ‘win’ them. If you just check into enough places or drive an x amount of miles you will eventually go higher in ranking. It’s all about quantity. To Fix this a skill element needs to be incorporated.
Here is my idea of how to fix this:
- Foursquare: Before people check in ask them a random question about the location they are checking into. If they answer the question correctly they have checked in. If not they will be denied their check-in. This way people have to acquire some knowledge about the location before they are able to earn a badge.
- Waze: Instead of navigating people to a certain destination why not give the player the option to navigate to the destination on his or her own. If they take the shortest route (depending on miles driven) they deserve points. It requires skill to drive the shortest route.
Games need to be more than just mindless actions in order to gather points. Games need to be challenging the player in order to keep it entertaining . The best player needs to win, not just the one who has the most time to spend.