New GPS game for explorers
The entire world is the playing area in GPS Mission
Orbster GmbH launched the beta phase of the multiplayer location-based game GPS Mission recently.
Any player can create “missions” on www.gpsmission.com without programming knowledge and set puzzles for all fellow players that they can tackle and solve “out there” with their GPS mobile phones.
There is a lucrative prize for the winner of the beta phase: an invitation to the 2008 Oktoberfest in Munich. The game concept has been nominated in the Navteq Global LBS Challenge.
The aim of GPS Mission is the completion of missions which are created by other players. These can be created for any place in the world with a tool called Mission Designer. A mission may be a scavenger hunt enriched with information on sights to see and things worth noting, may lead to a hidden cache or may simply be a guide to the creator’s favourite places.
Whilst playing, the player collects gold placed and hidden by the mission’s creator and completes photo missions. With the gold collected the player can purchase trophies, medals and badges as souvenirs and show his community which missions he has completed where.
The mobile experience is very simple and accessible. As soon as the game is activated, the mobile client displays where the nearest missions in the area are and guides the player with map support to the missions’ start points. Once in the game, the player solves location-based puzzles so as to reach the next checkpoint, collects gold, which moves him higher up the ranking, and completes photo missions. The images created in the game are immediately visible on www.gpsmission.com.
A “mark your way ” function allows players to mark exciting places with pictures for the creation of missions, even outside the game. The pictures are geo-located and available on the website to players when they next log on. There are no costs incurred by players apart from the data transfer costs payable to the mobile phone operator.
The greatest collector of gold in the beta phase, which lasts until the end of July, will win a trip to the 2008 Oktoberfest in Munich including travel, accommodation and beer. The leader in the beta phase will be marked in the overall ranking with a special challenge cup, the “Golden Gamsbart Cup” (Golden Chamois Beard). The Golden Gamsbart is shown in the profile of the current leader in the gold ranking.
With this innovative game concept, Orbster was nominated as a semi-finalist in the Global Navteq LBS Challenge, one of the best known competitions in the location-based service sector of map supplier Navteq.
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