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

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.

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.

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.

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.