Real-World Gaming: The Blending of the Real World + Digital World

The advent of touchscreen mobile phones with GPS and cameras such as the iPhone and Android phones is giving rise to an array Location-Based games. It’s opening up a brand new sector: Real-World Gaming.

This presentation will take a look at the technologies and monetization strategies in the white-hot geo-location real world social gaming space. Besides the typical F2P freemium models, the potential for tie-ins to the real-world opens endless branding opportunities and partnerships for developers. Participants will come away with a detailed understanding of the challenges and issues in this new geo-gaming space, as well as interesting opportunities for new monetization streams.

To that end, MyTown is a location-based social game based on real-world property ownership. One aspect of MyTown is dropping virtual items based on proximity to real-world locations. Recently with our partnership with H&M and Travel Channel, MyTown served 14 million H&M branded items in our app (branded ad units) and drove thousands to their 200 retail stores across the country.

The data we’re collecting is extremely valuable: where are you in real-time, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. Harnessing that for relevant targeting and offering maximum value to users (POS coupons, offers, etc) offers huge value for our users.

Since Booyah’s release of MyTown in December 2009, the iPhone app has rocketed up to Top 7 in the Apple App store and surpassed 1.6 Million registered users. MyTown is played an average of 70 minutes/day.