GPS Applications #4: Location-enhanced high-scores

There are already some pretty sophisticated location-based gaming concepts, and this is an area that will undoubtedly get a lot more sophisticated, so I expect I’ll be posting more about this in future. In the meantime, here is a really simple example.

Last night I downloaded “Flight Control” from the App Store on my iPod Touch. This is a very simple, but oddly compelling game. (Even so, I can’t say I’d recommend it for whiling away the hours on a long-haul flight … every game inevitably ends with a plane crash!)

The game is made all the more addictive because high-scores are uploaded to the game’s website where you can compare your achievements to every other player on the planet. This feature is enhanced further by uploading players’ locations along with the high-scores so you can see how you rank against anonymous players in your neighbourhood, town, county, country – or worldwide. For a while, it was top of the App Store’s best-seller list. Given that it’s such a simple game, the location-enabled high-score table has to be a major part of this mini-phenomenon. Now, if I think about it for too long, this seems like a dumb feature with no value whatsoever, so why does it make the game seem a lot more compelling?