Ad agencies are used to pitching large out-of-the-box ideas to clients. But last week a group of recent Miami Ad School grads grabbed the attention of advertising agencies around the world with a video pitch for an application that has yet to be created or even funded.
Their idea is simple: reinvent a beloved board game for a Web 2.0 audience by combining Monopoly with Foursquare. Deanna McDonald, Sean Tiraatanakul and Jaclyn Shelton are the brains behind this new and eagerly awaited app – “Foursquaropoly.”
In their own words, via their introduction video: “In order to bring the board game back to life, we introduce Foursquaropoly, a gaming app which uses Foursquare to make you the game piece and your city the board.”The app will take the location-based information provided by Foursquare check-ins and let players buy and sell properties (check-in locations) with virtual dollars. Once a players owns a property he will collect rent from other players who check-in there. The players who manage their properties the most effectively will collect large sums of money that they can use to buy the most coveted landmarks in their city. So if you thought being a mayor was good, can you imagine being the owner of the Statue of Liberty or the Chrysler Building?
While the idea of overlaying a game on a platform laden with game mechanics may seem too complicated, never fear. The app will not be built within the Foursquare application. According to the ClickZ News article “They are building [it] on Foursquare's API, just as Zynga and other game developers have launched products on Facebook.”
And similar to the way that brands jumped at the opportunity to advertise within Zynga’s games like FarmVille and CityVille, Deanna McDonald told ClickZ News that agencies have been calling her and her partners about running promotions on the application. But they were prepared for that, as she told ClickZ, "We imagine companies getting involved. There can be benefits [to the consumer] for buying the locations."
A Social Gaming Future for Foursquare
While this application seems to have opened up a promising future for these three creative graduates and a new avenue of advertising for major brands, a more interesting question is what this might do for Foursquare?
Up until now, Facebook has been the platform of choice for social gaming and it has been a good situation for all parties involved. Developers gain a 500 million-person audience with Facebook and it is an audience that attracts in-game advertising dollars. Facebook, in turn, receives social gamers who spend long periods of time playing games on Facebook, which also attracts Facebook advertising dollars. A PopCap study found that 4 in 10 gamers participate in social gaming for 1 to 5 hours weekly. This is a small amount of time compared to the average Facebook user who spends an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes per month on the site, according to Fast Company.
Foursquare needs this kind of social game to amp up its consistent user base. The platform started with a big bang, and has been able to attract some big name brands like Gap and Pepsico to partner with them, but their user growth has been slow. According to a 2010 Forrester Research study, 4% of U.S. online adults have used Location Based Social Networks, like Foursquare, and only 1% use them more than once a week.
Foursquaropoly may just be Foursquare’s Farmville, but ultimately it will depend on how the application actually plays once it is developed. It has all of the right components – simple and already understood game mechanics, a landscape ripe for competition and just a touch of nostalgia. My only question now is where is “Go” and when I pass it will I get $200?
Check out the "Foursquaropoly" video posted by McDonald, Tiraatanakul and Shelton on Vimeo:
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