SCVNGR is an innovative location based game platform rather like Foursquare, you check in at different locations and you can unlock various rewards. The approach that SCVNGR is taking though is creating a platform that allows anyone to create games and challenges that could be associated with one location (challenges or rewards) or span multiple checkins (a Trek).
As it is so easy to create games businesses are jumping on as quickly as consumers creating a vibrant community of over 500,000 users already. As it turns out Google Ventures is SCVNGR’s biggest backer giving it access to a lot of resources, including it’s location database which is powered by the Google Places API giving it international reach. SCVNGR is an important company to watch in this space as they are really the first to make a play to be the platform in this space. As you can see they have a pretty interesting revenue model where people pay depending on the amount of checkins they want to create.
Apart from paying for things SCVNGR also supports the ability for users to earn the ability to add rewards and challenges to places they have checked in at. I did manage to get a look at some of the game creation features and was very impressed with the simplicity but the important details, like the ability to include QR codes.
Take a look at this video from the founders that really get’s into the background and their longer term ambitions.
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Meet SCVNGR! from DreamIt Ventures on Vimeo.
BTW this is an interesting example a generic social strategy, that is “own the platform”, if you’re interested in strategy take a look.
Original Post: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/scvngr-location-based-game-platform
