September is going to be a big month for Brisket Gaming because our first game is going public in mid-September. We’ve had a private beta for a few months now and we’re hopeful that in just a few short weeks we’ll be able to invite everyone to help shave off the last burnt pieces so that we can release a tasty game in mid-October. Until we’re ready to tell you all the juicy details about the game, to which a clue can be found in this blog post, we’ll be telling you how this first game follows the Brisket Gaming Recipe we described earlier.
Ordinarily we’d tackle the ingredients in order, but we’ll tackle the Fun element in our final teaser post. It’s a bit of saving the best for last, an ideal we always strive for but somehow find ourselves unable to follow when confronted with a sheet of butcher paper filled with tasty BBQ and some crackers.
New is up first. Brisket Gaming will always bring you a new game mechanic you haven’t played before. Our first game is bringing you something new in the growing world of location.
Oh, and just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, location is hot. Facebook just released Places, its own location service, which is getting a good deal of attention. There’s also a lot of press focused on location-based services like Foursquare, but we here at Brisket Gaming greatly prefer Gowalla. Not just because Gowalla is a fellow Austin company but also because they appreciate a good plate of BBQ (plus they have nice local touches and artwork). Yelp is a site mostly for reviews but they’re getting in on location as well.
Friends connecting with friends is what makes location services work. The core of these services are all the same: you use your mobile phone to check-in at a store, restaurant, school, office, or any other location you happen to be at. Your friends that are on the same service can see that you’ve checked in at the location. If you happen to check into a tasty BBQ joint, they can immediately drive over and join you for a plate (their own, of course, unless you’re really generous, in which case please let us know when you’re buying).
Extra elements are added to the core service. Foursquare crowns the person with the most check-ins the Mayor of that location. Yelp calls you the Duke and if you collect enough Dukedoms you can earn loftier titles. Gowalla lets you swap virtual goods and complete tours of multiple locations. Facebook has the broadest audience for telling your friends that you’ve just checked into Starbucks. Again. (Ah, the siren song of the $2 Treat Receipt.)
Although location is used mostly for telling your friends where you’re chomping on brisket or sipping an iced mocha, location is also starting to show up in the game world. A great example of this is My Town from Booyah! In My Town, you earn money and experience from checking into businesses, which you can then purchase and collect rent from–the businesses that have more people checking in will generate more income.
Really cool name, Booyah! Has an exclamation point and everything. Almost as good as Brisket Gaming. But back to our story.
The Internet is full of press about location and there are plenty of other companies working in the space. But we don’t want to work in this space, we want to play in it.
How? Like this. Our first game is based on locations, but not necessarily on checking into businesses. Instead, our game is about capturing territory, real world territory, which you capture by sending in your location from a mobile phone, laptop, or other portable device. You don’t even need a device with a GPS radio, although that will be the most precise.
And now, because a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a thousand words’ worth:
Bubbles. I see bubbles.
Nice, right?
Descriptions are a good thing, but the picture tells the story. This is from one of our private beta multiplayer games where three players competed to capture as much territory as they could. You can see areas where only one player captured territory along with areas that were contested.
Simple concept. While playing the game is simple, mastering the game will take some work. Which we’ll discuss in a future blog post.
Though our game uses locations to play, we aren’t tied to businesses or physical addresses. You could just as easily play our game in a crowded city as a wide-open national park.
And there’s a fun twist to the game that lets you play with your friends even when you aren’t in the same city. More on that in a future blog post too.
Relying on location is something we share with those other services, but something that sets us apart is that our game will hopefully inspire you to go somewhere in the course of your games, not just report on places you were already going anyway. If it will help you or your team to send in a location from a far corner of the map, maybe you’ll hop on a subway, your bike, or your car (come to think of it, hop into your car because it’s hard to drive from the roof) and head to that far corner.
Rest assured we have plenty of standard game elements: achievements, powering up, different characters you can play, all the good stuff. But our game is new in that it’s a truly mobile game, not just a portable game. This is a game where your movements matter, not just a game you have in your pocket but it doesn’t change if you play it at home or with friends at your favorite BBQ joint.
You’ll have a single player game as well, although we imagine most people will play the single player game just to become a bit more powerful for the multiplayer games.
Sounds good so far, right? There’s more. So much more.
Know that you don’t have to be in Austin to play our game. Our game works anywhere you can create a Google map, which, last we checked, was anywhere on Earth. Games can be as small as a few neighborhood blocks or as big as a continent. The sky’s the limit. Literally–you can’t play in the sky. Because that would be dangerous.
You’ve had your first taste of what we’ve got cooking up. We have a lot more to share over the next few weeks. So be sure to tell your friends to become a fan of Brisket Gaming on Facebook so they can find out more about our game as well and be ready to play the day we launch. Games, like good BBQ, are best when they’re shared. And by shared I mean enjoyed together–but get your own plate.
