Citypoly: Real Life Monopoly in Nantes, France

In the dynamics of the Open Data (open public data), the city of Nantes has launched a call for proposals in March, to build smartphone applications. The final date for submission was May 18 Of the 34 selected projects, one in particular caught my attention: Citypoly.

This is almost the only game of this call for proposals; the others are more practical applications. The concept of Citypoly is quite simple: create a life-size Monopoly, with the game board as the city of Nantes. As in the famous board game, at the beginning you have a certain amount of money you have to grow. Here we do not buy street but symbolic places of Nantes, as the town hall, tram station, the library, the LU tower… But you don’t definitely buy them; you have the concessions for seven days.

You are geo-located thanks to your phone, and on the screen you can see all the places listed in the game in a 500m radius. Green tags indicate the places available, the red ones indicates those which are not, the blue ones are places belonging to you and the yellow are the ones that will soon be re-listed.

Another difference with the classic Monopoly, when you go to a place you do not lose money, but you win! Each passage reward the visitor and the owner. This encourages players to keep their phones close to hand when they travel to Nantes. They visit the city and discover places while having fun. As soon as you check-in a place you can find all the information on it. Contact information (address, telephone number), its price and rent in the game, and a link to its website.

Each transaction (gain, purchase) and the player’s ranking are recorded in the home screen.

Currently this is only the first version of Citypoly, updates are already in preparation for the next weeks. Eventually prices and rents are bound to fluctuate depending on the passage, which will also raise or lower purchase prices. This will be to the player to find the places most profitable. The goal is still to gain a maximum of “Citos”, the currency in Citypoly.

The designers also want to give this real life Monopoly, a dimension of social network. The owners will know who passed by its properties, a kind of playful Foursquare.

Citypoly is available for free on Apple and Android platforms since May 23 and has already about 200 users.

We spoke a few weeks ago about another check-in game with more or less the same principle, mixing foursquare and monopoly.

Foursquare, a network developed like … a game?

The principle of Foursquare mixes social media, geolocation and … a game! Yes, there’s basically a playful side by using this application.
Foursquare is a bit like Twitter; participants use this mobile technology (which can be downloaded on most phones) to inform people about the play they’re located in. Therefore, they “check-in” – indicate their presence – at restaurants, metro stations, museums, cafes and bars where they go to.

Considering to their activities, they can earn points in the city where they are. Then these points can be turned into virtual rewards called “badges“.
For example, there is a badge if you visit three karaoke clubs within a month, another one if you tell your friends you went to the gym 10 times in the last 30 days, etc..
Here is a list of all the badges that that can be acquired.

You can even become the virtual Mayor of the city! To do this, simply indicate your presence as often as possible in different locations. It’s therefore possible to obtain the title of “Mayor” of your bowling alley, of your favorite restaurant, or of the bistro you attend to every week with your friends, and even of your university if you have the most “check-ins” at this location.

In addition to sharing the place where you are, the idea is also to give your contacts good advice and recommend the best sites to visit (“tips”)!

Obviously, as in any game, there are cheaters! Nothing prevents a user to take his laptop and make people he is currently watching a movie at the theater, or drinking a beer at a bar, just in order to become the representative of this place or earn badges…

However, it would be too simplistic to see this new technology as a simple geolocation game. You can also play to more complex games with Foursquare, like the Metropoli!