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EpicWin aims to turn your real-life tasks into a social game
Given the amount of iPhone and iPad apps coming out these days, I'm not all that interested in getting excited about an app before it comes out. There's already plenty of games and apps available now, so worrying about not-yet-released apps isn't all that important. That said, this app called EpicWin is gaining quite a bit of attention -- it's a very originally designed to-do list masquerading as a game that gives points for accomplishing things in real life. If this idea sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it before -- Booyah Society was supposed to be a game that rewarded you for real-life accomplishments, and there have been a few other apps like it poking around. Most of them haven't worked very well -- the issue has always been that there's no validation, no proof that you've done what you said you did in real-life. But EpicWin has some solid developers behind it (the folks that worked on Little Big Planet for the PS3, and MiniSquadron for the iPhone), and a very intriguing art style and tone, so maybe it'll be more intriguing than what we've seen along these lines in the past. EpicWin is "coming soon" to the App Store -- we'll keep an eye out for it, and let you know when it's out.
GDC 2010: Interview with Keith Lee of Booyah
Booyah is an App Store company with quite a few lessons in its past already. The founders are former developers at Blizzard (they worked on both Diablo and World of Warcraft before setting off on their own), and after their first app, Booyah Society, didn't exactly strike gold on the App Store, they went back to the drawing board on their idea of "real life achievements," and have done much better with their latest app, MyTown -- it's one of the top grossing apps around, with more users and higher engagement than the popular Foursquare. We got to sit down with CEO Keith Lee for an interview at GDC, and he told us about what they learned from Booyah Society, why Booyah is convinced that real-life social gaming is where it's at, and what they think of the iPad (and what Blizzard thinks of the iPhone). Read on for more.
Booyah starts off slow, offers $1000 in contest
I've been playing with the hyped-up Booyah Society app for about a week or so now, and I don't think my reaction is too singular: it's not all that great. The idea is certainly a good one: take your real-life achievements and turn them into a game, complete with points and an avatar, but in practice, it's not quite there yet. Achievements are honor-based, which means you can make as many or as few points as you want just by punching anything in, and while the avatar is pretty nifty, it doesn't seem like there's that much to do with the little guy besides spin him around until he gets sick. That's not to say that the potential isn't still there -- the app's "Booyah" recommendations can give you some interesting things to do if you need them, and if they ever get the app using some actual iPhone mechanics (how about traveling a certain distance according to the GPS or playing a certain song or sound into the microphone?), it could be really addictive. But they're not quite there yet, and while we don't have any info on how many downloads they've gotten, the App Store rating is less than impressive at two-and-a-half stars.And they're not giving up yet -- they just announced a giveaway of up to $1000 over on Facebook. You'll have to log in to see it, but if you become a fan of their service and fill out a quick sweepstakes form, you're entered in to win a $500 Apple gift card for yourself, as well as a chance to give $500 to five more friends.Sure, the contest is blatant promotion (and it might even just be a shot in the dark to try and grab a Facebook audience). But what will be interesting here is to watch and see what happens with the app -- these guys have a legendary game development background (coming from Blizzard Entertainment), and at least $4.5 million in VC financing already. Whether they sink or swim, they're making for a very interesting case study of big-time development on the iPhone.
iPhone app offers achievements for life, booyah!
What is the point of doing anything if you don't get achievements? Really, if you don't get points for it and proof on a public database, does it even count as having done something? We spent like an hour mowing the lawn yesterday in three-digit temperatures, for example, and nobody even knew about it until we told you -- just now. A developer called Booyah, started by three ex-Blizzard employees, is bringing the all-important "cheevos" to daily life activities, with a free iPhone app called Booyah Society. The "game," set to launch today, allows players to create a custom avatar and log activities in 108 different categories (like "Food & Dining," "Fitness," and more -- with achievements based on writing short notes about what you've done in each category), earning credits for each achievement logged. The achievements can be private or public, shared with a friends list, and streamed to Facebook or Twitter.Writing this post announcing this achievement game was the last "freebie" for us. From now on, we're not doing anything unless we get points for it.
Booyah releases Booyah Society, an app/game that tracks "life achievements"
Booyah is a company I've had my eye on for a while -- they're a couple of veterans from Blizzard Entertainment (makers of the popular Diablo and World of Warcraft games, two of my favorites) who have been teasing a big-time iPhone app. Just today, they've finally showed their cards, and have released Booyah Society, a 3D, interactive, social network-connected "achievement system for life." If that sounds like an idea that's pretty floaty, you probably heard it right. Basically it's a game system that more or less overlays on what you're already posting to Facebook and Twitter. If you do anything from conquering a new videogame to doing a new exercise to visiting a new restaurant, you can earn achievements and points for an ingame avatar and scoreboard. In essence, they're aiming to take the things we already tell each other we're doing, and put this game/scoring system on top of that. There are plans to use the iPhone's hardware to do some self-reporting (GPS to track where you've been), but for now, everything's basically on the honor system. Will it work? Who knows. The app is available for free right now, and they're planning to include microtransactions in the future to let you buy things to dress up your avatar with, as well as looking at partnerships with other businesses (i.e., you can get a certain achievement by going to Wendy's and ordering some fries). Very interesting -- as with most social app ideas, this one seems like it'll make or break it based on who chooses to play it faithfully. They've got quite a pedigree with the Blizzard background, and built-in audiences with Facebook and Twitter integration, but whether or not people will find themselves invested in tracking these achievements and scoring points for their avatars, only time will tell.
