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Blog entry // 03.08.2010 // 9:48 AM // 27 Comments

Foursquare versus Gowalla, round two

A year ago, two exciting location-based social games launched at South By Southwest Interactive, the annual geek-fest that is something of a mecca for web nerds. After playing with both down in Austin, I wrote a blog post entitled A look at Foursquare and Gowalla. Although the post didn’t generate a ton of discussion, it is still consistently near the very top of my most-viewed-posts stats. A year ago, location-based social games were something of a novelty — now, they’re the hottest thing going.

So, I thought I’d post a follow-up, letting you know what’s changed, why these two games may not be as similar as you think, and which I personally prefer.

The basic premise

At a glance, the two games work in a very similar manner. Both are social networks, so you’re connected to your friends (note that when I wrote the original article, Gowalla was not a social network). Once you’ve established your friend relationships, you go out into the real-world (say, to a bar or restaurant), whip out your phone, open up either app, and “check in” to wherever it is you are. As you check in, you can (optionally) let your friends know where you are, and/or post the details of your checkin to sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Everyone loves to say these games are direct competitors (and they may be when it comes to business models and revenue), but in terms of user experience, that’s where the similarity ends. From here, the gameplay of each is strikingly different in several key ways.

For end users, I think the question “Should I use Gowalla or Foursquare?” is silly. There no more reason you can’t happily play both games than there is reason you can’t own both Monopoly and Scrabble.

So, what’s different?

Note: I’m an iPhone user, and as such, my comments apply to the iPhone version of each game. Both games are available for other platforms, such as Android, but I don’t personally have experience with them. Also note: I’m focused on the user experience and gameplay of these two games — not on their business models. You can find countless articles out there that compare the two in terms of potential money-making ability, if that’s your thing — for the most part, this isn’t one of them.

Foursquare gameplay

Foursquare’s gameplay is centered around three basic axes: “badges”, “mayorships,” and the “leaderboard.” Badges are virtual achievements you receive for reaching some kind of milestone. Some are very simple. For example, you’ll receive an “Explorer” badge when you check in 25 different venues. Others are more complex; you can get the “Player Please” badge by checking into a venue with three members of the opposite sex. Foursquare’s badges tend to be geared towards nightlife and partying (although not exclusively so). There are a ton of badges, and they’re constantly adding more, so the chances of you ever “completing” the game are slim to none. Running around trying to earn badges is fun, but in my opinion, less compelling then the another angle to Foursquare’s gameplay: mayorships.

Everyone’s got their favorite spots. Whether it’s your neighborhood bar, your local coffeeshop, or the airport, everyone seems like they’re somewhere all the time. On Foursquare, the person with the most check-ins to a particular venue over the past 60 days is crowned the “mayor.” Two factors make mayorships more exciting than badges (to me, anyway):

1. They encourage you to meet the other regulars in your favorite spot. For example, if you go to Kate’s Pub all the time, and someone name “Jennifer S.” is the mayor, you may be encouraged to figure out who Jennifer is and introduce yourself.
2. Mayorships are fun because you don’t just have to get them — you have to keep them. Whereas badges are one-time achievements, you can lose your favorite mayorship as quickly as you got it. So, there’s an ongoing incentive to keep checking in.

The final aspect to Foursquare gameplay is the leaderboard. As you check in to venues, you earn points — the leaderboard shows who has the most points of your friends, and in your area. Frankly, it’s not very compelling and I don’t think anyone really looks at it.

Foursquare has the concept of “specials,” which are deals they’ve made with businesses to incentivize checking in (and thereby, visiting their business). For example, you may check into a coffee shop and find that the mayor there gets a free coffee once a month. Or, you may check into a hotel and find that you are entered into a drawing to win a free night’s stay. On the surface, this seems exciting, but I’ve yet to find any specials that were incentive enough for me to physically go to a place and check in.

Foursquare’s game play tends to be very much about competing with your friends (for mayorships and leaderboard postion), which is different than Gowalla.

For me personally, Foursquare was fun for a while, until the people I played with (myself included) started cheating (more on this soon). It’s a well-done product, if a bit on the simple side.

Gowalla gameplay

Gowalla’s gameplay is a bit more complex than Foursquare’s. As you’d expect, this complexity may turn off new users, but also may appeal strongly to those who are really into gaming. Gowalla features several aspects: “stamps,” “items,” “pins,” and “trips.” Let’s go over each:

Each time you check into a spot on Gowalla, you receive a stamp (akin to a stamp in a real-life passport). A stamp is an well-fashioned icon representing wherever you are (note that Gowalla was formed from a design company that focused on creating gorgeous icons, so it’s no surprise that the entirety of the game is orders of magnitude more beautiful than Foursquare). Usually, these stamps are generic to the type of spot you have visited — an Asian restaurant is a pair of chopsticks, a salon is a comb and scissors, etc. However, Gowalla also has the concept of “featured spots,” for which they hand-craft truly stunning stamps. Featured spots are generally major sights and attractions, such as The Space Needle, the Golden Gate Bridge, etc. The idea, of course, is to collect as many stamps as you can by visiting as many spots as possible — it’s a bit like geocaching. Collecting stamps, especially the featured ones, is fun — but isn’t the most compelling part of Gowalla, in my opinion.

Next up: items. When you check into a spot on Gowalla, you may be lucky enough to find some available items. Items are, again, gorgeous hand-crafted icons representing all sorts of objects — everything from a drumset to a tour bus to an espresso machine to a beatnik poet. Once you have an item, you can hang onto it, or you can “drop” it at another spot, for other users to find. Each spot you check into may have items that have been dropped there, and you can always swap an item you have for one that’s laying around at the spot you’re at. Items are fun because they have history attached to them. You can drop an item at Kate’s Pub, see your buddy pick it up, watch them drop it at Boxcar Alehouse, see someone you don’t know pick it up, watch them drop it at The Space Needle, see a tourist from the midwest pick it up and take it home, dropping it at Kansas City International Airport. It reminds me of old favorite Where’s George, and I think it’s pretty fun to see where the items you’ve picked have been and who’s hands they’ve been through. Gowalla is just starting to explore a really exciting feature of items: virtual goods that can be redeemed for real-world things. Gowalla has a deal with Incase, makers of laptop cases and backpacks, whereby if you check into an Apple store, you may find a special Incase backpack item that can be exchanged for the real thing. Just today, Gowalla announced a partnership with the Travel Channel to offer virtual goods at featured locations. No doubt Gowalla will be doing more of this, and I think it’s a pretty compelling incentive to play the game.

Gowalla has “pins,” which are similar in many ways to Foursquare’s badges. They’re achievements awarded for certain milestones, such as visiting 10 coffeeshops or creating 50 new spots. Frankly, Gowalla’s pin assortment is uninspired, and seriously lacking when compared with Foursquare.

Finally, Gowalla lets users string together spots into “trips,” and you receive a pin for successfully visiting each spot in a given trip. Conceptually it’s a great idea, but as the tools for users to create trips have only been available for a month or so, there aren’t yet a lot of really cool trips, at least in my area. I expect that to change soon, and for trips to become one of the most engaging features of Gowalla.

Gowalla’s gameplay tends to be less about competing with your friends and more about personal achievements. You’re trying to collect stamps, pins, and items, but there’s no direct competition with your friends in the user experience — a distinct difference from Foursquare. Gowalla is, very much, digital/virtual geocaching.

Spot creation

Another key difference between Gowalla and Foursquare is how they handle spot creation. When you create a venue on Foursquare, you do so by entering its address. On Gowalla, spots have no address associated with them — instead, they have GPS coordinates. The repercussions of these differences are many:

1. Gowalla requires GPS to play. Foursquare is enhanced by GPS, but doesn’t require it. This means Foursquare has a larger potential audience, because it works on devices that don’t have GPS hardware. It also means Gowalla works better outside (GPS signals can be weak indoors), whereas Foursquare works equally well inside and out.
2. Gowalla is capable of having spots which are not addressable, and which are very precise points on the Earth’s surface. This, again, points to its geocaching nature. You can create a spot for that really wicked tree in your favorite park, or your mailbox, or the trash dumpster where your favorite bum spends most of his days. The net result of this, is potentially, some very interesting trips. Whereas Foursquare could only have a spot for Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Gowalla could have a trip called “Woodland Park Zoo Sights” featuring 50 cool things to find inside the zoo.
3. Foursquare has no way of verifying you are where you say you are. Because of this, it’s easy to check into a venue on Foursquare, even if you’re hundreds of miles away. Gowalla, on the other hand, enforces the integrity of the game by not allowing you to check into a spot until your GPS reading shows that you’re actually physically there (or at least very close). Which leads me to…

Cheating

Because the Foursquare iPhone app (and, presumably, their apps for other platforms, as well) lets you check into venues regardless of if you’re there or not, and because there’s strong incentive to do so (earning mayorships, getting access to the various specials available for checking in, etc.), cheating is rampant on Foursquare (I use the word “cheating” loosely, as if the app allows you to do it, maybe it’s not cheating — but I think we can all agree it’s against the spirit of the game to check into a place you’re not physically at).

For me personally, this ruined Foursquare. I was really enjoying the game for a while, competing for mayorships with my friends, until I started to see people checking in one place, and then checking in five miles away immediately after. It really affected my motivation to compete at Foursquare. Also, if I were a business owner trying to set up a special with Foursquare, this would be a serious concern for me. Unfortunately, I don’t think most of the businesses doing specials even realize I can easily become the mayor (and reap whatever benefits you’re giving me) without ever setting foot in their establishment. I think, at some point, Foursquare’s lack of enforcement that you are where you say you are is going to come back to bite them in the ass. But we’ll see.

Gowalla doesn’t really have this issue, because the app requires access to your GPS and ensures you are extremely close to the place in question before letting you check into a spot (and thereby, receive any special items that may be available there).

Check-in culture

There’s an interesting cultural difference between the two apps, as well. On Gowalla, with its geocaching roots, it’s fairly commonplace for someone to walk down the street and check into each and every spot they pass. This is encouraged by the gameplay, which rewards you with items, stamps, and pins for doing so. The Gowalla community, for the most part, doesn’t seem to frown on this type of usage. When a friend checks into a the neighborhood bar on Gowalla, there’s no expectation that they’re staying there for any length of time — they may have just been passing by. Also, it’s not uncommon to see Gowalla users checking into a sculpture, a fountain, a quirky landmark, or a bridge.

The Foursquare community, on the other hand, considers this to be a serious faux pas. When you check into a venue on Foursquare, you are, effectively, saying to your friends, “hey, I’m out and about — come join me!” Clearly, indicating that you’re at the neighborhood bar and then not actually being there when your buddies show up is not going to win you many brownie points with your friends. Likewise, the Foursquare community (in my experience) strongly frowns upon checking into places like sculptures and bridges (if you even can, which you often can’t, because they’re not usually addressable). It makes sense, in that if you’re checking out a sculpture, you’re probably not inviting all your friends to come join you.

I’m not making a judgement on which of these mentalities is better — just a casual observation about the culture of check-ins on each game.

The bottom line

Both Foursquare and Gowalla have made great strides over the past year. Notably, Foursquare now works all over the world (whereas it only worked in a handful of US cities on launch), and Gowalla now sports a social network (where it did not at least year’s SXSW). Both have expanded to other platforms beyond iPhone, and both have started making special deals with business. Both do a great job of notifying your friends where you’re at, if that’s what’s important to you (for me, it’s more about the gameplay). And both have received a ridiculous amount of buzz in the press, usually setting them up as strong competitors to one another in a “which one is going to win?” fashion.

I’m here to say that I don’t think one has to win. Monopoly and Life are both games that seem similar on the surface, but they’ve both been best-sellers for decades. I expect both Foursquare and Gowalla to succeed and prosper, and I expect many more location-based social games to bubble up, as well (especially if the rumor that Facebook is adding places/checkin functionality to their API is true). There’s plenty of room in this space for more than one game.

For now, I personally prefer Gowalla, largely because of its design sensibility, its ability to have non-addressable spots, and the fact that it discourages cheating by enforcing the integrity of check-ins with GPS. But, both are solid products and worth a play if you’re interested in mobile social games that encourage you to get out and explore your world instead of staying home with your face buried in your monitor.

But wait, there’s more!

Update, 3/10/2010: Predictably, a couple days after I wrote this, both Foursquare and Gowalla released significant updates to their iPhone apps.

Foursquare has some nice design changes, both in terms of usability and aesthetics. They’ve simplified the check-in flow a bit, and are now using icons to indicate different types of places (these are useful, but not to be confused with Gowalla’s stamps, which indicate the type of place while being beautiful enough to be a collectible, of sorts). You can also now see your check-in history, which is a nice touch. Visually, Foursquare is much more attractive than it was before, no doubt — but I’ll still give Gowalla the edge on design.

Gowalla made much more sweeping, significant updates in their 2.0 version. They’ve also refreshed visually, and as you’d expect from these guys, it’s stunning. They’ve made a significant change in that the “Activity” tab is now the default view, rather than “Passport.” I think this is an indication of Gowalla putting a bit more focus on the social networking aspect and a bit less on the game aspect (which probably makes sense from a business and growth perspective, but I prefer the old way, personally). They’ve also added some significant new features. You can now comment on other users’ check-ins. You can now attach photos to your own check-ins (a shot across the bow to Brightkite, I’d say). And, in response to a feature request I made long ago, you can now add a check-in message (and post it to Twitter/Facebook) after your initial checkin. Finally, Gowalla adds a “hot spots” feature, which is (presumably) a lot like Foursquare’s “trending” — showing you places near you that are currently active with a lot of Gowalla users. Some nice updates for both apps, but there’s no doubt that this is a refresh for Foursquare, and a really significant new update for Gowalla.

Tags for this entry

• mobile 139 (100%)
• games 48 (35%)
• geo 26 (19%)
• foursquare 6 (4%)
• locationbasedservices 3 (2%)
• gowalla 3 (2%)
• lbs 1 (1%)
• social 1 (1%)

Links in this entry

• A look at Foursquare and Gowalla
• Where's George
• partnership with the Travel Channel
• feature request I made long ago