I recently wrote a piece for the casual game website Gamezebo about MyTown and Foursquare and the state of real-world game mechanics.

Being there is playing there: Checking in on the emergence of location-based games

Right now most of these games/services revolve around check-in mechanics. And I can totally see why, check-ins are the atomic unit of location-based data–”I’m here.” With Foursquare you simply raise your hand and state your location. MyTown offers some further gameplay beyond your hand-raising with players collecting rent on properties they’ve visited. They may seem overly simple, but these casual mechanics are what’s required to get the average player used to real-world gaming, easing them into more complex and demanding games.

Read the whole article.