Online gaming has never really appealed to me – too many guns and peculiarly out-of-proportion, bikini-clad, computer-generated babes for my liking.
So the world of noticings is a genuinely, pleasant surprise.
The aim of the game is to take photos of interesting things while you’re out and about and then upload them to flickr, giving them relevant tags (including a geotag), so they can be entered into the game.
Players get awarded points for different things, such as spotting faces in everyday objects/architecture, noticing something every day for a week or being the first to spy something in a neighbourhood.
It’s a charming, simple and quirky idea that has quickly built a mini-community, and achieves the Holy Grail, which is encourage users to come back day after day.
Noticings is also the kind of site you want to stay fairly niche for fear of it losing its charm, but I’m sure a few hundred more users won’t hurt it just yet.
