Foursquare already has a gamey element to it with achievements (badges) and competition (mayorships), but one group of supernerds took the APIs from Foursquare and Google Maps and reconceptualized the location-sharing service as an IRL game of Risk.
According to Mashable, users in NYC can take part are required to pledge allegiance to one of city's five boroughs.
Checking into a neighborhood on Foursquare is the online game's equivalent to placing plastic man on a country in the board game. An algorithm decides who owns each neighborhood using the number of people who have checked into it on each team. There are currently about 100 players.
Co-creator Ricky Robinett says that he and his team also want to implements a level-up feature that would give more influence to power users. I've always seen Foursquare as kind of pointless and self-aggrandizing, but this makes it just sound fun. Anyone else in NYC wanna play? [Mashable]