Booyah tries again with MyTown

Booyah, a new social gaming company formed by industry veterans Keith Lee, Brian Morrisroe, and Sam Christiansen, all former Blizzard employees who worked on early iterations of Diablo III, made something of a stir earlier this year with the release of their first game/toy/social widget for the iPhone, Booyah Society. Unfortunately, much of the stir was due to the team's pedigree rather than the merits of the product which left many gamers scratching their heads (in no small part due to the fact that it had absolutely nothing in common with Diablo.) The original pitch was that Booyah Society was a "real world achievements" game where players declared what they were doing, and then sought validation through their existing social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Reception to the product was predominantly that of confusion, and much of the feedback from both the press and from users was that the app was little more than a strange avatar-based skin for existing social network status updates.

Now, just a few months later, Booyah Society has completely gone from the App Store, and in its place is a new free app that replicates some of the original functionality (like the 3D robotic-looking avatars) and bolsters them with a heavy dose of FourSquare or Gowalla-style GPS location tagging. The new product, dubbed MyTown, is built on the premise of "owning" local businesses by actually visiting them and then interacting with other users. If you're a frequent user of other GPS-based "check in" games, you may be interested to try MyTown as it introduces a novel Monopoly style element that may make it more appealing. For many though, the appeal may still present itself as something of a stretch.

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Booyah, a new social gaming company formed by industry veterans Keith Lee, Brian Morrisroe, and Sam Christiansen, all former Blizzard employees who worked on early iterations of Diablo III, made something of a stir earlier this year with the release of their first game/toy/social widget for the iPhone, Booyah Society. Unfortunately, much of the stir was due to the team's pedigree rather than the merits of the product which left many gamers scratching their heads (in no small part due to the fact that it had absolutely nothing in common with Diablo.) The original pitch was that Booyah Society was a "real world achievements" game where players declared what they were doing, and then sought validation through their existing social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Reception to the product was predominantly that of confusion, and much of the feedback from both the press and from users was that the app was little more than a strange avatar-based skin for existing social network status updates.

Now, just a few months later, Booyah Society has completely gone from the App Store, and in its place is a new free app that replicates some of the original functionality (like the 3D robotic-looking avatars) and bolsters them with a heavy dose of FourSquare or Gowalla-style GPS location tagging. The new product, dubbed MyTown, is built on the premise of "owning" local businesses by actually visiting them and then interacting with other users. If you're a frequent user of other GPS-based "check in" games, you may be interested to try MyTown as it introduces a novel Monopoly style element that may make it more appealing. For many though, the appeal may still present itself as something of a stretch.

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