Calgary-based Earth MMO started with the idea of turning real life into a video game, essentially using video game mechanics.

Co-founders Rowan Sommerfeld and Thomas Vu developed the idea over eight months last year before taking it on the road to various events, and eventually to a hackathon in Miami, sponsored by Niantic – the company that made Pokémon Go.

Vu said they’d been accepted into one of the internal hacker houses sponsored by Niantic, winning that hackathon.

“We also placed third overall in the entire hackathon for Miami,” Vu said.

“That was how we got on stage, essentially.”

They then ran an event on stage where they had a “big boss fight” explained Sommerfeld. People could scan the QR code, load up an augmented reality from the website that would show up on their camera and they would see a goblin boss.

“We’re like, ‘this goblin has shown up he’s terrorizing the city, scan the QR code, we’ve got to take him out,” he said.

“Then, we had a whole crowd of people all fighting a goblin boss at the same time. We did this as a test to see if AR combat is fun.  It’s really fun.”

The idea is based on the same premise of Massively Multiplayer Online games like World of Warcraft. You can go with a group of friends adventuring together on a quest that includes different encounters, via their progressive web app.  

“Essentially, it’s like Pokemon Go, but instead of catching Pokemon, you’re playing as an adventurer going on quests with your friends, fighting dragons and goblins, and getting better equipment and items exploring your city,” said Vu.

Starting small and then going big

Earth MMO has started with a handful of smaller projects, including an execution during Enchanted Okotoks. They wanted to help make community events more engaging.

Sommerfeld said they created interaction points along the main street in Okotoks, along with 29 business partners who also became part of the game. It included the augmented reality aspect that included quests inside the stores. They also had live actors.

“We would have somebody in full costume that would be playing the part of one of these in-game characters, NPCs, and they would be out front of the store interacting with people that walked by,” he said.

Vu said they’ve also had interest from people involved in Dungeons & Dragons where Dungeon Masters can convert their campaigns into real life around their respective cities.

The pair, both born in Calgary and having known each other since they were 12, said they wanted to continue building the connection they had locally through the Alberta Catalyzer – Velocity program.

They both said they’ve learned a lot about running a business in general through the program, but the one-on-ones with the coaches provided immense value. Sommerfeld figured their coach, David Cree, was a gamer on some level.

“He gets games, so when I started talking to him about what we’re doing, he was all over it,” he said.

They’re sticking with Okotoks for their next execution, hopefully turning the whole town into a gaming environment, Sommerfeld said. They want it to be playable 24/7 to show it’s a model that can work.

“Once we’ve shown that it can work in Okotoks, then we’ll scale it to like another small town maybe like Cochrane and then like High River, Airdrie, and then eventually like we’ll move in for Calgary,” he said.

“Once we show that it works in a big city like Calgary, then I think like we’re poised to start rolling out massively across the world.”