Belgians Are Hunting Books, Instead Of Pokemon (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report:Inspired by the success of Pokemon Go, a Belgian primary school headmaster has developed an online game for people to search for books instead of cartoon monsters, attracting tens of thousands of players in weeks. While with Pokemon Go, players use a mobile device's GPS and camera to track virtual creatures around town, Aveline Gregoire's version is played through a Facebook group called "Chasseurs de livres" ("Book hunters"). Players post pictures and hints about where they have hidden a book and others go to hunt them down. Once someone has finished reading a book, they "release" it back into the wild. "While I was arranging my library, I realized I didn't have enough space for all my books. Having played Pokemon Go with my kids, I had the idea of releasing the books into nature," Gregoire told Reuters. Though it was only set up a few weeks ago, more than 40,000 people are already signed up to Gregoire's Facebook group.

Comments

Sounds Familiar...

[ewhac]

I think they just re-invented geo-caching, only with books.

popular in northern eu

[DrYak]

I think they just re-invented geo-caching, only with books.

(and PockemonGo itself is just virtual geo-caching, only leveraging Nintendo's brand recognition to bring it to the masses, Apple-style.)

in north-european countries, anonymous book exchanges seem quite popukar. there was a book-shelf in the middle of a small plaza near where i was living back in Germany. each day I passed in front of it, the contents seemed to change.

this Belgian teacher has mainly managed to make it popular with the kids by leveraging the PockemonGo craze. nice job!