Here at Geocaching Australia we are planning the games for 2019. We will be running a mid year game in the middle of winter and a game over the summer period. We run the games to highlight some of the things you can do at Geocaching Australia such as dragonZone, moveable caches, and many other things as well as provide additional entertainment to be had while you're out geocaching.

For 2019 we would like your suggestions for two games. An easy game set in winter where the light is short, the weather is cold and your ability to cache may be restricted. A more challenging game for summer which may be longer, have more hours of daylight and during holidays may allow you to challenge yourself a little more.

Games will only invoke Geocaching Australia caches, they will be physical caches only and any validation of requirement claims must be able to be done without any human intervention.

Working within those rules what sort of game would you like to see in 2019?

I was thinking that perhaps an 'Unloved Cache' game might be fun.
Points would be scored for say each week a cache has been unloved.
Of course the unloved length of time would have to be up to the start of the game so that all players can find such caches not just the first one to find it.

Why only physical caches?

Physical caches are what we'd like to work with at the moment. By all means, if you want to come up with a game that includes non physical caches, please put it all down in writing, explaining how you think it will work and we'll look at it. For various reasons, we may use it.....or we may not.

As mentioned, our games are planned well in advanced and if there is an idea that is suggested and we think its's possible, well, we may just keep it as a game for the future.

Please don't let any of the above put you off. A good game can take up to 12 months or longer to plan, code and test. An idea listed today may be the big hit of 2019 or 2020.

OK. Thanks for that.

I'd figured there was a fair bit of work involved in setting up the games, but that's given me a greater appreciation of just how much is involved.

I'll get my thinking cap on.

Great Idea Roger - there are many unloved caches out there. Only concern is there maybe cachers that have found all the unloved caches a long time ago, so there may have very few within there state that they can find. Of course unloved caches also run the risk of not being there anymore!

Maybe rewarding people for hiding caches and the number of finds they get on that cache during the game period.

Thanks for the suggestion/s. Not sure how many unloved caches there would be and if there would be enough in most locations to make a game of it. Something to look at maybe.

A game where a CO is rewarded for the number of times their cache is found during a set/game period will simply see that cache found by the all CO mates. We've been down that path before and it's something we will stay away from in the future.

Good to see the suggestions though......keep them coming.

As long as there is not a size limit on caches to be placed you can count me in.

Edwin

Fair Enough, Not fair if people game the competition. I could imagine all sorts of "Bogus" accounts being created just to help someone over the line. It shouldnt be about winning but taking part!

The other thing that came to my mind, and it might not work is the song "swallowed a fly song" Maybe something with different sizes needing to be found representing different animal - Fly = Nano, Spider = Small, so on. There you go, something from left field