Rabbit hunt

This is a little idea for LBS based mobile game. A content provider can produce such a reward based game if it has access to Operator's LBS (Location Based Service) platform.

The game is like this: The game provider employ a certain person (the rabbit) carry a mobile and just randomly move around the city. Mobile subscribers (the hunters) can query about the relative location of the rabbit, through SMS. Eventually, if a hunter get so close to the rabbit, he/she can attempt to approach nearby suspicious looking fellow and ask if he/she is the "rabbit". The first one catches the rabbit get cash reward.

Sounds quite dumb, but I think the key to make it work is proper packaging and figure out the details. For example, my idea is the "rabbit" is supposed to be carrying some visual clues (like, he/she is wearing something related to a rabbit, remember the "follow the white rabbit" clue in Matrix I ?), not to make him so unique, but encourage people to approach him/her if the hunting circle has been reduced in a 10 meter ring. Another thing is provide relative location clues, like "the rabbit is 1430 meters of your north east", instead of "the rabbit is now at S 12.25'44", E 65.23'76" "

The logistic cost of the game provider is actually quite low. You don't really need a single person to play the rabbit, just pass the mobile phone and the "visual clue" around a group of employees, each of them can play rabbit for one day or something, while they commute around the city.

Business model? charge the players on each query. You can even throw in free teaser messages to trigger players from sending in more queries, like " the rabbit seems to be near by (within 1km), want to find out where it is?"

Adjustments can also be made to the game if we find the rabbit is too easy to track down, for example, provide rabbit with warnings when hunters are moving close. Since the rabbit is employed by the game provider, it is easy to fix a policy of how much evasion is most profitable.