A little over a year ago Garmin Launched opencaching.com to much fanfare. In that time Opencaching has managed to attract less than 50 geocache listings in the Waterloo Region. Compare this with the almost 2300 munzees placed in the region of Water in just over a year. With this stat alone munzee has crushed Opencaching, at least in Waterloo. There are fewer than 1000 geocaches in Waterloo region. Based on these numbers I think munzee poses a real challenge to geocaching.com.
munzee is a GPS game similar to geocaching. I don’t play the game, munzee is not supported on Blackberry platform but I have been with other players. Here are the main differences in the games as far as I can tell.
- munzee is all about the numbers, I’m not kidding. There is a leaderboard on munzee.com that allows players to see their standing against other players.
- Device dependant. Each munzee account is attached to a particular device. This means that teams of more than one person will need to share phones. I was out with a friend the other night and he had his wife’s phone so he could do captures.
- No pen required. Logging is accomplished by the scanning of a QR code or the reading of a chip using near field communication.
In most other respects finding a munzee is similar to finding a cache. Using the munzee app on your smart phone you go to coordinates and look for the munzee, which is usually some kind of tag/label with a QR code. The NFC mode is a recent introduction to munzee. You do not use your GPS although I have seen a GPS loaded with munzees in order to save the smart phone’s battery. Using the GPS feature on a smart phone tends to deplete the battery faster than normal.
For many years the official line at Groundspeak has been that geocaching is not about the numbers. As much as they try and down play the importance of raw numbers, milestones for finds still play a big part in the game. Unlike for munzees in geocaching there are few stats for the number of geocache hides you have placed. With munzees you are awarded points for the munzees you hide. Awarding points for hides creates an incentive to hide munzees. This is one reason the game is growing in scope if not in popularity.
According to Aaron Benzick at munzee.com there are over 50,000 active munzee players. This is still a small number compared to the over 5 million geocachers at geocaching.com. What munzee has been able to do that opencaching.com has not is build a critical mass of hides. There are over 172,000 placed worldwide. Germany ranks as the second most active munzee area with about 68,000 munzees placed.
Geocaching has helped create a knowledgeable audience for this new game. I recently attended a munzee event. There were 30 people in attendance and 26 of them were existing geocachers. munzee is just different enough from geocaching that it is attracting players.
Benzick of munzee.com doesn’t think they are a competitor to geocaching.com, “We don’t like to look at ourselves as competitors of geocaching. I think we supplement it nicely and allow options for people as they are out and about interacting with the real world. We are big fans of getting out and doing things in your community so the groundwork that the geocaching community has laid for the outdoor adventure crowd is something we respect!”
As I mentioned previously I do not play munzee but I can see the real attraction in the game for those that care about statistics. What do you think the future holds for munzee?
teamvoyagr
I have been writing the cachemania blog since 2008. I'm interested in the development of geocaching and the many ways that people play the game.
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13 Comments until now
If you could post a headline of ‘munzee.com crushes geocaching.com’ that would be impressive, crushing opencaching.com is pretty much a non-event, Garmin released that website too late, groundspeak already had the monopoly and it’s hard for anyone to compete with the main brand when it comes to geocaching because it’s so well established.
I was curious about Munzee, and I do have the app installed on my phone, but I have just 1 find to my name, it is not widely supported here in the UK, it’s a shame, I would happily play this alongside geocaching, but for the time being geocaching is my main focus, munzee doesn’t seem involving enough for me….and not to mention the swag in geocaches keeps my kids interested too, there’s nothing for them in munzees
Sorry, just to follow up my previous comment, I wanted to add that it’s not that widely supported in MY PART of the UK, there are none within walking distance like there are caches
. Also, 50,000 active users on munzee the article states, yet with just 1 find I am ranked #23,270 in the world, that suggests there’s a large portion of the 50,000 ‘active users’ that are not active and haven’t even logged a find.
But Munzee got one big problem…
there are many cheaters!
One deploys a munzee, a friend founds that munzee AND puts a munzee on the same place where he “founds” the other munzee. Than his friend founds this one and so. So they make a lot of points, doing this everywhere. There is no limit how many munzees can be at one place. I’m playing Munzee, but this art of cheating is not cool!
[...] popular munzee will get is anyone’s guess. It is already more popular then opencaching. Do you play munzee? Let us know by posting a comment here or on [...]
While the game is dependant on your device – you’ve got to have an iOS, Android or Windows Phone to play it is not actually device dependent.
I routinely carry two iPhones, both logged into Munzee using the same account. It is easy to sign out and sign back in using a different account on the same device. I know the same friend who carried the spouse’s phone and that had more to do with the broken camera in his primary device than the need to carry her phone.
@Manny – placing another Munzee near an existing Munzee is not cheating, it’s part of the game. The rules are different here than they are on geocaching.com. This particular rule may change in the future but for now the actual saturation guidelines only apply to how close you are to one of your own Munzee placements.
Yes, you have a point. I should have anticipated that. Thank you for the correction.
Munzee is fun and easy, points are a big deal and I just want to have fun.
Nice article comparing the two games. My son Brandon loves this game. He got bored of geocaching. This new game is funner for older young adults. I am playing both for now. Play on.
I am Jeff The Geek’s son and geocaching is boring! I really like the munzee game because it is a freindly competition, faster paced, and A LOT less hastle. You dont have to carry around pointless toys, a GPS and a big back pack to store them. I also like that it logs it then and there, no CPU’s and again no more hastle than needed. Its a great time filler when i have an hour break between shifts or a saturday that works as a double date race to get the most. It is all over less expensive(no GPS:$300+), more quick, and more versitile.
I Munzee because I have found all the geocaches in my local area and still want to get out and hunt. It is great for an urban setting and all of those parks that already are full of caches have lots of room for new Munzees. Deployment is far easier and creating (and maintaining) a Munzee tag is easier too. Don’t get me wrong….I’m still a geocacher too. I’m just waiting for more local geocaches to be placed.
I don’t do Munzees because I care about statistics. I do them because I enjoy having another thing to hunt for. And you’re implying that Munzees are all about statistics and that caching has nothing to do with statistics. Perhaps you need to be directed to the Statistics tab on the profile of every cacher on geocaching.com.
We are geocachers and aren’t interested in Munzees. We do, however, support anything legal that gets you outdoors! Have FUN!
I like Munzee for the reason that you have to be present to capture it. It logs it onto the database once you have captured it, and then your score goes up accordingly. Correct me if I am wrong, but when geocaching you could say that you “captured” it without actually being there. I don’t like that aspect. Also There is multiple variations to the game such as virtual Munzees where you don’t have to have anything placed at all. You just have to be within 300 feet of where the location was set. A good example of when this is used, is if people wanted to place a munzee on the lake. They obviously couldn’t float a QR code for very long so a Virtual Munzee is a more sustainable choice. I know it is not the trick of finding the virtual, the cool thing is when you set it you can see who has been to your spots.
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