Build a San Jose Empire in Virtual Reality Game ‘Landlord Go’

As far as video games go, the newly launched Landlord Go looks to be the next big thing.

Through the first week of its release, Landlord Go had already been downloaded over 1.2 million times, ranking it as one of the most popular new mobile games on Google Play.

“The goal was to have 100,000 users in the first month, but the trajectory is like a rocket and going up, up and up,” Z. John Woznowski, CEO and co-founder of Reality Games, said in a recent interview with San Jose Inside. “We still don’t know how big this can be because everyday we have about 50,000 downloads.”

Landlord Go has been such a hit that Reality Games is receiving 4,000 to 5,000 emails a day from players around the world.

Due to the high volume of messages, the company uses a bot to answer most of the incoming questions. Landlord Go has been described as a mashup of Monopoly and Pokemon Go, two of the iconic games in their respective industries.

Users can choose to buy local shops and properties wherever they are located in hopes of building their own real estate empire.

It’s a geolocation based game, which means users have access to the properties that are physically around them. If players want to buy a property in another city or neighborhood, they can activate the property agent feature.

Once a player chooses a property they are interested in, they select the number of shares they can afford to purchase for that property.

After that stage, players begin to earn rent and incur costs. Over time, they collect more properties and shares while building their empire. Of course, just like the real world, it takes savvy investing and sound decision-making to create a real estate empire.

Landlord Go uses real buildings, real people and real prices to turn a user’s city—San Jose, for instance—into an action-packed strategy game.

The level of realism in the game is undeniable. Any time a player visits your property, they pay you rent. Putting properties on the market or engaging in a bidding war for a property with other players recreates the experience of a person competing with others for a home in Silicon Valley.

Through the first nine days of its release, Landlord Go had registered 11,000 players who were making deals for virtual ownership of the more than 50,000 properties in San Jose.

Think the new coffee shop that opened in downtown is going to be the next big thing? Put a bid on it and start raking in the profits as customers start lining up around the block.

Using their own comprehensive data set combined with NASA satellite scans showing nighttime light emissions, the makers of Landlord Go have created what it calls a truly unique property-buying game experience.

In the coming months, Landlord Go will have an augmented reality feature, making the experience feel that much more realistic. Landlord Go is an upgrade over the company’s previous economic strategy games, Landlord and Donut Trumpet Tycoon.

4 Comments

  1. > Build a San Jose Empire in Virtual Reality Game ‘Landlord Go’

    Might be an interesting game, but . . .

    kind of click bait. Not really about San Jose.

    You could probably build your real estate empire in Portland, or Baltimore, or CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle.

  2. Not to diminish the importance of keeping the public informed about the latest video games, but . . .

    Forty people invaded a gun store in Hayward and took 29 guns.

    https://twitter.com/henrykleeKTVU/status/1268391349717327872?s=20

    That sort of qualifies as a military operation, and my understanding of military practice is that we’re probably within artillery range of the battlefield.

    No reports on whether any of the seized artillery could reach San Jose.

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