“Location-based game” is a mouthful. Zach Saul and John-Paul Walton, founders of Dokobots suggest instead the term “geogame.” A geogame “uses technology to augment the real world.”

Most people are familiar with the top location-based social media tools, Foursquare, SCVNGR and Gowalla, but Saul and Walton said geogames have great opportunities to grow beyond simple check-ins.

In their panel, “Beyond Check-Ins: Location-Based Game Design,” Saul and Walton said geogames have great potential to retain users by overlapping real and virtual worlds. In Dokobots, players pick a bot, name it and send it out into the world. Literally, the whole world. The key, they said, is to “create virtual objects with real world limitations.” For example, if a robot flies from San Francisco to Japan, it will take as long in the game as it takes in real life.

Because it’s not limited to big cities, Dokobots is available to anyone, anywhere.

“I’m from the midwest and I really championed this. I wanted to make sure people everywhere could play this,” Walton said.