This is a brilliant idea, but it could be a treasure hunt - the easy to find QR codes should draw people into something more involved. They could link to a website that provides a clue to the next location leading them closer to the bounty.
There could be a process that encourages people not only to search but also to contribute bitcoins and leave clues for others - it could expand beyond the campus and to the wider world..
OMG That is brilliant!
I started to play a game long ago, can't remember the name of it, but it was soon after the Internet started taking off. This game came from a traditional computer game maker, a riddle/treasure hunt game, but the exciting thing about it was it adding an "online experience".
There was a real world prize, maybe like $100-500K or something, and you could talk with other players online and see how far they had gotten. I never had the chance to follow through more than the entry screens of that game, but I always thought it or something like it had HUGE potential. People love things like mysteries, riddles (really tough ones!), and scavenger hunts. They also love interacting with one another online, so merging these things can exponentially increase the fun.
If something like this could be created using Bitcoin the resulting word-of-mouth (best form of advertising) viral marketing could propel Bitcoin forward by leaps and bounds.
Let me think more on this...
Geohashing is a method for finding an effectively random location nearby and visiting it: a Spontaneous Adventure Generator. Every day, the algorithm generates a new set of coordinates for each 1°×1° latitude/longitude zone (known as a graticule) in the world. The coordinates can be anywhere in the forest, in a city, on a mountain, or even in the middle of a lake! Everyone in a given region gets the same set of coordinates relative to their graticule.