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0:00:13.6 Chris Ronan: Hi everybody. Welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ, the podcast from HQ in Seattle. I am Chris Ronan, one of the HQ Lackeys. And on behalf of all of us here, happy New Year. We hope 2025 is off to a great start for you and yours. It is certainly shaping up to be a fun year for Geocaching. As you may have heard, 2025 is the 25th anniversary of this game that we all love, and a number of celebratory things have already been announced, such as block parties and community celebration events. More is on the way such as the topic of today’s conversation. Bryan Roth is here. He is one of Geocaching HQ’s co-founders and is the company president. He’s here to chat about treasures, which beginning this spring will be a collectible game feature. So let’s hear more about it with me and Bryan talking treasures. So Bryan is with us. And Bryan, this is the first time since 2023 that you’ve done, you avoided the podcast all of 2024.

0:01:30.2 Bryan Roth: Did I really?

0:01:31.7 CR: You did. I was just looking this up.

0:01:32.7 BR: Oh my goodness.

0:01:33.5 CR: I was trying to, I think one time, way back in the day, we made a joke kind of related to whenever they do that skit on Saturday Night Live, where they have the five timers club or the… You were the original five timer on our podcast, but I was counting it up just now to see what you’re at now. And I wanna say you’re in the 13 or 14 Timers Club, so you are in your own club on the podcast, but even that being the case, you haven’t done one since almost April of 2023.

0:02:01.1 BR: Wow. Well, I’ll say it’s good to be back.

0:02:06.2 CR: And he wasn’t avoiding any… I don’t want anybody to read into that, think that Bryan’s been avoiding the microphones. He hasn’t.

0:02:12.2 BR: It’s true. I always have plenty to say and I think having a lot of other esteemed lackeys as guests makes a lot of sense as well. I think after 13 times, hopefully everybody still appreciates hearing a little bit from me.

0:02:26.5 CR: I think we do.

0:02:27.6 BR: And this time in particular with it now being January 2025 and 25 years of Geocaching being celebrated this year, I’ve got some fun stuff to talk about.

0:02:39.3 CR: Yeah. And later in the year we’ll do more of a, maybe more of a retrospective and maybe get Jeremy in here and we can talk about that kind of stuff. But just briefly as we approach the 25th anniversary of when this game started, it must be wild for you. And I don’t know if you and Jeremy and Elias talk about this ever as you guys are just around talking to each other, but I mean, 25 years since you guys got together and started this website and eventually the apps and all that stuff, I mean, you could never have possibly known or imagined that the game and the community would grow as it has over these years. And truly has been a life-changing thing for me and so many other people to have this hobby and this community as part of our lives.

0:03:29.7 BR: It’s funny, Chris, I’ve actually been thinking about this quite a bit recently, 25 years. If you figure at best we get to live for 100 years, and I’m not counting on it obviously, but like 25 years is a quarter of a lifetime. That’s a long time. And I’ll say like, one of the things that’s been profound for me is just how many things have happened in 25 years? There’s so many stories that have been told and things that have occurred just that we’ve forgotten about. And so every now and then somebody will remind me of something and I’m like, oh my goodness, that’s 16 years ago, or that’s 20 years ago. And it’s just, it’s amazing to think about what has transpired over 25 years. And as you know we talk about impact at HQ all the time, and just the amount of impact that this game has had on the lives of millions of people around the world, including you, including myself, my family, friends, it’s remarkable. We’re so fortunate to be a part of it, and now we get to celebrate together as a global community. And it’s one more moment in time that we all get to enjoy. And so I’m just really excited for 2025 and especially what comes next.

0:04:51.3 CR: And there’s a lot coming next, a lot of stuff that we’ll talk about over the course of weeks and months. But the primary thing we’re here to talk about today is treasures, which is a new project that HQ is just announcing that you are very involved with for people that are just learning about it. We’ll get into more details, but just kind of briefly, what is treasures and why should people be excited about it?

0:05:19.9 BR: So as you mentioned we announced it this morning that we’re releasing treasures, which is kind of a new feature set that sits on top of Geocaching. And so basically treasures are collections of digital items that can be found in geocaches. And so that’s in a nutshell that’s what it is. You would go out, you find a geocache that meets certain qualifications, and when you log it, you would receive a treasure. We would help you understand this treasure is part of a specific collection. As you find all of the treasures in that collection, you would complete the collection. For some collections, you would earn a souvenir, for some collections it’s just the joy of completing the collection. And so the plan for this year is to release a series of collections throughout the year, and we’re going to start in March. At least, that’s the plan for now, is to start in March with an introductory collection for everybody.

0:06:21.2 BR: And so the goal will be to introduce people to the feature set, let them understand how it works, let them understand what it means to find a digital treasure, add it to a collection, what it means to complete a collection, how you can look at your treasure inventory and see all of the treasures you found, all the collections you’ve completed. But really it’s a new way to add more challenges to the game. And I’m not obviously talking about challenges as sort of how they’re related to caches, but just sort of put things in front of people that they may decide they want to go out and do. Like, for example, we’ve been playing with it a little bit at HQ over the last couple of months, and we’ve gone out and released some internal collections. And I know when I see what I have to do in order to go get those treasures, I’m looking at it and saying, all right, these are the types of caches I have to find.

0:07:16.2 BR: I have to find so many of them to complete the collection. And it’s just another form of motivation and joy. One of the cool things about treasure collections is that we have a lot of flexibility in how we define a collection. That is what makes up the collection? Is it navigational tools? Is it hiking gear? Is it lucky coins, for example? Is it avatars? The sky is kind of the limit. And anything that you can think of that could be a group if we associate it with art, we could create a collection. Each collection has specific requirements in order to find those treasures. So for example, we can set requirements related to the difficulty in terrain, how many favorite points of cache has to have, what types of caches can have these treasures in them? How many fines a player has in order to have access to a collection?

0:08:19.8 BR: Are there collections that need to be completed in order to unlock future collections? With that flexibility, we have the ability to put different types of challenges in front of different types of people or different types of players in terms of how they want to play. So for example, over the past many years, we have heard from geocachers that some of our marketing promotions are a little bit easy, too easy to complete, or some people say they’re a bit too hard. But you can imagine now where we can create a collection that is accessible for kind of casual players, where maybe you have to find five traditional caches that have a difficulty of two or lower in order to collect a series of navigational tools. And so when you go out, each time you find a cache, you get a new navigation tool, it’s digital art, it goes into your treasure collection.

0:09:16.7 BR: When you complete the collection, you can get some type of award or you just get the joy of knowing that you’ve completed the collection. But what we could also do is we could say, well, we know there are players out there that will do that within the first hour after we release the collection. So how can we create something a bit more challenging? So we could say, well, not only are, maybe this collection is only Multi-Caches with a difficulty of four or above, and maybe you need to find 10 items. And maybe each time you find one of those caches that fits the requirements, the odds of getting a treasure is still 10% or 30% or 80%. So we can really, by turning the dials on the requirements for each collection and each treasure, we can put different types of challenges in front of different people.

0:10:11.0 BR: Ideally, people are gonna want to go out and complete collections by being active and playing the game of Geocaching. And so we’re really looking at this as a win-win. One of the ways that you can imagine it is when you go out to find a cache, if it’s a micro, some people love them, some people don’t love them. The micros are really small caches. Oftentimes all there is is is a logbook. Sometimes it’s that little rolled up piece of paper and it’s a little bit difficult to get it back in the cache. And it’s sort of the joy you get is, well, I travelled to this location, hopefully it was a cool journey. I found the cache, I had that eureka moment. Now I opened it, signed my initials on the piece of paper, put it back where I found it, and head out.

0:10:58.2 BR: But what if, what if that cache is one of the ones that you need in order to get the last piece of a collection? And you go out and you say, all right, I know, I logged this, and you get the award pops up on mobile or web, and it’s like, Hey, now I’ve gotten something more. Now I have an extra moment of a eureka. I have a moment of delight because I’ve completed the collection. Maybe I’ve unlocked a souvenir or some other reward. But by adding this layer of treasures, we’re hoping to make Geocaching more fun, more exciting, make the the fine moment even more joyful for everybody who’s playing.

0:11:38.5 CR: At one point you mentioned souvenirs, and that might be something that comes to mind, maybe that feels familiar to people when they hear about treasures that it sounds maybe a little bit like souvenirs, but they are different. Can you talk a little bit more about the distinctions between treasures and what people are used to with souvenirs?

0:12:00.4 BR: Absolutely. So yes, souvenirs are different than treasures. Souvenirs basically commemorate specific Geocaching fines and activities like finding a cache in a new region, a new state, new country province, finding a cache on a certain day, like last first, completing goals in a Geocaching marketing promotion. Treasures are digital representations of objects that would be found or encountered when logging geocaches. So like a compass or a matchbox car or a rubber ball. One of the cool things about treasures being digital is that we don’t really have to limit ourselves to things that would fit in a geocache. And so, for example, rather than find, let’s say a space rock from Mars, maybe you find a Mars Rover in a nano cache or a micro cache. And so being able to have the flexibility to play and create fun series of treasures, fun collections of treasures is something we’re really looking forward to.

0:13:07.8 BR: Each treasure, as I mentioned, belongs to an individual collection, which can be completed when all required treasures have been found for that collection. So there really is a distinction. And in some cases, a collection of treasures can be unlocked by earning a souvenir. Those can be prerequisites. It’s part of the functionality that we’ve built. So, for example, you go out and you have to find a specific country souvenir to unlock a series of treasures that are only available in that country. That’s flexibility that we have. I think to begin in 2025, we’re not really gonna be making them too complex. It’s really about introducing players to the feature set and kind of putting some fun collections in front of people throughout the year to keep people engaged and excited. And we’re really looking at it as a way to celebrate 25 years of history with Geocaching by creating and releasing some treasure collections that are, say, more nostalgic or have some interesting ties to things that have happened over the past 25 years.

0:14:17.5 CR: So treasures is something that’s going to keep going on and it’s going to keep being built on. And I don’t know how much you wanna get into [laughter] speculating or talking about what’s possible, but some of the stuff I’ve heard has been a lot of fun like that maybe someday you could trade items with other cachers. I mean, is there any of that stuff that you wanna talk about? Like just, I mean, it’s not that you’re necessarily saying it’s definitely gonna happen, but as you said, there’s a lot of flexibility and a lot of dials that can be turned and stuff that’s possible down the road.

0:14:50.8 BR: Absolutely. So, one of the cool things about treasures just to note, is this isn’t the next marketing promotion from Geocaching. This isn’t our summer marketing campaign where you’ve got a month to complete it and you earn a couple souvenirs and then it’s done until the next summer. This is a feature set that we plan to continue developing over time. And so some interesting aspects of it is every treasure that is awarded is a unique item in the database, like trackable. So you can imagine that as we get further into experimentation with the feature set, we can allow people to collect maybe more than one of each treasure, maybe multiples of each treasure, and they can send those treasures or share those treasures at events with other people who maybe didn’t complete a specific collection. One of the other things is that these collections don’t necessarily have to expire.

0:15:51.2 BR: While they could we can have an intro collection that is available for everybody in perpetuity, and obviously this is in theory, but to start playing treasures what we’ve got planned now is all players will need to have it a minimum of three caches found historically. So we want you to know how to play Geocaching as a game before you jump into treasures. But once you have three caches, you will be eligible to go out and find the first collection. When you complete the intro collection, you will then have access to future collections. But we really want everybody to be able to complete the intro collection so that they have the understanding of the basics and how it works. But once we release future collections, those collections don’t have to expire. So you can imagine somebody who joins the game two years from now will have access to most, if not all of the collections that have been released in 2025. And so in a way, unlike the marketing promotions of the past…

0:16:56.1 CR: Well, Mystery in the museum is one or Cosmic Quest in those [0:17:00.3] ____.

0:17:00.7 BR: Mystery of the museum, Cosmic Quest those are done, they’re completed. So unfortunately we can’t allow players to go back and play them again. But the benefit of having treasurers as digital collections is that we can make them available on an ongoing basis. So, maybe some people really enjoy a specific collection while players who come later can still go back and complete that collection. In the future having treasures as unique items in the dataset allows us to enable things like trading, or maybe when you find a treasure, you can put that treasure in a different cache. Some of that functionality is not available yet. And again, we’re really planning to start with the basics. But I can say that the underlying functionality of this feature set gives us a lot of flexibility to bring some new game elements to Geocaching. And the goal is to engage and delight people all over the world with treasures and we’re just excited to get started.

0:18:07.7 CR: I could see somebody maybe being concerned if they live in an area that doesn’t have as many geocaches, are they gonna be at a disadvantage to participating in this compared to, like we were in Seattle, there are hundreds and thousands of geocaches. I don’t think I’d have a lot of trouble going out and participating in treasures, but maybe I live in an area with not quite so many. How is that addressed or can it be addressed?

0:18:33.0 BR: I mean, the best way to address areas that don’t have a lot of caches is to get out there and place some caches. And so as I mentioned earlier, in certain cases, some of these collections will be very specific in their requirements. Like you need to find a specific cache type with a specific DT rating, a specific number of favorite points. And in some cases, like it’s not meant to be easy, it’s meant to be a challenge. And I’ll say I was sitting at lunch with a lackey not too long ago and asking about them caching with their family and they will say, we love caching, we’re still getting out there, but we wish there were more things to challenge us. And so here you go, this is one of those things. And the goal is really to not just have challenges for new players or things that are really easy so everybody can go out and earn a badge or a souvenir or something. These are things where we wanna have some easy ones for the players who are not so active and we wanna have some hard ones that really challenge folks.

0:19:39.4 BR: And like you mentioned, in certain regions, they will be harder than others. And the goal for us with this feature set, with this platform element is to learn what works and learn what doesn’t work. And so as I mentioned there’s a lot of dials and we’re gonna be turning those dials to figure out how can we best entertain people? How can we add something that’s fun to this game that gets people excited to go outside Geocaching and also excited when they find the geocache and maybe a little bit more so than we have been historically. And I think that’s the beauty of this feature set. We all know the eureka moment of having a cool journey going out and having a fun cache hide, or maybe finding a cool container or finding a cool spot with a wonderful view. But this is something that can actually add to that. So as good as it already is, we’re hoping to make it a little bit better in the coming years with digital treasures.

0:20:42.1 CR: And one thing I was just thinking is as after I asked the question is I think one of the benefits as compared to the souvenir campaigns that have a finite amount of time, maybe it takes you longer to finish a collection as if you live in a, or if you don’t cache as much, or if you live in a spot that doesn’t have as many caches, but you’ve got more time to do it, it’s not necessarily just going to end after a month or after two months. Like our souvenir campaigns that they all end at some point. And so maybe this is one of the advantages of treasures.

0:21:15.6 BR: That’s correct. It’s one of the elements of flexibility that we can play with. So, if we wanted, we could have a collection that’s only available for a specific time. But I think the default is gonna be to have these collections available in a way that’s not time limited to allow for people with the flexibility depending on what they’ve got going on in their lifestyle or seasonality in their region so that they can go out and we know based on what we’ve seen over 25 years from the community that there will be people who want to go out and get these as fast as possible or be the one who finds the most or completes the collection the quickest. But there will be other players who are just a little bit more casual about it. And the goal with this is really to find a way to entertain all of those folks and make this game more fun for everybody.

0:22:15.4 CR: And not to get too into the weeds on this, but one thing I’ve heard a few people just internally ask about, and so I’ll ask is if you don’t want to do this, if you don’t wanna play treasures, can you turn it off and not get notifications and stuff like that?

0:22:30.5 BR: Yeah. And so the one thing that we will be adding is the ability to turn off the notification. So the way that it works right now, or the way that everybody’s gonna see it working in March, is that when you find a geocache that meets the qualifications for a specific collection, you’ll have a popup in the mobile app. You’ll have a popup on the website saying, congratulations, you found a treasure. And there’ll be links to the treasure collection. There’ll be links to your treasure inventory in the treasure collection. There’s notes that will show you what you need to do in order to get more treasures in that collection. Also in the app and on the website in your profile, there’ll be a section called Treasure. So when you click on that, you’ll be able to look at the available collections.

0:23:23.4 BR: You’ll be able to look at the treasures in your inventory. And so one of the things that we realize is if people are really active and they’re getting those award messages, while it might be delightful for most people, some people might say, Hey, this isn’t for me. I don’t really want these popups just let me cache the way that I want to cache. You’ll be able to go in and turn off the notifications. So while you’ll still be able to go into your profile and see what treasures you’ve collected, if you’re not looking for them deliberately, you may or may not get them. You may or may not complete the collections, but we can prevent the notifications from showing up so you won’t have to see it. Based on what we’ve seen here at HQ testing the feature set, I don’t think there’s anybody who’s really looking to turn off the notifications. It’s another moment of delight. It’s an award moment. It feels special, but we really, in doing what we can to try and serve everybody, we wanted to add the ability for people to turn off the notifications if it’s something that they don’t want.

0:24:25.0 CR: And this is available treasure is available to premium and basic members or all community members can participate in this.

0:24:33.8 BR: That is correct. All community members will have access to treasures. One of the things that we can do is we can have collections that are only available for premium members. And as one of the ways of thanking the premium members for so much support over the many years and really helping us get to do what we do for the community, I’ll say that there will likely be at least one, if not more premium collections in the future. But there will also be more and more collections available to everybody as well.

0:25:05.4 CR: Well, that’s a lot for people to take in. And they can go to the Geocaching blog to learn more. There’s an FAQ that will be coming out and watching the calendar, I guess, right, Bryan, because throughout the year there will be, once we get past the initial collections, there will be more later in the year as well.

0:25:25.8 BR: More collections to come in, in 2025 and beyond. And as we get closer to the release of treasures, we’ll share more details about what to expect, how you can find treasure, how collections work, and how you can share feedback with us. I think once folks see what collections look like, people are gonna have a lot of ideas for like, oh, this could be a collection or that can be a collection. And we will be looking for ideas, we will be looking for feedback. Again, we think that this is a feature set that can really add to the game over time. And we’re gonna wanna hear from the community what you think and how you think we can make it better. And we’re just excited to bring it to the game and the community and excited to see how people engage with the new feature set. So stay tuned. It’s coming soon. It won’t happen soon enough for me, so I can’t wait until everybody gets it in their hands. And until then, go find some geocaches, go hide some geocaches, and let’s celebrate 25 years of Geocaching together.

0:26:34.7 CR: That was Bryan Roth Geocaching HQ’s president and co-founder. To learn more about treasures, visit the Geocaching blog at blog.geocaching.com, and more information will be forthcoming as we approach the official launch of treasures later this spring. In the meantime, from me and Bryan and all the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching and happy 2025.