Comments
By analyte123 2026-03-0616:342 reply Please consider extending the game at least by a couple weeks! I’m very curious what percent of all California payphones could be captured with an extended game. I know the game’s phone number isn’t free but I’m sure it could be largely covered by donations.
Without even going and playing the game yet, it’s already let me understand more of the local geography. Lots of small nursing homes, behavioral institutions, and halfway houses have a payphone. Places that thankfully I haven’t had to think about and didn’t even know were there. I doubt most of these will be captured.
Many have lamented the demise of the payphone but it really bears repeating. If someone loses or is robbed of their phone, they have to rely on the trust of strangers (when they may be looking pretty rough themselves) or scrape up $20-40 for a prepaid phone at a store that’s open, rather than calling at a payphone that’s open 24/7 for 25 or 50 cents or even for free with a collect call.
Landline phone calls should just be free at this point. Put like 0.0001% of mobile profit into a fund and surely you can maintain the existing POTS payphone base. POTS-quality voice is like a rounding error in bandwidth, but we're saddled with POTS-era costs for connections.
It's not the traffic but the CO equipment and copper line maintenance.
By ninalanyon 2026-03-0720:151 reply They don't need to be landlines. Just put a mobile phone in a steel box.
By cyberax 2026-03-0722:08 There are phones like this along the highways. They also tend to use high-power microwave links instead of mobile networks, so they work even with no regular phone coverage.
By citizenpaul 2026-03-070:01 You are underestimating just how many people that are out there that want free long distances calls lol. I worked at a phone company and this was a never ending persistent security issue. There are lots of tricky ways to get someone to pay for your long distance call. If the pay phone was free then the local provider would be on the hook for those calls.
Just block long distance calls right? If it was that simple it would not be a persistent issue.
By K2h 2026-03-0619:59 I agree, I need more time to score! extend the game!
This is amazing. I would love to have this game in France! We have a geocaching scene (https://www.geocaching.com/, https://france-geocaching.fr/), but I really like the idea with payphones and this system of calling to claim findings.
The "love letter to a disappearing piece of infrastructure" bit makes me think of the payphone pictures that are published in each of 2600 magazine issues: https://www.2600.com/payphones
By MarkusWandel 2026-03-0616:311 reply Another cool "just get out there" thing is the Degree Confluence Project. Just checked, and even the web site is still old school. https://confluence.org/
My personal contribution: https://confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=3402
By MarkusWandel 2026-03-0616:33 Anyway would love to play this payphone game, if only as an excuse for bike outings, but it's only for California and I don't live there.
Honorable mention: https://walzr.com/payphone-go/?phone=1599
I don't know why but I find this person very cute with how excited they sound about the local library.
Will try to find some payphones myself.
https://walzr.com/payphone-go/?phone=592
My new favorite fishing story.
By OJFord 2026-03-0619:26 https://walzr.com/payphone-go/?phone=1451
> Shout out to [...], I love you guys. Platonically.
