Seth Priebatsch

On Thursday morning, Nobles graduate Seth Priebatsch ’07 — the self-styled “chief ninja” and co-founder of SCVNGR (pronounced scavenger), an Internet company — dropped into Lawrence Auditorium for Assembly. The young entrepreneur invited the student body to participate in testing some of the latest features of his company’s new location-based game. Students participated and helped locate glitches, in “Nobles Trek,” with challenges set on the Dedham campus. As the student body filed out of the auditorium, many were already beginning to test the game on their mobile phones.

“Don’t play in class,” Priebatsch told the students with a laugh.

“We’re building a game layer on top of the world,” he said. “It’s a game about going places, doing challenges and earning points,” adding that the app is already available in 20 million locations worldwide. The challenges involve six-second interactions, perhaps snapping a photo in a particular location such as the Nobles Beach, and posting it to SCVNGR. Scores of everyone playing are listed on a leader board in real time.

The company has experienced exponential growth, partnering with some 600 organizations, including the City of Boston, the U.S. Navy, the Smithsonian National Zoo, M.I.T. and Harvard to create place-based platforms for a variety of uses. On Thursday, the announcement of SCVNGR’s newest features led the New York Times’ popular technology blog, “Bits.”

“SCVNGR in the NYT. Way cool! http://nyti.ms/cog3E1,” Priebatsch tweeted.

Priebatsch says his company has reversed the usual model for unleashing a new game. They started with business uses for their “big idea,” and are just beginning to move into applications available to consumers—and Google Ventures has invested $4 million in the company.

“SCVNGR has become something much larger than I thought it would be,” said Priebatsch, who has rented a building in South Boston, Mass., for the expanding company—complete with a pool table and Nerf arsenal.

To learn more, go to www.scvngr.com.