Digital City Adventure
Starting point
The city of Mikkeli and local companies wanted to participate in the Youth Guarantee program, in order to open up the possibilities of building a future – job, studies and hobbies – in the city. The project would explain how a working city and society functions. Also, local businesses would have an opportunity to face the young job seekers, present their companies and recruit.
In stead of traditional seminars and recruitment fairs, sthey were looking for a fresh alternative. That’s where we got in the picture.
The solution
“Imagine you are on the top of the Naisvuori Observation Tower looking over the city. You see an interesting game board where people move as living game figures from checkpoint to checkpoint. They are collecting points with the help of GPS and get prizes when they reach the goal.”
The Digital City Adventure was a week-long game designed to the centre of Mikkeli. It consisted of checkpoints with different tasks. The players moved from one checkpoint to another, performed the tasks and collected points. The adventure was playable with smartphones, tablets and laptops. Those who did not own one got a printed map and accomplished the tasks via on-location terminals. The prizes included a trip to New York for two, a trip to London for two, Nokia Lumia phones, etc.
Different events were organised during the game week to support the game and help the young to seek jobs. Top Finnish entertainment stars performed in the events.
Implementation
We designed the concept and visuals for the adventure, including game mechanics and interfaces. The implementation was done by Observis Ltd on top of their location-based application framework.
The checkpoints around the city were the core of the adventure. There were three different types of them: basic checkpoints, event checkpoints and secret checkpoints.
- The majority of the checkpoints were basic checkpoints . They were always visible on the map and contained different tasks, like quizzes.
- Event checkpoints were active only during the event they were bound to. The events included recruitment fairs, open air concerts and bungee jumping.
- Hidden checkpoints were arranged for every day of the adventure. They were not seen on the map but the participants were given clues to find them. The clues were mysterious and guided to new clues in different places and local media. These clues formed paths that required a decent amount of detective work to solve.
The hidden checkpoints had a huge effect on the game, challenging the most active players to really work for the points. The first players usually arrived 30 minutes after publishing the first clue. The whole game was decided by points from the last hidden checkpoint – the suspense lasted to the last minutes!
Game points
By checking in at the checkpoints the players earned game points, and they could also earn bonus points by accomplishing the tasks. In addition to game and bonus points, the players, with their actions, collected different achievement badges, such as Tracker (found all the secret checkpoints), Swot (full points from all the quizzes) and Active (participated in an event). All these formed the total points with which the players competed.
Marketing
With the Digital City Adventure MPY launched a free Wifi, requested by the city of Mikkeli and covering the city centre. The adventure helped to bring the new network into people’s knowledge.
All the instructions and material were gathered to the adventure’s website. The adventure was also active on social media: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Ad for the local TV channel
