Singapore-based startup PlayMoolah has partnered with OCBC Bank in an initiative to provide account holders withaccess to the subscription-based online game platform.
PlayMoolah is a platform designed to teach financial literacy to children aged between six and twelve years with gamification tools that encourage children take charge of their money, in a fun, engaging and safe manner as well as additional features that allow parents to also be involved in their child’s learning journey.
The joint initiative is called the “OCBC Mighty Savers and PlayMoolah Adventure” and is integrated with OCBC’s existing Mighty Savers program. With a minimum account deposit of $50 account holders can access a Lite version of a PlayMoolah game account, while depositing $1000 provides access to the full version of the game.
This is the first financial institution with which PlayMoolah has partnered and OCBC Bank believe this positive alignment between companies serves an important need for their young customers. “We decided to work with PlayMoolah, as there is a distinct meeting of minds between our Mighty Savers programme and their online platform” said Ms Ng Li Lian, Head of Mass Segment, OCBC Bank. ”Both use similar methodologies to encourage good financial behaviour. With Mighty Savers, children can redeem gifts when they make a deposit of $50 or more, and with PlayMoolah, their online platform encourages both online and real-world savings.”
For PlayMoolah, the partnership provides another way to reach out to a wider database of users and more importantly, help boost the financial literacy of more children, empowering them to better manage their money. Audrey Tan, Co-founder of PlayMoolah said, “We founded PlayMoolah to inspire a new generation of young people to develop a healthy perspective towards money. We want them to be empowered by seeing it as a way to serve their dreams, personal growth and happiness, as well as to create value for society, rather than viewing money as an end in itself. Because of this, we are delighted to partner OCBC Bank, to help their Mighty Savers customers develop a positive relationship with money.”
Read more about PlayMoolah and their success to date in a previous blog post PlayMoolah: Gamifying financial system.
This blog post first appeared on http://www.recognitionpattern.com
The casual and mobile gaming scene has exploded in recent years with the success of games such as Angry Birds and Draw Something being held up as shining examples for independent game developers to follow in a chance to make millions overnight. But few know the trade secrets behind such success.
In a rare opportunity, Singapore designers and developers were treated over the weekend to a visit from the team of Halfbrick, one of Australia’s largest game development studios. During the Developer Dojo, with networking and workshop sessions co-hosted by Microsoft and e27, the sold out event provided insight into the company’s background, integrated marketing strategy and framework for technical development.
Although best known for their global success with casual gaming hit Fruit Ninja, the studio has had anything but overnight success. Fruit Ninja may have had over 300 million downloads across multiple platforms but it was in fact the company’s 15th game. Founded in 2001 with just five guys, Halfbrick had very “small and humble beginnings”. However, CEO and Founder Shaniel Deo is confident that the company’s success can be attributed to three key factors.
Halfbrick team with fan: (L-R) Shaniel Deo, Richard McKinney and Phil Larsen.
Studio Vision
Firstly, there was a strong vision for the company from the outset. “When we started we really nailed what we were trying to do,” Deo says. ” Our key was we wanted to be the best at game design. Our peers and other companies at that time were focusing on graphics and technology… But we thought if we focused on game design we could out compete those guys. People are always looking for something extraordinary… game design lets you to stand out from the crowd and our games certainly embody that”. Deo also notes that companies like PopCap and Nintendo have always been an inspiration.
This focus on design and innovation has been cemented with a non-hierarchal and collaborative management style as well as the introduction of “Halfbrick Fridays.” At this weekly event every employee has an opportunity to pitch and prototype game ideas. In fact Fruit Ninja was pitched during one of these very events.
A second factor of their success has been the ability of the team to learn from experience. Halfbrick got their start by developing games for larger studios such as Electronic Arts, Activision and THQ on various platforms including Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network before moving on to their own intellectual property.
But Deo stresses that developing games is not enough – studios must actively learn from that experience. His advice to developers is to “make sure that with each product you release, you learn something, build on it and try to improve… When we started making our own games, we started with smaller titles like Blast Off and Age of Zombies and you can see the progress that we made and how each title gets better and better. In the app space you can do that really quickly… With each iteration you want to be improving.”
With over a decade of experience behind them Halfbrick has had slow but steady progress an approach that also applies to recruitment. “Carefully handpick your team,” says Deo. “Make sure the people you work with complement your skills and bring something to the table. We started with five guys and we didn’t always make the best choices at that stage… You want to choose your partners wisely. As we grew… each person we’ve added to the team goes through a rigorous recruitment process.”
In addition to a strong vision and focus on design, a creative and integrated marketing approach has been crucial in promoting not only individual game titles but also the Halfbrick brand itself.
Marketing Ninja Style
From literally no budget (acting, filming and editing for their first Fruit Ninja video was done entirely in-house) to the slick production values of more recent promotions, Phil Larsen, Head of Marketing gave some important insights to Halfbrick’s approach to marketing casual games, some of which may surprise game developers and marketing gurus alike.
Just as the Deo emphasised learning from development, so too does marketing benefit from analysing what has been done before. Moreover, marketing is not something that happens once the game is completed: quite the opposite. As Larsen states, “It starts with the game. Marketing is not about writing a press release or buying a hundred thousand users. I work with development teams as soon as they come up with the idea.” It’s an integrated approach that allows staff to collaborate on potential design features and seize promotional opportunities.
A lot of hard work also goes towards ongoing communication and maintaing good relationships with external parties such as publishers, stores, retail, media outlets and the end consumer. Moreover all marketing activities are executed under the light of promoting both the current game title as well as the overarching brand. “We want to be known for our game play and our awesome, fun games,” Larsen confirms adamently. This includes successful cross-marketing opportunities with companies such as Dreamworks to develop a version of Fruit Ninja with animated character Puss in Boots.
In a move that may surprise a lot of indie developers, Halfbrick has never had a user acquisition budget. Larsen says that “If [paid user acquisition] fits into your overall marketing strategy then great but be aware that marketing is not just about plugging money into an ad network.” Instead the team looks for innovative and complementary opportunities that deliver high-impact at low-cost. A prime example was the successful leveraging of Microsoft’s global multi-million dollar launch of Xbox Kinect by naming the resulting title: Fruit Ninja Kinect. To coincide with Fruit Ninja’s two year anniversary, the company ran a national competition with a travelling road show to find Australia’s Fruit Ninja Master.
Technical and Cross-platform Development
Just as Fruit Ninja was launched successfully in 2010 into the iOS environment, Deo notes that with the imminent release of Windows 8, “Its an amazing time in apps and mobile… It’s a blank slate and a real opportunity to come in and create a real hit… Sooner or later players crave new experiences and you can do that with Microsoft’s platforms”.
Richard McKinney, Halfbrick’s CTO, explains that Windows 8 provides game developers with a new frontier for gaming with a touch-centric environment, cross-form factors, and Xbox Live integration as well as access to multiple architectures through Metro APIs. “We’re really excited that pretty much everything is based around touch,” says McKinney. “And for the first time we have a store built into the operating system… so there’s greater visibility [for apps] than the desktop environment.”
And there haven’t been any “quick and dirty” ports from the other platforms to Windows. McKinney stresses, “Every platform has its own characteristics and user expectations. We’ve done a lot of work to make sure that each game is a great game for Windows 8.” The development team also highlighted opportunities in the enhanced ability to share across social networks through integrated applications.
The team has had obvious fun in experimenting with Windows 8 features such as live tiles and snapped views, pushing their creative boundaries to create some very innovative and fun game play that has increased the stickiness and re-engagement opportunities of games like Fruit Ninja and their latest release Jetpack Joyride.
Halfbrick’s success is probably best summarised by the team themselves.
Deo: “User experience and respecting the user is really important to us. I guess we’d rather make less money and still make sure the user is happy then crank all the levers and extract as much money as we can.”
McKinney: “When users are happy they tell their friends and we probably make even more money that way.”
Larsen: “We’re building long term solutions and long term relationships as much as we can.”
This blog post first appeared on http://www.recognitionpattern.com
Ride public transport like a boss and get rewarded
Encouraging citizens to use public transport is a major issue for urbanized areas around the world. It reduces congestion on major road arteries, provides a mode of transport for those who don’t drive or can’t afford to buy a vehicle and facilitates access to services and facilities in other locations.
Singapore has one of the most efficient public transport networks in the world with a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) network of under and above ground lines linked with Light Rail (LRT). From all accounts it’s a well-utilised service but there are still issues, as in most major cities, with congestion during peak hour periods.
Mr Lew Yii Der, Group Director of Corporate Planning and Research at Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA) said earlier this year “Even as we expand the rail network and bring in additional trains to enhance rail capacity, it will take some time for these improvements to fully come on stream. Travel demand management is an area LTA has been actively exploring as it encourages more optimal use of public transport capacity.” Part of this exploration has been the launch of a Singapore-based project to study trends associated with travel on public transport. But more interestingly the study is also looking at how incentives and game mechanics can reduce congestion during peak periods.
Insinc with commuting congestion
Insinc (Incentives for Singapore’s Commuters) is a joint collaboration between the National University of Singapore, Stanford University and LTA to study the effects of incentives and web-based interaction on public transit commuting. Since January, the program has rewarded commuters for traveling outside of peak periods. Participants register their EZ-Link card so that each journey earns credits (1km = 1 credit) while shoulder-peak travel (6.30am-7.30am and 8.30am-9.30am on weekdays) earns bonus credits (1km = 3 credits). The study is the first of it’s kind in Singapore but has well-established roots in several projects that have successfully encouraged behaviour change.
Pedometers, Indian traffic jams and campus parking
Professor Balaji Prabhakar, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University.
Professor Balaji Prabhakar, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University is head of the Insinc study and his ground-breaking work on traffic congestion has been well documented in publications such as the Economist, NY Times and Wall Street Journal.
Prabhakar’s academic expertise allows him to appreciate the complex relationships inherent in public transport networks. However, he is quick to point out that such networks are all around us. “Societal networks don’t have to do with computing or communications, they’re all the other networks we use on a daily basis. Technology and economics interplay strongly and humans are also in this loop. We are components of the network, so our decisions matter, while we are in the system. Whether we choose to take the MRT, a bus, bike or car, it affects the load within the system… The key issue is supply and demand but how do you make them meet? Price can be used, as economics suggests, but could we also use incentives? That’s the purpose of our work.”
The study of incentives to encourage behaviour change led Prabhakar and his team to turn to the world of video games and gamification (using game elements in non-game contexts). Last year the team collaborated with global management consulting giant Accenture US to develop Steptacular, a pilot study that encouraged employees to get fit through the use of pedometers, earning and then redeeming credits for rewards. Results indicated “high enrollment, frequent engagement with the system, and an improvement in the average steps per user per day”. Even professional game designers from RedOctane, developers of legendary video game Guitar Hero, have commented on the design and noted similarities with well-known gaming phenomena such as “level grinding” and the “Easter eggs of random rewards”.
But it was a visit to Bangalore and getting stuck in peak hour traffic that revealed to Prabhakar the potential intersection between societal networks, tracking behaviour and creating feedback loops to modify future behaviour. A resulting study involving 14,000 users, successfully shifted 25 percent of peak hour congestion, resulting in the removal of eight buses from the existing fleet. The most telling result was that the financial savings from those extracted buses was more than enough to cover the incentive rewards used in the program.
Calculating the Odds
Gameplay board within Insinc.
Capitalizing on the findings of these previous studies, the Insinc program uses several game elements and mechanics to encourage behaviour change. Commuters earn credits and bonus credits depending on how often and when they travel. Additionally, the number of “decongestion” trips determines the commuter’s “level” within the program. This is where things get interesting. Insinc commuters can exchange their accumulated credits for cash (credited back to their EZ-link card) or win larger prizes by playing simple games of chance on the Insinc website. As the player “levels up” they gain access to boards with increasingly higher stakes to win larger amounts.
Insinc utilises elements from common graphical user interfaces (GUI) found in-game designs to communicate odds and chance. As Prabhakar says, “This idea of visually explaining things to people, where it becomes self-explanatory, is one of the things we’ve taken very seriously. It underlies a lot of the game design that we’ve been doing.” A recent addition to the game tool set has been the “Magic Box”. These weekly offers are designed to encourage specific behaviour within small groups of users allowing the developers to trial different types of incentives and measure their effectiveness.
We’re all part of the network
When modifying behaviour one needs to take into account the overall ecosystem that surrounds the individual. A range of factors including work, study and family commitments can affect the timing and frequency of public transport habits. Obviously it’s not possible for everyone to travel earlier and in fact, it’s not even desirable. For example, if everyone started traveling earlier you would have only just shifted the congestion: same problem, different time. Consequently the aim of the study is to encourage just a proportion of commuters to alter their behaviour and only then, by just a few days in the week by 20 to 25 minutes.
Although Insinc has been in operation for little over six months it has already produced some impressive results. Around 22,000 commuters have registered for the program with over SGD180,000 paid out through the system to date. But has the study been able to modify the public’s commuting behaviour? The answer is yes: of those commuters who have participated in the program, almost ten percent of their peak period travels have shifted to the shoulder-periods.
Hardly surprising then that LTA recently announced that the study will be extended a further 18 months to study the effectiveness of the scheme over a longer term and across a wider cross-section of commuters, anticipating the addition of 40,000 new users. As of August 1, Insinc will be opened to commuters with NETS Flashpay cards, senior citizens and student concessions (universities, polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education.)
The gamers reading this article will probably be wondering: if you’re going to introduce game elements why not introduce an element of strategy? Prabhakar notes that it’s a question of skill versus chance. In the case of Insinc, the use of game mechanics provides an engaging interface while the element of pure chance simply provides a random reward redemption option. The point is not to beat the system but to work with it. “There are more interesting things we can do with social elements,” Prabhakar says, “for example where friends can play together. That makes it more engaging.”
Earlier this year Prabhakar launched a three-year project based at the Stanford campus in California aimed at reducing the congestion of cars arriving and departing campus during peak periods. Known as CAPRI (Congestion and Parking Relief Incentives) the study uses RFID technology to monitor car movements and then reward drivers who traveled during off-peak periods. Given the success of previous projects, stakeholders will be eager to track the results of the project.
The use of game elements in Insinc has provided concrete results of how incentives rather than disincentives can successfully modify behaviour when it comes to public transport adoption. However, I believe the program’s success also demonstrates a rapidly growing trend. This type of system, one that provides the user with access to her own data, is becoming prevalent due to the advances in mobile technology and sensors as well as the increasing appetite of users’ to track, reflect and modify their behaviour. It’s self-awareness guiding self-improvement. And if we can harness this powerful idea to change our public transport commuting habits… imagine what else we can change.
This blog post first appeared on http://www.recognitionpattern.com
Review: Chaos of Three Kingdoms on iOS
Chaos of Three Kingdoms by Huayu Games
ESSENTIAL INFO
- Publisher: Huayu Games
- Origin: China
- Players: MMO
- Rating: 12+
- Price: Free download through iTunes plus virtual currency
- Format: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch (3rd and 4th generation), and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. (Reviewed on iPad 2.)
REVIEW
Chaos of Three Kingdoms is a turn-based strategy game (TBS) developed by Huayu Games. Based on the historical battles of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient China, it has been available in Chinese for some time but recently released in English for iOS mobile devices.
It’s been a while since I’ve played a TBS but I soon adopted the familiar position of trusty spreadsheet by my side helping me plan future battles and conquests. Information is provided in a need-to-know fashion, as the player levels up or via the quest prompts. This has the advantage of not overwhelming the player but a more detailed overarching introduction would be welcome and helpful for those not familiar with the Three Kingdoms narrative.
Following a brief encounter with the Yellow Turban Rebellion, you are introduced to your home base from which you must build your army and resources. Through the acquisition of resources such as silver and food (obtained by occupying silver mines and farms respectively) you can upgrade your base and improve specific areas including the Academy (technology and science), Market (purchase and enhance equipment), Training Ground, Vault and Barracks for your ever-ready to battle troops. Thus core gameplay focuses on the development of your strategy (diplomatic, technology, military and economic resources) and military tactics required to win each battle (troops, training, equipment, formation).
Then it’s on to the grand battle! Initially, battles are against NPC (non-playing characters) enemy and ally opponents. This serves as an introduction to different Heroes (generals), their skills and strengths, equipment and how to employ military tactics to defeat your opponent. Success in battle is largely a function of strategy and your ability to make effective choices. After attacking an enemy NPC you have the option of recruiting them to your own army, bolstering your strength and skill sets. Different Heroes possess various strengths in blocking and attacking that are later developed through training. Purchasing and enhancing equipment (weapons, armor, horses, and stratagems) will also ensure your Heroes abilities are maximised.
After choosing a country (Wei, Shu or Wu) and joining a Legion you can challenge other online players through PVP (player versus player) and Legion battles. It was difficult to ascertain which Legion to join as only minimal information was provided in-game (perhaps developers intend for players to seek out additional information on the forums) but becoming a Legion member is essential to acquire more resources such as gold as well as participating in Legion level battles and tournaments.
As with most freemium MMOs, one of your greatest opponents will be time. Silver is required to build your base and army but there are opportunities to speed build times or buy outright the resources or equipment needed by using Gold, which is purchased using real world currency or through Legion members bombing your gold mines. Gold becomes more important as you ascend through the levels of the game, allowing you to expand your equipment slots, train faster, purchase items to synthesize and create stronger battle skills.
The graphics and music are good for this type of genre, which usually focus on game play rather than aesthetics. However, a minor complaint is that given the amount of instruction and dialogue provided in-game and the obvious desire to appeal to an English speaking market, the developers may want to polish up the English content which at times detracts from otherwise strong game play.
If you love the mythology of Ancient China and turn-based strategy games but want the ease of going mobile, this is a game you can conquer with relish… and of course with the added bonus of being free.
Note: This review was undertaken with the assistance of a gift pack from RenRen Games.
This blog post first appeared on http://www.recognitionpattern.com
