FIND THE MASTER BAITER
Platform: Web Prototype
Software: Figma
Duration: 1 week
Type of project: University
Completion: 2024
Team size: 7
Role: Responsible for the whole gamified prototype
PROJECT OVERVIEW AND GOAL
I was always fascinated by the idea of game jams. I took part in a few and always wanted to participate more. I used to tell my friends from different fields that it’s a fantastic way of unleashing creativity and testing your skills. I was surprised when, during my exchange at Humber Polytechnic, I found out that the Creative Advertisement course has its version of a game jam - the Sprint Week.
During the Sprint Week, students from various years (first, second, and third) get mixed into teams and are assigned a random client. Based on the briefing, they have a week to create an idea for their client. After a week, the teams must present their ideas to the whole course and the clients, where they get feedback and awards.
Our client was one23west - a Canadian advertising agency that works with various companies. They were working closely with a dating app called Plenty of Fish this time. The client wanted us to come up with an idea for an activation that could attract more people to the Plenty of Fish app.
Based on Plenty of Fish’s previous activation - Dick Pics x Plenty of Fish gallery, we knew that we could really unleash our creativity. After solid research about the app, the users and the target audience, we came up with an idea of a campaign called “Don’t be a Master Baiter”. When my team found out that I am studying game development, the choice of our special thing was easy - a gamified educational experience.
THE GAME
The game is a simple way of showing people how easy it is to get baited online by catfish. The player needs to go through a few levels to find the Master Baiter, which does not necessarily match the scene. The levels get increasingly more difficult with the idea that the last one (not present in the prototype) would be a picture of people, and the answer would be randomised, to show the users that we can never be sure who is pretending to be someone else online. Since we wanted the game to have an educational purpose, each level has a short description of why it wasn't easy to find the catfish.
THE AWARDS
The study granted us three awards for this activation. We won the best idea among the client (123w), the best idea among all the clients, and the fan favourite. Something like this happened for the first time in the history of Sprint Week, and I am happy that my game idea could help achieve that.
MY CONTRIBUTION
I had a lot of fun creating all of the assets to match the style of the PoF app. Since I usually do not touch the art side of the projects, it was a refreshing and enjoyable experience.
I felt the challenge when I had to be the only game developer in the team. My team trusted me entirely, which I appreciate, and they gave me free rein to conceptualise different game ideas. But since they are unfamiliar with the process, it took me some convincing to convince them to trust the process and that the prototype will look different when it’s more polished than greyboxes. It taught me more about working with non-gamers and how to show my ideas to them.
The fishes are the PoF assets.
The first prototype.
I tried to recreate the style with my design of sheep and wolf.
The final prototype.