Monopoly Game App Project Proposal Enterprise Innovation, Spring 2015

Carnegie Mellon University

Chloe Chen Chih Chi Hu

Tangent Chang 

Introduction A traveller’s experience at the airport often contributes greatly to the overall satisfaction

of a trip. For most travellers, the airport experience is often full of surprises, mainly delays that take a huge toll on their experience. Our goal is to enhance the travel experience for those who are spending extra unplanned time in the airport. Specifically within the airport, we can take advantage of the traveller’s micro location, and incorporate that into an interactive mobile app. With current bluetooth low energy technologies such as the iBeacon, indoor positioning systems can support real time micro location analytics. By adding this interactive feature along with suitable incentives, a normal game of monopoly can become exciting and addictive. By providing the travellers with a fun way to interact with one another, the shops, and the airlines, we can enhance the overall travel experience for all parties involved.

Survey For the first phase of the prototyping cycle, we wanted to learn about the current market

potential and opportunities for a location based mobile game. So we conducted a survey containing twelve questions that covered the participant’s background, their relevant airport experiences, and their preferences or interests at airports.

From the thirty-five anonymous responses gathered, we were able to identify the following key factors to shape our interactive location based mobile application: (see Appendix for a sample survey, as well as a summary of graphical results). The survey results really helped to solidify our game concept and point us to a unique space of opportunity that hasn’t really been explored yet.

1. Business Opportunities  

From the participants feedback, we noticed that about 60% of the travellers have experienced some sort of delay in the airport, in most cases due to flight delays and weather

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conditions. The top three activities while waiting were hanging around, using the internet, and eating. This shows that there simply is a bigger need for interaction and activities during delays to kill time. With this insight in mind, we determined that in addition to attracting the typical travellers who spend about an hour of pre-boarding time in the terminal, we could attempt to engage those that are spending hours waiting for their delayed flights.

2. Initial Target Customers

The majority of participants in the survey ranged from ages 15-35. We found that the most common type of travel was for vacation (67%) or for business (21%). These travellers typically travelled alone (55%) or with a group (23%), this is exclusive of children or elderly, because that could potentially make it more difficult for a user to focus on interacting with a mobile application. With this in mind, we decided to focus on the large number of travellers that typically travel alone or in groups that are open and interested in physical movements within the airport.

3. Possible Incentives and Motivation to Attract Users

We also wanted to find out the level of interaction with strangers most people were comfortable with. In the survey, at least 66% of the participants indicated that they were open to the idea of interacting via a mobile application and a stunningly 97% of the participants indicated they would be open to exploring the airport. This indicates to us that people are open to a location based mobile application. To further incentivize users, we also wanted to hear what travellers would be most interested in if discounts or monetary incentives were included in terms of ads or various other means. More than 50% of participants indicated that food discounts would be the best coupon possible for a person waiting for their flight. Keeping in mind that we could potentially get the restaurants, food stalls, stores, and airlines to participate, we decided to focus on monetary forms of incentives rather than social incentives for the initial prototype.

Game Design After identifying the requirements of our initial prototype, we embarked on a journey to

design a game that could encapsulate and satisfy our customers. We intend for the monopoly game mobile application to be attractive, addictive, and lots of fun.

1. Rules In general, each player, in turn, rolls dice and then moves forward (clockwise around the

board) the number of spaces indicated by the sum of the numbers rolled. Effective actions includes purchasing, upgrading, paying for others and special events.

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1.1. Game Flow

Colored actions are shown in mockups (See Appendix for the UI mockups) 1.2. Map

After logging in the game, the player will be assigned to a sub-map, based on the location using iBeacon. Sub-maps are small pieces of the whole airport. The player won’t play the game in the whole airport but in a smaller part instead. 1.3. Money

Each player will be allocated certain amount of virtual money in the beginning. This money can be used for purchasing, upgrading and paying for others.

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1.4. Purchase and Upgrade

When a player lands on an unowned store, he/she can choose to purchase that store. As a reward, the player will get a coupon of that store. In the next time the player lands on his/her store, the player can upgrade it which means other players have to pay more every time they land on this store. 1.5. Special Event

When a player lands on a restroom or a reception, he/she will have a special event occasionally, including being rewarded money and losing some money, going to jail and being frozen for several turns.

2. Money & Credit Since there are two different usage of currencies, one can be only used in the game and

another one can be convert into real rewards, such as coupon or mileages, we decided to separate them into virtual money and credits. Virtual money can be used for purchase, upgrade or payment; credits is used for buying coupon or exchanging other rewards.

However, according to the clickable mockups experience, this two-currency design is annoying. The buying coupon flow, players buy coupons right after buying stores, is not smooth since these transactions are similar and make players feel repeated.

3. Play Mode We would like to provide two play mode: single player and multi-player. The former one

is playing with AI, and the latter one is playing with real people. If a player choose multi-player mode, then he/she has to choose a play room which has a

capacity limit or create his/her own private room which can be shared with other friends through FB or other social network application, and our system will assign other real players who are in the same sub-map into this room.

However, there are a lot of problems in the multi-player mechanism, and the most important one is execution time of each player’s turn. Player may spend a long time for his/her turn, and others have to wait for him/her. For example, if one player want to use coupon in his turn, he/she may spend 10 minutes to do so (buying things or waiting for coffee), but other players can't wait so long. Hence we think that, multi-player mode is possible for the players who are already friends, but for the strangers, we need to consider more.

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Business Model

The ultimate goal of this game is to build an integrated ecosystem, which involves passengers, airport stores as well as airlines. For the passengers, our game offers them with entertainment to kill time as well as opportunity to win coupons or other benefits; For the stores in the airport, our game would help to increase foot traffic, thus promoting sales of the merchant; For Airlines, our game would help to enhance customer loyalty, and reduce anxiety within the passengers in case there is a delay because of unexpected circumstances. These three parties are dynamically connected with each other, and a well-established ecosystem would enhance the travel experience as a whole, as well as bringing benefits to each of them. Based on our investigation and research, we have the reason to believe that there is significant market potential.

Road Map

To further enhance the experience, we are going to explore the possibilities from three different aspects as follows:

1. Integrate with Social Network

As one step further from playing with UI or travel companions, we want to provide the option so as to link the game account with social network accounts, thus the passenger can play with his/her friends on Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare/etc., they can compete in the game and “brag” about achievements, which we think would enhance user elasticity.

2. Develop Client for Airport Stores

Besides the client we developed for the passenger/player, we also want to provide game client for the stores in the airport in the following phase. The merchants can use that for monitoring sales, coupon status, and they can monitor real-time foot traffic into the store, so as to decide whether engaging in the game would help to boost the sales.

3. Integrate with Wearable Technology

Another interesting idea is that we may combine the game with the wearable technology. With the recent launching of Apple Watch, wearable technology has been a heated topic these days, and it would be very beneficial to our game as well. Imagine when someone holds a drink in his hand and wants to continue the game, then wearable device is a good

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option to go. Wearable devices help to free people’s hands, so it would be a good platform for our game app.

Conclusion  

Thanks to Campbell and Professor Stuart’s feedback after our presentation in class, we have discussed some more ideas to implement in the future.

First of all, we would like to extend the boundary of our game. To be specific, while some

passengers/players are willing to engaging in the game which requires him to walk around, some passengers/players may prefer to sit in the waiting lobby but still want coupons. We can explore this side of the game which doesn’t require physical movements of players.

Secondly, we may consider incorporating the idea of Asynchronous Gaming into our

mobile app. Take Facebook friends, Jack and Amy, as an example. Suppose Jack has enjoyed a Monopoly Game during his stay in Dubai Airport one week ago, now Amy is transferring through Dubai, while playing the Monopoly Game, rather than joining a random game (assuming no other friends are close by), it might be more engaging for her to continue a game that Jack was playing in. If she lands on one of Jack’s existing properties, she might be paying Jack the fine, and Jack would receive a notification accordingly. With this idea, the interactions within the game can become more personal to both players and serve as yet another way to incorporate the aspect of social networking into the game.

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Appendix : UI Mock Ups:

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Survey

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