CASE STUDY: The Space Runner

Prepared by: Wong Shi Teng, Business Development Team

[email protected]

A Case Study on Gamification & Learning

THE SPACE RUNNER

mailto:[email protected]

The Space Runner is a campaign launched in February 2015 to encourage

learning amongst a bank’s employees. In relation to SG50, the Space

Runner has a storyline where players embark on a learning journey in the

galaxy to bring 50 valuable lessons back to homeland.

Overview

A Case Study on Gamification and Learning All Rights Reserved. Gametize.com

Inspired by a movie about outer space, The Space Runner features two

space runners venturing into the galaxy where there are various planets,

comets and satellites to explore. There are 13 stations, also known as

“Topics”. Each non-planet station consists of the bank’s campus learning

modules, and each planet station covers holistic learning.


Concept

[the bank’s vehicle]

Concept


The game’s content was made interesting by implementing storylines and

introducing different scenarios. Witty options also made the game more

appealing.

Game Structure


The Space Runner was blasted (pun intended) and made optional to all

employees. Players could log in using Facebook. To ensure the game was

made available only to the target audience, a secret passcode was issued

to targeted employees.

2 Stations were released every month;

Over the course of 6 months and 1 week

Players were motivated to earn points to redeem rewards such as movie

tickets and vouchers. The last station Planet Earth was released before a

Final Showdown, hosted for the top four space runners.

The Final Showdown


The Final Showdown was a physical event hosted at the company’s learning

campus and a crowd of more than 100 employees participated in the event.

Employees that did not play the game also attended the event. The four finalists

went through different stages which consisted of questions related to the game.

Audiences were also engaged with 5 new challenges released during the

showdown in a “fastest fingers win” format and prizes were presented to each

winning participant. External guests were invited to host the event.

User Reception


A total of 418 players completed

10,538 challenges, at an average of

25 completions per player. Players

completed around 28% of the games.

The bank has about 6,000 employees in its Singapore headquarters. The

initial goal was to have 50% participation rate by the third month from

launch. The aim for level of engagement was to have an average of 4

completed challenges per topic by each player.

Out of 6,000 employees, statistics

reflected 418 unique players, hence

an estimate of 7% participation rate

over the course of game launch.

Target Profile


1st Group: Retail sales employees in the beginning of their

twenties, who just recently joined the bank.

2nd Group: Operations and technology employees in their late

twenties, who have had a few years of working

experience with the bank.

Secondary Group: Non-executives, people of the X generation and non-

Singaporeans.

The game was designed to fit the interests,

personalities and motivations of the primary

target audience. Some examples of the

execution includes the use of Singlish and

Internet language, such as “Moolah” and the

inclusion of memes. The rewards store also

included items that would appeal to the target

audiences, such as movie tickets and

Starbucks gift cards.

Target Profile


What Went Well


Engaging Storyline

Learning and training content is often dry; this was solved by the immersive thematic approach. Despite large amounts of content, Space Runner managed to capture the users by ensuring that every aspect of the game was related to the space travel concept. Furthermore, the use of Internet memes in some topics enhanced the user experience in entertainment value. With that, content was more engaging and memorable. Space Runner could be referred to as “learning through space travel”.

Enthralling Aesthetics

The Space Runner was a showcase of the flexibility of visual customization on the Gametize platform. Without typical flashcards, it was less daunting for users as everything looked pretty and fun. Aesthetics such as the Space Runner’s is possibly the first thing that draws a player (especially of the younger crowd) to start the game – many players play for the visuals. Fantastic aesthetics set the game apart from other typical learning games and aided in the delivery of the storyline. Space Runner would be more significant, identified as “the adorable game where we travel in space to learn”.

What Went Well


Learning On-the-go

The game was compatible on web, iOS and Android devices – all easily accessible for the target audience. Even if employees were on the game during office hours, they would be spending time learning relevant content. This achieved the objective of the project – to encourage learning. The launch of the game was at a good time when Singapore hyped up for SG50. In line with the celebrations, employers – local or foreign – got to learn more about Singapore through trivia.

What Went Well


Having the right incentives

The system of +5 points for every vote encouraged participants to get their friends to join and also boosted in-game interaction by encouraging voting for other players.

The rewards store had movie tickets, taxi vouchers and gift vouchers of several popular food and beverage outlets. It was suitably incentivized for the target audience and rewards were snagged up extremely quickly, with the most popular one being movie tickets which were fully redeemed within minutes.

Having a Final Showdown increased involvement of players and was a good conclusion of the game.

Top prizes for the final showdown included tickets to Universal Studios Singapore, a stay at Resorts World Sentosa for two, an iPad mini, and CapitaLand vouchers. Participation prizes were offered up for attendees of the Final Showdown event.

What Could Have Been Better


Implications of customization

With the customization of topic map came some restrictions such as being unable to add more stations (topics). If 13 stations were set, it would be difficult to have additions. This however, should not be a big issue if topics were nailed in the beginning. There are also workarounds to help with the scalability of the game. For instance, in order to release the planet monthly, planets were blacked-out and locked pre-release.

Progress bars were removed with the integration of the topic map. This might demotivate players who are more absolute about completing topics, as there is no visible gauge to urge them to want to finish a topic.

Progression

There may have been too much locked content. For many of the topics with unlockable content, about only half of the content gets unlocked. This might have discouraged some players from completing the entire topic as it could have felt like it took more effort to unlock a second set of content, especially if they were required to do more tedious challenges, such as a photo challenge. As seen from the statistics, many players see a topic only halfway through.



Level of difficulty

Some challenges were less accessible to players and hence could be deemed as a difficult challenge. This resulted in the usage of online images or players putting challenges off and eventually not completing them. While it can be perceived as a good sign that players are driven to complete the challenges by using online images, it could also be solved by reconsidering the accessibility of the target audiences or by designing simpler challenges.





Level of difficulty

However, it’s worth noting that the more legitimate posts receive more player votes than inappropriate posts or posts with Google images.



Quality of submissions and anonymity

The quality of player submissions could be more substantial. Some of the photo submissions – despite players submitting legitimate images – did not have qualitative captions to accompany their submissions.

This behavior could likely be because of anonymity as players are free to log in using their personal email accounts. Players may have completed challenges for the sake of getting points to earn rewards, and the objective of learning could be easily overshadowed. Reducing anonymity may help to improve the quality of submissions.

However, it is worth noting that the serious players were top in the leaderboard mainly because of votes garnered from good submissions.



Incentivizing well

The main motivation of the target audience was most possibly the rewards,proving the effectiveness of the rewards store. While overshadowing the main objective is plausible, as long as there is a hook for players to partake in the game, there is increased probability of them having learning takeaways. However, the scheduled rewards resulted in low activity rate when there are no rewards available.

There were around 250 rewards prepared for a targeted 3,000 participants. Some may have been put off from participating as they realized the rewards were running out quickly. Some participants might have felt that the rewards were not worth that many challenges. Unexpected/surprise rewards and badges could be introduced to encourage ongoing engagement.

Other type of rewards could be introduced as such as SAP (Status, Access, Power) Rewards in the form of group lunch treat from the manager, late passes, extended lunch passes and coffee (or no coffee) with supervisors. These rewards are less taxing on a budget and if used right, could promote healthier team relationships.



Areas for improvement

Drawing inference from the statistics, the game did not reach its targeted goal in terms of numbers.

Competition with stakes involved across different departments or branches could be introduced to motivate more employees to play the game. An example could be a losing department treating the winning department to lunch. The managers of the participating departments could also be lead by example if they joined in and encouraged their team members to play the game.

This gives employees another reason to play the game, promotes team bonding and possibly even motivate them to submit more qualitative answers.

Client Feedback


“I love how space runner can unite colleagues in an organization together within a game. The release of each stage was appropriate and the questions were mind wrecking enough, at least for me!”

Brenda Tay

“Just a tip, I guess the screen can be more interactive. I couldn't click on the people who liked my pictures and it's hard to find fellow space runners on the game. Perhaps the photo page can also be improved with categorization instead of just one group together.”

Brenda Tay

“This app has created a very different kind of learning experience which is fun, exciting and rewarding. The social interactivity of the app is especially powerful in creating connection among employees in our large organisation. It was very heartening at the end of the day to see the top 4 winners ‘showing off’ their knowledge learnt from the app. Credit goes to my colleagues Kevin and Joan who believed that learning can be different and they worked tirelessly to make this possible. Great job guys!”

Cassandra Cheng

Suggestions have been taken into consideration by the technical team of Gametize.

Conclusion


The Space Runner is an excellent example of aesthetics and storyline

implementation of gamification. To better improve the game based on

objectives, the content could have been improved in iterations based on

player feedback and behavior over time. It could better received with the

introduction of competition, other form of rewards, and lesser or simpler

challenges.

User experience demo video:https://youtu.be/NIZkJc_VzUw

https://youtu.be/NIZkJc_VzUw

Recruiting & HR

CASE STUDY: The Space Runner