Transforming digital engagement into real world transactions

The post Christmas period can be a challenging time in the world of fast food with both in store and delivery orders down compared to the rest of the year. The Marketing Store had a plan to turn this trend around — mini games within the Australian mymacca's® mobile ordering app, in which every play wins a prize!

The idea was clean and simple, fun mini games that Macca’s fans can play any time anywhere via the Global McDonald's App. Each play of these games resulted in a guaranteed win and was rewarded with a voucher for a free or discounted food item to be redeemed via the mobile order and pay system. In addition to this, players could up the challenge in Macca’s Run — a multi-levelled skill game in which each player's achievements were rewarded with entry tickets for a weekly draw to win cash prizes.

All that was missing was a world class creative digital agency with a flair for game design to bring this into reality, that’s where we came in!

One of our solutions to the tight turnaround was to develop a low-poly art style that would let us generate a large amount of 3D quickly but still looking as delicious as the burgers we were rendering! We took this 'limitation' and turned it to our advantage putting the beautiful, geometric style front and centre. The simple origami-like aesthetic became key to the art direction of the project and empowered us to deliver a stunning 3D experience on time and on budget.

The promotion is fully realtime 3D with animated characters and dynamic lighting within an HTML5 environment. Elegant scaling enables a rich experience even on low end devices so nobody is left out. Using our in-house 3D engine allowed us to create a super smooth production pipeline meaning the 3D content could be delivered via the WebView in the main McDonald’s App. Add clever progressive loading and best in class optimisation for mobile devices, and you have a great mobile experience, almost indistinguishable to that of a native app.

The games themselves are fun and filled with personality – delightfully concise bite-sized interactions which are fun and rewarding for every player. Designed with quick, casual gameplay in mind, the controls are intuitive and the player is never in any doubt as to what they need to do. Each scene is full of animation and character, while every interaction is rewarded with responsive animations and satisfying sound effects.

The combined result is a rich and appealing world which players want to reach out and touch, a rewarding experience both figuratively and literally!