Here’s a look at what’s launching this month
December 2020
What’s new or currently rolling out
With immediate effect we are pleased to announce the availability of four new game engagement mechanics within Voco. The new mechanics will allow Voco users to configure their own branded versions of games from the most popular mobile game genres including brain puzzle games (Sudoku, Wordsearch), matching puzzles and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ game narratives.
This release builds on the introduction of Voco’s Content Hosting Interface earlier this year enabling customers to rapidly add new and differentiated methods of engaging with audiences. Adding further depth and diversity to the Voco games catalogue at this time extends to the business user greater opportunity to align the right game mechanics to an audience to support the design of digital experiences that are personalised to the individual.
The games library is extended further to include two new ‘Puzzle’ themed games: Sudoku & Wordsearch.
The Sudoku game is a feature-rich digital version of the popular logic-based number placement puzzle. The game provides extended gameplay to engagement journeys by supporting longer or repeat forms of engagement. Puzzle Games like Sudoku and Wordsearch are suited to engage users in idle moments, for example whilst queueing to enter a retail store, travelling on public transport or sat in a waiting lounge or simply as a regular dose of brain-training. In these spare moments, audiences are increasingly turning to game experiences, they might as well be spending that time in yours.
The Sudoku game includes the ability to configure the difficulty of the game by uploading different puzzle files and setting in-game hints. A range of challenge options add further variety by challenging users to complete puzzles against the clock or by not exceeding a set number of mistakes.
Sudoku is fully integrated with Voco’s engagement story functionality enabling the presentation of daily challenges, delivery of rewards and support for high score tables to deliver further challenge and competition to your audience.
The Word Search game challenges users to find and mark clue words hidden within a puzzle grid. Voco users configure puzzles by assembling clue words on a particular theme – from a consumer engagement perspective this might involve embedding key product or brand words, alternatively, from an employee engagement perspective this could be used to embed core themes or words that complement solutions designed to engage/re-engage the workforce with the company vision or new initiatives associated with a period of transformation.
In the same vein as the Sudoku game – gameplay options are included to add a variety of challenge to the game experience with hints to assist users and countdown timers to enable users to compete against the clock.
The new puzzle games are highly configurable; Voco users can re-skin and tailor the theme of the game experience with a wide range of content items including:
- Background and loading screen images;
- Sound files including background music, puzzle completion, correct / incorrect selections and win animations;
- Win/No Win messaging and animations;
- Rewards, prize weightings and unlockable game events with engagement story support.
Matching Puzzle Game: TileMatch
Puzzle matching games have continued to top charts in terms of popularity, whether through early browser-based games such as Bejeweled or more recently in mobile apps like Candy Crush. According to market research studies the genre of puzzle matching games is second only to brain puzzle games in terms of popularity and stickiness. However matching games take first place in these studies for engaging users for the largest portion of player time and hence provide a good option for solutions requiring an extended session duration.
The Tilematch game provides Voco users with the ability to fully configure their own branded puzzle matching game – whether this is tailoring the icons (gems, brand icons etc.) matched within the game or through uploading themed game backgrounds and tailored game soundtracks. The game experience is supported by a range of challenge options that include competing against the clock, producing high scores within a certain number of moves or hitting a target score within as short a timescale as possible. This provides not only variety to the game experience and options to extend the engagement experience, but also the ability to drive competition between users when complemented with Voco features such as High Score tables, Achievement Walls and Progress screens.
Decision-Making Mechanic – Choose Your Own Adventure
The Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) game challenges a user to navigate through a deck of cards that present a series of choices or interactions. The game is easy to play with a binary swipe mechanic (influenced by Tinder) that can be controlled with one hand using a simple thumb movement. The game presents a series of short direct questions and short response answers with reward outcomes triggered when completing all interactions within the deck of cards. Critically, all user responses are collected, meaning CYOA in its base form can be used as a tactile, selection mechanic to collect user preferences, for example, by presenting a series of product preferences or choices for users to select. Like existing engagement mechanics this can be used to trigger engagement stories to personalise the engagement experience or be exported to drive data strategies in existing client martech platforms.
But the game offers much more depth by adding additional metrics which are driven directly from the users responses. Using a scorecard approach, the way users respond to different interactions will challenge users to manage or balance up to four elements, which might drive different reward outcomes or prematurely end the game. Inspired by the popularity of mobile game Reigns this creates a more absorbing experience combining the core interactive selection mechanic with the challenge to users to consider the impact of their responses or actions.
The metrics and score carding is fully configurable meaning the game can be configured to support a range of engagement use cases. This includes creating fun, narrative game experiences reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 1970’s and 80’s to add to your digital experiences through to challenging users to consider the impact of their actions through awareness campaigns (e.g. consumer choices in relation to Zero Food Waste).
From an employee engagement perspective we see a broad application:
In creating business simulations raising awareness of a change initiative and how daily choices affect key parameters (Customer Satisfaction, Shareholder Value, Resource utilisation etc.).
Creating simulations that assist in teaching users how to have better conversations about new products and services with the end customer.
Providing simulated experiences to assess a candidates suitability for a role from as part of a Talent attraction / recruitment perspective.
The game is fully configurable allowing the theme / narrative of the game / selection mechanic to be tailored to be on-brand and campaign specific. It is fully integrated with the Voco engagement platform provide synergies when used with progress screens (e.g. presenting multiple chapters / scenarios) and alongside engagement mechanics that present content (“watch this video then taken the challenge”) or that support listening to the audience through data capture / user feedback mechanics such as quizzes and polls.
In Case You Missed It
Highlighting some of the related product releases from earlier this year…
Instant Win Game Mechanic: “3 in a Row”
The ‘3 in a Row’ game experience provides users with spins to try to match three prize symbols in a row, approximating a fruit machine experience.
Having a broad audience appeal the game joins the games inventory alongside Voco favourites like the Scratchcard, Wheel of Fortune, and Gift Opening Game as a highly configurable “Surprise and Delight” option for driving engagement.
Data Capture Mechanic: Feedback Wheel
This engagement mechanic offers Voco users both an alternative and complementary approach to capture audience data alongside existing quiz, survey, and audience polling features within Voco.
The Feedback Wheel delivers a level of interactivity unlike traditional survey forms
streamlining the capture of in-depth insight through a single screen with a simple swipe of a thumb or mouse click. Presented as a tactile experience on mobile and desktop it contextually responds as a user engages with segments of the wheel, encouraging your audience to explore and willingly share emotional sentiment, interest levels, and provide feedback.
Event Orchestration and Response Handling
Additional capabilities have been added to the Voco platform to assist business users in building engagement journeys that include the sending of event calendar invites and support for personalising engagement journey paths based on event response and attendance data. This further extends our ability to drive audience behaviour across both online and offline audience journeys.
Event audience participation and data capture capabilities are extended with the launch of the Audience Polling Engagement Mechanic
The poll tactic allows you to encourage your audience to take part in a poll to quickly canvas opinion with a simple vote on a question or topic of your choice.
When combined with the quiz tactic this can be used for displaying meaningful data, for segmentation as well as driving next actions. Furthermore, the Audience Polling feature can be used to encourage audience participation in an online or offline setting, as a means of ‘breaking the ice’ whilst capturing and displaying meaningful data.
Have questions about anything we’ve shared? Our team is standing by to answer your questions and discuss the myriad of use cases that we see for the new engagement mechanics
Reach out to your local Customer Success Team or write to
support@3radical.com. We’re happy to help!
The 3radical Team
About 3radical
3radical Voco allows individuals to interact with organisations on their own terms. Voco’s real-time decisioning engine is able to combine game science theory, data accumulated from billions of interactions, and real-time self-reported data, resulting in the optimum blend of interactive content, rewards incentives, and channel for each engagement. The self-reported data is willingly and transparently provided in return for a value exchange, and can be used to improve the relationship between the individual and the organisation across all channels, and to inform product and service development.