The Open Publishing Lab (OPL) at RIT came to Dan Casazza, Mike Morisco, and myself for marketing and design assistance with a social networking game they created for use at the annual Imagine RIT festival.Literally within hours after our first meeting with some of the team, our solution came to fruition. meetü: the social networking game.The name came from the basic idea of the game: meeting people. What do people say when you meet someone who has something in common with you? "Oh, me too!" me too = meetu = meet + u = "It's nice to meet you"
A simple design assignment soon turned into a full blown marketing campaign. Once our minds started thinking of what we could do with the concept, we went wild with it.As part of a teaser campaign to spread around campus, we created over 70 "pair" posters like the one seen on the right to build some hype and generate interest in the game.We chose pairs from a variety of categories, this one specifically from two of the most common types of majors at RIT. The goal was to find at least one touch point on every student on campus.
Sometimes we would think of a great pair combination and then realize that there wasn't an 'e' in both words or names.If you didn't notice yet, the e's act like faces, creating conversation between the two. By adding small illustrations to each e pair and giving them some personality, we were better able to attract the attention we needed.
We got die-cut stickers for players to write their names on and stick to their shirts to easily spot other players.
The game was revamped from the previous year, so the game play was different. As it turned out, some elements turned out to be a bit cumbersome.The game used QR codes as the way to track people playing the game. There were 'missions' players had to complete to receive points. For example, the top right mission in this image requires you to introduce yourself to three other players and exchange stickers. This creates a connection between the players that we were able to process with software.Another element of the marketing campaign was twitter integration. From the start of the teaser campaign, we pushed people to both twitter and the meetu website to get updated information on the game. We used the social media tool to get people to tweet their favorite e pairs by taking a picture of them, further spreading our reach.
A full version can be seen on my personal site: http://www.toekneestuck.com/work/title/meetu/
