Today (19th September 2011) sees the launch of Lives at War, our groundbreaking new game aimed at secondary school children learning about life on the Home Front during World War 2.

Developed in partnership with Lighthouse, with funding from the Digital Film Archive Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund, Lives at War is a virtual world presenting a fictitious Brighton street of the 1940s. The environment uses game mechanics to draw ‘players’ in to the lives and experiences of air-raid survivors, through a number of task-based activities.

Much of the content of the game has been developed with a group of school children aged 14 – 15 working with older people from Brighton who remember the war. Together they have visited museums, galleries and archives, participated in creative workshops, and investigated artifacts and archive films from Screen Archive South East.

We’ve been planning this project with Lighthouse for almost two years now so it’s wonderful to reach the point where we can finally show it off. When we first started scoping the game, browser based 3D worlds were in their infancy but as the project has developed so has the technology. But this process has been about so much more than the technology and one of the most rewarding aspects has been the involvement of the schoolchildren at each stage of the game’s development from researching real life experiences that drive the storyline to producing moodboards for the creation of avatars.

You can read more about the game in our case study and play the game at www.lives-at-war.org.uk

The launch takes place at Lighthouse in Brighton and is part of the month-long Brighton Digital Festival so if you’re reading this on the 19th and happen to be in Brighton this evening come along and say hello!

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Following our recent successful collaboration with Manchester PR consultancy Down at the Social to produce a facebook app for Legoland Discovery Centres we’ve now delivered another app for the latest addition to Merlin Entertainment’s midway attractions, the SEALIFE Grapevine in Dallas.

The aim of the app was to build relationships with young underwater fans and their parents in the run up to the launch of the centre on 1 July 2011. We created a Facebook application that allows users to upload images and text which are then posted to a competition viewing gallery.  The key to making the campaign a success is the ability to share, like and comment on the entries.  A bespoke content management system also allows administrators to moderate entries and view competition analytics.

We’ve been helping Manchester based PR and social media consultancy Down at the Social deliver a global social media campaign for LEGOLAND Discovery Centres.

Down at the Social are tasked with global PR and social media for the Merlin Entertainments Group attractions in Manchester, Berlin, Duisberg, Chicago and Dallas and have developed a cross-territory campaign searching for ‘MINIREPORTERS’. The campaign encourages parents and teachers to work with their children to create unique video and picture news stories and is being delivered through a facebook app which we’ve developed.

The application uses the same mechanic in each territory but is themed differently to reflect the local market.  Users upload a video or picture into the application via You Tube or Facebook, and can then view and vote on other entries in a gallery. The five entries with the most votes are then judged by a panel of experts before the final winner is announced.

We have developed a bespoke competition platform that enables multiple competitions held in different regions to reuse the same gaming mechanic. Administrators are then able to tailor content to each specific region by using the competition systems’ content management system. LEGOLAND Discovery Centres’ investment in a competition platform has significantly reduced development time, deployment costs and ongoing management time and costs enabling them to concentrate on the important work of engaging with their target audience.

View the MINIREPORTERS facebook app.

When Brazen PR asked us to come up with some ideas for a Christmas mailer we looked to Facebook for the solution and suggested a very seasonal 12 days of Christmas ‘Spot The (Christmas) Pud’ competition.

We spent a day down at Brazen Towers photographing the team in festive mood complete with baby Christmas puds. After airbrushing out said puds we then uploaded twelve photos to a Facebook gallery on a specially created Brazen facebook page. In the run up to Christmas twelve daily e-flyers invite players to log in to the page and tag the day’s image with their best guess as to the location of the sticky dessert.

At the time of writing we are on Day 4 of the campaign and its proving to be a great success. If you’re reading this before 16th December 2010 then there’s still time to enter the competition and win some great prizes. Just click here and guess where the pud is!