Penguin AR Game

Greenpeace

Teaching the world about penguins with AR gameplay, as Pokemon Go took over the world.

Purpose

Pokemon Go was a worldwide phenomenon, to such an extent that it opened up the opportunity to take advantage of the on-location hunting gameplay a smartphone could deliver. To capitalize on the craze, we partnered with Greenpeace to build a solution that teaches people about the penguins that the organization tries to tend to, encouraging curious people to hunt for unique types of penguins, take pictures, and learn more about the conservation efforts for the species.

Responsibilities

I helped lead the project, managing a small group of web engineers to build an environment in which the game administrators could manage the location of where certain types of penguins could spawn. The goal was for them to be identifiable all across The Netherlands, with multiple instances of 7 species spread around the country. This way, every community could play the game, collect all the species, and learn everything there is to know about the creature.

The game itself was built for both iOS and Android devices. But the penguins needed to be placed, and their spawn areas needed to be managed as well. We do not want people trespassing or wandering into dangerous territory in an effort to play the game, so we'd allow game admins to manage the areas an individual can hunt for penguins in.

Additionally, there were 7 different species, but they could grow depending on what species wash up on the shores of the research facilities in the north of The Netherlands. They had also considered the idea of spreading the campaign towards other conserved species, like seals. So an administrative section to create expansive content around each individual entry needed to be made.

Lastly, the most important part of the game is hunting the penguins based on their approximate location. So we needed to assign each specie a location to be found in. We used the Google Maps API for administrators to be able to draw valid zones, and place penguin pins where they would like to guide players to find them. This solution allowed for dynamic experiences that the game administrator could manage as they wished, moving penguins around or timing them out.

We wanted the location to be able to be somewhat dynamic or rare, so we also supported a time range feature, to allow game managers to schedule the location of a penguin to be present in the area at any given time. Since there were 7, we did not need to do any complex AI on the backend to determine what specie appears where within the hotzones, admins could manage it themselves.

This project only took a few months, and upon launch garnered quite a notable amount of downloads despite the Pokemon Go craze dying down and the app serving itself to a very niche customer base. But all in all, the project delivered an exciting experience to smart phone players and taught many people about the importance of the penguin conservation work being conducted by Greenpeace.