This project brought us together once again with a local, Glasgow-based, client. In 2008, we joined forces with Culture And Sport Glasgow, a government body that promoted cities sports and culture events, to offer a viral Flash game to advertise the Great Scottish Run hosted in Glasgow. Following that positive experience, our UK based games design and development team was eager to work with Culture and Sport Glasgow to promote it in 2009.
As the Great Scottish Run viral game that the Tentacle Solutions games design and development team produced in 2008 had received fantastic feedback from those involved and from those who played it, the government body has decided to revise the game. They aimed to continue building momentum to promote the 2009 run - to create publicity for the event and generate additional registrations to get more runners involved.
Just like last year, new and unique challenges arose as a direct result of the very nature of the project. Again, the UK-based games design and development team was asked to tailor a game to the runners demographic. With last year's experience under our belts, coming up with new ideas and revamping the game in line with them whilst retaining success levels was perhaps the biggest challenge of all.
Our team couldn't miss a new challenge and a chance to promote Scottish culture, Scottish sport, and encourage visitors to come to the city. We were fully available to speak to the client regularly to ensure that the viral game was vetted at every stage of the process. It was the subject of numerous conversations and meetings to ensure that the client was happy with the progress and the game could be completed on time and held to the highest possible standard.
As with the previous year's Culture And Sport Glasgow project, the final game had to adhere to specific rules and regulations given that it was produced for a government body - and we were already familiar with most of them. This did not make it any less of a challenge but certainly ensured that we were fully up to date with the procedures for creating such a viral product.
"The Tentacle Solutions games design and development team produced the following for Culture And Sport Glasgow ahead of schedule:
A fully compliant viral Flash game that was based on the same principles as the 2008 game but was entirely new to ensure maximum promotion for the Great Scottish Run;
Full integration into the website to ensure that it ran smoothly and was completely bug-free.
The feedback we received from our overjoyed client proved that the second Great Scottish Run game was just as successful as the first, if not more so. The viral actually reached individuals all over the world and so effectively put the Great Scottish Run on the map for the second year in a row.
We are extremely happy to be working with Zarrar and his team for the last two years on the Great Scottish Run project. They have come up with some extremely innovative ideas and at the same time accommodated all of our requests and changes.