CLIENT: MSNBC.COM, SS&K | RELEASED: APR 2007
CHALLENGE
MSNBC.com had created a campaign called A Fuller Spectrum of News and wanted a game to help promote its premium news site. MSNBC.com, through the agency SS+K challenged Fuel Industries to present the news and headlines in a way that reflected the range and depth of MSNBC.com without losing its friendly nature.
STRATEGY
No one had combined the mediums of game play and news gathering before in a way that was both successful and fun. When designing a game for an audience that skews slightly older, it's a good idea to call on the classics. By using a Brickbreaker style template and infusing it with today's headlines ripped straight from the RSS feeds, Newsbreaker was born.
CREATIVE & EXECUTION
Users have a paddle with which to direct the ball into the colored bricks at the top of the screen. The colors of the bricks correspond to the categorical coloring on the MSNBC.com site. When the ball breaks a brick, a headline from today drops down for the user to catch. As the game proceeds, the points increase as well as the stories to be read when the game is over. The more a user plays the more familiar they become with the news categories and the writing of MSNBC.com. Who says gamers are unaware of the world around them?
AMBIENT APPLICATION
As part of the campaign, SS&K with Brand Experience Lab generated further interest in Newsbreaker with an interactive in-theatre version of the game called in selected markets across the US, where sensors capture the collective movement of audience members to control the paddle. As the crowd moved their arms left and right, the paddle corresponded on the screen
RESULTS
Newsbreaker was featured in a variety of blogs and articles, generating significant media coverage. Hundreds of thousands of unique visitors played the NewsBreaker game, with an average interaction time of over 40 minutes - proving the games channeled players to read the news feeds.
