Shift Control Media Goes to Work for AKQA and Coke’s “Happiness Factory” Website
Designs and builds four casual games for digital environment based on brand’s animated fantasy commercials
Greenwich, CT – January 29, 2008 – Shift Control Media, a branded entertainment company specializing in original game development, has created four original games that are incorporated into the recently launched Coca-Cola “Happiness Factory” website. The games are part of a larger digital environment created for Coke by AKQA that was built around the “Happiness Factory” motif first introduced by the brand in its 2007 Super Bowl TV spot.
According to Shift Control President and C.E.O. Tim Zuckert, AKQA envisioned a digital world where the notion of applying for a job in Coke’s “Happiness Factory”—and actually taking the role of the Happiness Factory characters—would come to life on the brand’s website. “Our brief was to develop the gaming aspect of this interactive experience,” Zuckert explains. “AKQA came to us based on our background in brand marketing and video game development, with the goal of delivering games that were not just fun and encouraged repeat play, but were also directly on brand and on strategy.”
Frank Sanni, Shift Control’s Director of Strategic Planning, adds that Shift Control also had to ensure that the game play and character actions fit in with the original “Happiness Factory” feel and tone, and that the games were fully integrated with the other digital elements AKQA created.
“We set out to create games that had the same visual richness as the broad-cast IP,” Sanni comments, “while offering a balance of accessibility and replay value normally associated with larger casual games. There’s a well-defined mythology to the ‘Happiness Factory’ that required a high degree of sensitivity in translating to the interactive space, and we were very respectful of that.”
Shift Control produced four original games—each built around a “Happiness Factory” character—that allows users to experience what it would be like to do their job in this fantasy setting. Each game grows in complexity as players master more of the skills they need.
The games feature “Mortar Man,” who’s garbed in a robotic-looking fire retardant suit and specializes in Pyrotechnics; “Chinoink,” an airborne cross between a Chinook helicopter and a pig, who specializes in bottle transportation; Capper, a bottle-opener-shaped character in a hard hat and tool belt, who locks in the goodness of each bottle; and “Kissy Puppy,” a fluffy little fuzzball with gigantic lips, who puts the love in every bottle of Coke that rolls off the assembly line.
Credits for the Happiness Factory online experience go to Lars Bastholm, Executive Creative Director, and Jerome Austria, Creative Director, AKQA. Credits for the Happiness Factory games go to Mark Findlay, COO, and Ted Morgan, Producer, Shift Control Media, and Matt Wolf, Executive Producer. Creative assets for the Happiness Factory were provided by Psyop. To play the Happiness Factory games, go to www.coca-cola.com/HF
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Posted on 01.29.08 to Game Development, Brandworthy, SCM news. Author: ted. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. No comments yet. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.
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