ROAD BANDS

TitleROAD BANDS
BrandHOTEL F1
Product/ServiceHOTEL F1
Category E06. Innovative Use of Social or Community
Entrant HAVAS Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation HAVAS Paris, FRANCE
Production HAVAS PRODUCTIONS Paris, FRANCE
Production 2 XXII Paris, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Christophe Coffre Havas Paris Chief Creative Officer
Maxime Trenton Havas Paris Art Director
Kevin Nugeron Havas Paris Copywriter
Philippe Caseiro XXII Lead Artist 2D/3D
Jayson Houdet XXII Artist 2D/3D
James Decloquement XXII Art Director
Maxime Ora XXII Game Designer
Dorian Allart XXII Lead Unity Developer
Maxence Perrin XXII Lead Web Developer
Dany Da Silva Barao XXII Web Integrator

The Campaign

As reference for road-trippers, HotelF1 knows that each trip is unique and that everyone travels in their own way. By launching a videogame geared towards 18-34-year-olds and letting its community code their own levels, HotelF1 stays true to its philosophy. We coded the first four levels of the game, in which a glam rock band hits the road in hopes of writing the best song in the world. Almost immediately, they are caught by the bad guys, Zackhouse, a hard tech band from Scandinavia. In the initial version of the game, players discovered mini-games that included high-speed chases on the highway, a packaged-club-sandwich fight in a highway rest stop, and a pump duel at a gas station. From there, we gave the community the opportunity to invent the rest of the story. We made the code open source and organized a hackathon, bringing gamers, designers, and developers together around the project.

Creative Execution

On July 12, 2017, we released the first version of the game, which included four levels. We kept the code open source and uploaded it to the collaborative software development platform Github, where it was downloaded hundreds of times. Contributors had access to all of the graphics, programming scripts, and music assets. We then organized a hackathon that included dozens of contributors. The project was publicized on Eclypsia, a gaming channel on popular streaming platform Twitch. Three 48-minute shows (07/23/17, 08/01/2017, 09/27/2017) were broadcasted to promote the game, live comment on the coding process, and recruit contributors along the way. Melty covered the project with a Facebook Live video, viewed by 30,000 people on the day of the hackathon (10/14-15/2017). Word spread quickly throughout the gaming community and the event was widely shared on Twitter, Facebook, and various gaming forums.

15 million impressions across social networks 86 new threads created on specialized gaming forums 765 hours of coding 54 levels created Dozens of developers, graphic designers, sound designers, and game testers involved in the project And of course, the first branded game coded by the community itself

We know that millennials play a lot of video games. Communication around the most popular games usually takes place in gaming forums, through close collaboration with groups of developers and testers. As a result, we decided to unite the community around the essence of any video game: the coding itself. And if each road trip is different, a game about road trips should also be unique. In order to develop our collaborative game, we called upon the brand’s community, as well as software developers. In order to reach as many contributors as possible, we posted videos pitching the concept and created threads on gaming forums. Each post was linked to the software development platform GitHub, a reference for collaborative development. Contributors had access to graphic and development assets. To support this Virtual Game Jam, we organized a hackathon in which dozens of developers coded over fifty levels in just 36 hours.