In September 2008, the MTV sales team and Paramount Pictures teamed to promote the upcoming release of the DreamWorks film Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa.
Plan
The plan was for Addicting Games as well as other MTV sites to host a game making contest built around Madagascar 2 content. Instead of spending the time and money to develop their own game making application, MTV brought Mockingbird on board to provide their audience with a fun and engaging way to make games.
How Mockingbird Platform Was Used
Mockingbird and MTV decided that a custom Game Kit would be the right engagement for their audience. The goal for the contest was to have thousands of fan-made games which would be shared and played, all promoting the Madagascar movie.
Mockingbird Designer was used to build and iterate on the game kit and for adding DreamWorks’ art — no programming or scripting required by either MTV or Mockingbird.
Mockingbird then created a customized version of the standard Game Kit UI that matched the Madagascar color palette. Some features were also removed or cut back, including image uploading and text editing, in order to ensure the resulting games were on-message and safe for the intended audience.
Results
Mockingbird delivered the finished Game Kit and completed integration with the Addicting Games site in just a few weeks. The game making promotion ran for 4 weeks during November, 2008.
- 23,000+ games were created, posted, and sent to friends
- 650,000+ plays of the fan-made games
- 2,000,000+ plays of the Game Kit
- Each play of the Game Kit lasted an average of 3 to 4 minutes
