Sugoroku CS3
- Brand
- Adobe
- Year
- 2007
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Bascule Inc.
Objective
Adobe built the game to introduce Japanese designers and creative professionals to the newly localized Creative Suite 3, wiring individual CS3 applications into the board itself so players encountered the product line by playing rather than reading a spec sheet. The campaign also leaned on Japan's mid-2000s blog culture for reach: the prize for winning was blog decorations that carried the game back out onto players' own pages. A second wave then turned the audience into contributors, inviting them to design their own board squares using the CS3 apps.
Solution
The board is a sugoroku track built from squares, each one illustrated by a different guest artist around a CS3 product. Clicking a die sends the player's piece racing along the track against a computer-controlled rival, landing on squares that pose quiz questions, hand out CS3 "power" boosts that speed the piece up, and unlock more of the artist-drawn squares along the way. Beating the rival to the finish opens a registration screen where the winner claims blog parts and blog stickers made from the squares they picked up, ready to paste into their own blog. In a later round, the site also took player submissions — squares drawn in Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3, Illustrator CS3, or Fireworks CS3 — with the winning entries added to the live board and sticker set.
- 1
The player arrives on the promo site and picks a decorated cube design from the set contributed by different illustrators; each cube doubles as the player's game piece on the board.
- 2
On the game screen, the player rolls a die to send their piece racing along a board of illustrated cubes against a computer-controlled rival.
- 3
Landing on a quiz cube prompts a question; answering correctly advances the piece further along the board.
- 4
Squares occupied by the rival are contested: once the rival moves off a cube, it becomes free again for the player to claim.
- 5
Collecting CS3 products along the route grants "CS3 Power," which speeds the player's piece up for the rest of the race.
- 6
The race ends when either racer reaches the finish line first; if the rival wins, the match restarts from the beginning.
- 7
A winning player sees the haul of artist-drawn cubes collected during the run, then registers to receive blog parts and blog stickers featuring those cubes to post on their own blog.
- 8
In a second campaign wave, players can design their own cube in Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks CS3 and submit unlimited entries to the Cube Awards 2007 contest; winning designs are added to the game board and to the blog parts and stickers set.
