Pizza Hero
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Objective
Domino's needed to win attention and orders in the fast-growing iOS market of 2011, giving people a reason to engage with the brand between purchases and order again. The app doubled as a recruiting funnel, steering engaged players toward real jobs at local stores. It also let Domino's pull back the curtain on how a pizza actually gets made, using play to teach its own kitchen standards.
Solution
Pizza Hero puts players behind the counter with nothing but their fingertips: they stretch dough into a circle, swirl on sauce, tap cheese and toppings into place, then slide the pie into the oven. A five-level Pizza Prep School teaches the moves, then the real shifts begin — orders start arriving live, first one pizza at a time, then two and three at once, with topping bins to keep stocked as the pace picks up. A virtual Domino's chef rates each finished pizza in stars, scores post to Game Center leaderboards and can be shared to Facebook and Twitter, and between shifts players can jump into quick side games like pizza-slicing and Bubble Pop Bonanza, or unwind in an untimed Free Play mode. The best part comes after the counter closes: players can order the exact pizza they built for real delivery, and the highest scorers get invited to interview for an actual job at their local Domino's.
Results
Pizza Hero passed 300,000 downloads and climbed to No. 3 on the App Store, two spots ahead of Skype. Players made more than 7 million pizzas in the game, and almost 800 of them went on to get real jobs at their local Domino's.
- 1
The player downloads the free iPad app and enters Pizza Prep School, a tutorial modeled on Domino's real employee training program that frames the game as a path from novice to "pizzaiolo hero."
- 2
The core loop is a sequence of touch gestures: rubbing the dough into a round base, smearing sauce in circular motions, tapping on cheese, and poking toppings into place; each stage is graded on evenness and coverage.
- 3
The finished pizza is pushed into the oven with a forward shove of the iPad that earns bonus points, then a virtual Domino's chef rates the result on speed and quality with up to five stars, and a badly made pizza has to be thrown out and remade.
- 4
Two side minigames punctuate the routine: slicing the baked pizza into even pieces, and popping bubbles that rise on the crust for extra points.
- 5
After five tutorial levels, working levels 6 through 11 raise the stakes: orders now arrive in real time, the player juggles two pizzas at once and later three, while also keeping the topping bins stocked.
- 6
A Free Play mode lets the player make pizzas indefinitely, with no timer and no chef grading the results.
- 7
Scores and achievements feed into Game Center leaderboards, and the player can post results and their pizzaiolo profile to Facebook and Twitter from inside the app.
- 8
A "Make An Order" tab lets the player order a real Domino's pizza (US only), carrying over the toppings chosen in-game, though the dough- and cheese-handling scores have no bearing on the real order.
- 9
From spring 2012, the app added a job-application feature letting top-performing players apply for an opening at their local Domino's directly from the game.
