The Game Of Work
View the case- Brand
- Good Employment Charter
- Year
- 2024
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Corporation Pop
Objective
The Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter wanted to build on its first Good Employment Week and give commuters — not just HR audiences at conferences — an easy way into a conversation about equality, diversity and inclusion at work. The goal was to make the week's message visible across the city and prompt people to ask, right on their commute, whether their own workplace is actually fair.
Solution
A QR code on the back of a tram seat, a bus ad or a poster opens the game straight in your phone's browser — nothing to install. You see a retro 8-bit snakes-and-ladders board, 100 squares stretched into a tower, and roll the dice to climb it alongside two other characters moving on the very same rolls. As the game plays out, career moments like a job interview, a pay-rise request or a redundancy round resolve for each character in turn, and although everyone rolled the same dice, one of you pulls ahead, one holds steady, and one falls behind. A session is over in the time it takes to ride one tram stop, and you're left looking at three tokens on the same board that never should have ended up so far apart.
- 1
A passenger scans a QR code found on a tram-seat back, a bus ad, or a campaign poster, opening the game directly in their mobile browser with no app to download.
- 2
A start screen invites the player to roll the dice and see how differently employers can affect people over a working life, with a "Play the game!" button to begin.
- 3
The game opens on a board of 100 squares that unfolds vertically into a tower, then fills in with snakes climbing upward and ladders dropping down to represent obstacles and opportunities along a career path.
- 4
The player rolls a dice to advance up the board; the same roll moves three characters at once — one advantaged, one neutral, and one disadvantaged.
- 5
Workplace events land along the way — a job interview, a request for a pay rise, a redundancy — each with a positive, neutral, or negative outcome that depends on the character's employer and manager, so the same event can send the three players to different squares.
- 6
The goal is to reach square 100, representing retirement; which character gets there first is never certain, illustrating the underlying inequality.
