The Battle For Earth Begins At Sea
- Brand
- Battleship
- Year
- 2012
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Social
- Agency
- Universal Pictures
Objective
Universal Pictures needed to hook Facebook's built-in audience of players and sharers into the world of "Battleship" ahead of its spring 2012 theatrical release. Rebuilding Hasbro's board game as a social app let the studio put the film's human-versus-alien conflict directly into a mechanic people already knew, then use the game as a distribution channel for footage from the movie.
Solution
You open the game inside Facebook — no download, no install — and get matched against another player, with humans on one side of the board and the film's aliens on the other. Ships are rendered in 3D, so a hit actually looks like one: hulls take damage and sink as the battle plays out. You can play it out live if your opponent is online, or fire off a shot and come back later, since the match just waits for their next move. Win, and the game unlocks an exclusive clip from the film as your reward, then prompts you to challenge a friend or share the match to keep the game going.
- 1
The game opens as a Facebook canvas application at apps.facebook.com/battleship-the-game/, playable directly inside Facebook with nothing to download or install.
- 2
The player picks a side from the film's conflict, Humans or Aliens, which sets the roles for both players in the match.
- 3
The player finds another Facebook user as an opponent and starts a match in either asynchronous mode, taking turns whenever convenient while the game waits for the opponent's return, or real-time mode, when both players are online together.
- 4
The core loop is classic Battleship: the player fires on cells of the opponent's grid, and hits are shown as 3D ships sinking.
- 5
Winning matches unlocks exclusive clips from the Battleship film as a reward for returning to play more.
- 6
Matches accumulate into an ongoing rivalry, with players continuing a series against other users to contest control of the sea.
