Mars Network Challenge
View the case- Brand
- Cisco
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Lead Gen & Recruiting
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- The1stMovement
Objective
Cisco needed to launch DNA Center, a network-automation platform, into a market of engineers for whom "provisioning and automation" is a hard sell. The game had to double as a global product demo and lead-generation engine for the biggest digital launch in Cisco's history, running across dozens of markets at once.
Solution
You play a network engineer tasked with building and defending humanity's first base on Mars. Each base on the map unlocks a run of tower-defense levels: you place and upgrade defenses to fend off sandstorms, solar wind, and sudden intrusions threatening the colony. Clear a base's levels and you're dropped into a "Base Challenge" — the same task, but now performed inside the real Cisco DNA Center console, where you build a network fabric, assign a policy, push a deployment, or quarantine a rogue device. Finish the challenge and the base is secured, your score posts to a global leaderboard, and the next base on the map opens up. New bases and levels kept arriving over the game's run, so returning players always had fresh territory to defend.
Results
The game drew 100,000+ registered players, with 100,900+ unique visitors, 4,000 registrations, and 8,000+ completed demos recorded by early 2018. It launched simultaneously in 36 countries and 21 languages on day one — Cisco's largest global launch to date. Across the wider #TheNetworkIntuitive campaign it was part of, digital engagement ran 223% above target, with 130 million social impressions.
- 1
Players open the game at challenge.cisco.com, choosing a region, country, and one of 21 interface languages, and are prompted to rotate a phone to landscape. A terms-and-conditions screen must be accepted before play, and players can watch an intro video that sets up the story of building and defending humanity's first Mars base.
- 2
Players can start without an account, but the game repeatedly prompts them to register with name, email, company, phone, and country to save progress and post scores to the leaderboard; returning players log back in with an ID created at signup.
- 3
After entering, players reach a map of Mars divided into zones, each holding a base with its own purpose and task set; bases unlock by level, and players progress across four sites in total.
- 4
Each base opens with five short, reaction-based tower-defense levels: players place and trigger defenses against incoming threats like sandstorms, solar wind, and sudden attacks, scoring points on hits and matches.
- 5
Clearing a base's five levels unlocks its Base Challenge, where play shifts from the arcade into the real Cisco DNA Center interface — players provision a network by creating a fabric, assigning a policy, and deploying it in a few clicks, doubling the game as a self-service product demo.
- 6
Other Base Challenges cast everyday network-engineer duties as Mars operations: keeping the base's connectivity running, monitoring crew vital signs, and quarantining devices flagged as suspicious to practice security response.
- 7
A later wave adds a NetDevOps scenario at Base Mu, where players receive a network upgrade transmission, fork the base code, make changes, run tests, and deploy to the base's production network only once tests pass.
- 8
Speed and accuracy earn points that post to a global leaderboard, where players can check their rank against engineers worldwide and return to the map for new bases added in waves over the course of the campaign.
- 9
A separate screen collects product feedback, asking players to complete the prompt "I wish the DNA Center would..." with a wish for the real product's functionality.
- 10
Top leaderboard finishers won prizes from Cisco, including invitations to Cisco Live events and credits toward Cisco Advanced Services and certifications; the contest and leaderboard closed on August 31, 2018.
