Ronald McDonald House In Roblox
- Brand
- McDonald's
- Year
- 2022
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- DDB Stockholm
Objective
Children treated at Ronald McDonald House often live far from home for long stretches and lose touch with friends, even though staying close to loved ones is shown to speed recovery. McDonald's Sweden and the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity built this initiative to ease that isolation while lifting trust in the charity and donations through a wider integrated campaign.
Solution
A child staying at one of Sweden's five Ronald McDonald Houses gets a code in their welcome pack that unlocks a sixth house, this one inside Roblox. Entering it, players land in a colourful multi-storey hub where every season plays out at once in the yard outside, and move between themed rooms built from real kids' wishlists: a pool, a sledding hill, a teleport room, even a wall of cinnamon buns. From there they can jump into one of three mini-games, each with its own leaderboard, racing for a top spot or just comparing scores. Because the door only opens for residents and the friends they invite in, every session is really a hangout with people who understand what they're going through, closing out whenever they log off rather than on any fixed level or ending.
Results
The world logged 45,500 visits and over 2,200 children played despite code-only access, with an 11.27-minute average session and 13.09% retention. The surrounding campaign lifted trust in the Ronald McDonald Children's Charity by 21%, donation intent by 20%, and actual donations by 29%. A charity gala auction of three in-game items raised almost 150,000 SEK (about £11,000).
- 1
Entry is gated: a child admitted to one of Sweden's five Ronald McDonald Houses receives a welcome kit containing an access code, which unlocks the private Roblox world on PC, mobile, Xbox, PlayStation, or Meta Quest. The same code lets the player invite friends from their hometown, so the house becomes a shared space despite the distance from the hospital.
- 2
Players spawn outside a tall, multicolored Ronald McDonald House set on sprawling grounds with gardens, water parks, and mountains. All four seasons run at once outside the house, so snow for sledding sits right next to a swimming pool.
- 3
The core loop is social exploration: players wander the house's floors and themed rooms — a perpetual Christmas room, a disco room with a mirror ball, an upside-down room, a space room with a rocket, and an indoor beach — encountering other kids from across Sweden's houses. A teleport room and a wall of self-replenishing cinnamon buns connect to other activities and worlds within the experience.
- 4
Two set pieces double as interactive attractions: a staircase that plays a musical note per step, and an indoor pool built like an aquarium that leads into a ball pit.
- 5
The outdoor grounds host ride-based attractions, including a roller coaster and multiple water parks.
- 6
A set of mini-games gives the house competitive side content: a treetop obstacle course with climbing difficulty and a leaderboard, a timed tower-climbing race starting from a chimney, and a four-player sled race down the world's tallest mountain where hitting obstacles knocks players out.
- 7
The world receives ongoing updates that add activities requested by the children who use the real houses, with a fantasy-car racing game as the most recent addition.
- 8
The world's launch on November 29, 2022 was staged as an in-game event: kids arrived by limousine, walked a red carpet, took photos and selfies with Swedish Roblox stars Yumi and Tomu, then explored and played in the house together.
