Launching their new campaign, Choose Your Champion, Service Master Restore wanted to improve their customer relationships at trade shows.
At trade shows, a primary channel for ServiceMaster Restore, customers were often forced to wait extensively before meeting with reps.
We built an immersive arcade experience bringing the "Choose Your Champion" campaign to life.
Many trade shows lacked an engaging way to keep potential customers occupied while sales associates spoke with customers. Service Master Restore wanted an interactive way to attract potential customers while also staying within their new national marketing campaign, Choose Your Champion.
The 8-bit campaign tapped into the nostalgia of their customer base, mostly clients aged 45+, while also show casing how Service Master Restore provides restoration solutions no other company does. Their campaign loosely alluded to an arcade game and the team approached us to make it real.
We then went about taking their campaign and turning it into an end-to-end arcade game, creating game software, hardware to store the game, and themed arcade cabinets.
Many 1980s games featured a side scrolling platform game with a main character
The campaign featured a selection of different characters with corresponding elements that they were built to "fight". In the campaign video, the customer calls in need of repair services.
For ideation, our goal was to solidify concepts of the story so we could start building our game logic, hardware needs, and external game cabinet design.
We tested ideas of putting a hammer on top, to making the box a tool box to just designing a storyline vinyl. Ultimately, the client chose the storyline vinyl as it used less materials and matched other 1980s arcades.
We would also create a smaller-sized version in a portable tool box to bring to smaller shows.
The game console would emulate the construction idea with a screw-driver joystick and classic arcade components including buttons, lights, graphics and sound.
Level 1: Bedroom
Level 2: Kitchen
Level 3: Basement
Start screen with a broken house
Character Selection
After solidifying our design ideas, we used Figma to prototype assets for our 3D space, creating an engaging environment for student testing. We designed a world devastated by a storm, where buildings could only be repaired by correctly answering calculus questions. Before testing, we secured IRB approval, as students are considered a vulnerable population and required ethical oversight.
There was lots of trail and error -- including debugging the crazy overlays and character movement.
From bits of wood to the finished arcade cabinet with a computer inside holding the game, we were ready to ship to the marketing team!
Customers loved playing the game and found they learned about new offerings from Service Master Restore through the games many characters. By choosing their champion, customers understood all the different restoration capabilities.
They also had fun being competitive with their fellow attendees! Either cheering friends on or playing themselves, customers loved being able to play a game that reminded them of their childhoods.
We re-imagined the arcade game to this time be reminiscent of Galaga.
Because SRM works with commercial buildings, I created a Galaga-themed game where a team of SRM employees run across the screen shielding buildings from the destruction of falling elements.
