56 Sage Street Advergame
admin | August 16, 2010
I just read an article on DigitalBuzzBlog.com about this advergame, and even if initially I was a bit skeptical about it, I’ll have to agree with the authors of that article: This is a real interesting game, for a number of reasons.
First of all, here what we are talking about..
56 Sage Street is an advergame developed for Barclays Bank.
It’s main goal is to improve teenagers’ understanding of banking and educate them about direct debits, loans, statements, fraud avoidance and general money management.
The game itself is a mixture between the money management aspects of Sim City, and a rich storytelling layer that reminds of a Grand Theft Auto kinda thing.
My skepticism was mainly based on the fear that this two would not have mixed properly, resulting in an overshot serious game, making use of fancy jargon as a way to appeal to younger audiences. I think it is pretty difficult to convince a teenager to care about loans and bank statements, even via a game.
..And then I tried the game, and played a bit with it.
Well, dunno if I’m or not a member of their target group, but I found this game extremely playable and entertaining, even if I definitely felt the educative purpose of it (probably due to the fact that I knew what to expect in advance).
Still, these money management elements were not overdone as I expected, and fit very well in the gameplay, resulting in a very playable and entertaining experience.
The game follows the development of a young fellow that just moved into a big city, “rags to riches”.
The player has to juggle between job opportunities, economy struggles and food/house problematics in order to achieve more and more wealth, increasing its reputation in the city and being granted more and more benefits from a benefactor, until the creation of a little economic empire over the city.
As for the educative part, I discovered that I have no idea about what a “savings account” is, I lost my apartment after the first day of rent for not having understood the concept of direct credit, and I ended up asking money to a certain “Turbo Johnny”, just to find out that he would have later asked me for a 50% interest rate over the sum he lent me.. Littl’ basterd!
Technicalities.. The game has a system of achievements that are easily shareable on Social Networks, improving the possibility of viral spread of the application, and that give a nice reward to the player for completing milestones in the game.
Negative point, it needs Facebook in order to save the game. No Facebook, no party. I played until I felt like givin’ it, and then lost all my progresses, knowing that I would not probably play it again not to have to rebegin it from zero. I understand the intent of guaranteeing a Facebook connection in order to increase the chance of link share, but a simple cookie would have done the job.. meh..
In conclusion, pro and cons, I was really surprised of how well the “banking education” was implemented in the game. Present, but subtle. And I definitely played the game motivated by the fun of advancing in it, and completing challenges.
I encourage you to try it following this link, and to read more about it on this blogpost about the development of the game.
