APPLAYDU: The creative journey
There is nothing better than watching CREATING APPLAYDU, the official documentary about the creative journey of the Saigon team to release APPLAYDU to the world. If you do not have the time to watch the video now, we got you covered! Read it below.
THE CREATIVE JOURNEY BEHIND APPLAYDU - Beyond the initial brief
In February 2019, Gameloft partnered with Ferrero for their most iconic product: Kinder Surprise. Gameloft for brands team was very excited by this opportunity because basically the toy they grew up with! Thierry Lecat, Managing Director, shared: "I remember those great collections The Hippos or the Turtles in the Kinder Surprise. Whenever I was watching TV commercials at that time, I just wanted to collect them all. There is a lot of nostalgia around this brand and product."
The creative team went beyond the initial brief and actually helped Ferrero bring their strategy to another level by creating an application with which kids can learn while playing, not just merely an application for kids playing with virtual toys.
From the simple toy for kids...
With the scale of the brief that Ferrero gave to Gameloft, Gameloft for brands team started to work on the ideation. One of the main sources of inspiration is an awesome toy that Cédric Ratajczak, Creative Director, bought for his daughter:
"This toy looks like a small radio. The kids can make choices on that such as 'who do you want to hero to be?', 'where will it take place?', 'Who your hero will encounter?', and based on those choices, the kids will hear a unique story containing all those choices. It reminds me of the gamebooks, and you know the books where you are the hero. You make choices that influence how the story unfolds. The idea was brilliant, but I saw a potential to develop that idea much further and to give the kids more creative freedom to build their own stories and to give them the chance to materialize, to visualize those stories, thanks to the magic of digital!"
...to something greater
Cedric continued: "And I was like... What if the hero of the story was any of the toys you have at home. What if the kids could bring the toys to life, take control of them and immerse them in a world they could have created themselves. What if the kids themselves were at the center of the story. What if instead of just choosing between A or B options, any action, any interaction of the kids would directly influence the outcome of the story? What if the final stories were taking the shape of digital books that the kids would be proud to show to their parents. Imagine the great family moments it could create. So that was the vision I had, the promise we pitched to Ferrero, and I think that's what we did with APPLAYDU."
The best AR experience
The kids' journey starts by bringing their toys to life thanks to Augmented Reality (AR) technology. Kids can now play with their toys in a way they never did before by becoming their friends, interacting with them and even taking pictures with them.
They can even embody their favorite toys by rotating the camera and wearing one of the masks. There are 236 playable toys at launch, which is more than the first POKEMON game!
Christophe Anh Tuan Cheron - Lead Producer, talked about how kids can 'play further' with this app: "With APPLAYDU, The kids are able to unlock their toys and bring them to life. They also have the possibility to embark their toys in a personalized adventure, created and crafted by their own hands. Through the procedure and narrative tools that we have created, literally, thousands of stories can be created and read at any moment, just like a book. These stories are personalized with the kids' names and avatars and are illustrated with all the kids' decisions that they have made in the 'adventure'. During the journey of story creation, kids have the possibility to draw some elements of their environment, and to encounter characters who will challenge them through different stimulating and engaging games."
Technically, the team's ambition was pretty high: create one of the best AR experiences 100% dedicated to kids and available on a very large scale of devices. Nowadays, AR is mainly accessible on social media (not allowed to kids under 13) or on high-end devices (usually not used by kids).
So the team created a UI/UX that is visual, intuitive and interactive to make sure kids would understand how AR works; and ensured that the experience would remain the same on any kind of device, from the ones released seven years ago to the latest ones.
One of the challenges we had in preproduction was establishing User Interface and User Experience rules. First, very young kids understand abstraction. Second, as they like to explore, we needed to have a playful approach that can reward their curiosity. And our solutions fit all those constraints was contextualization.
And what is the place in real life where a kid can play, collect toys, discover, learn, read, create, and spend time with their family (all APPLAYDU features): their own bedroom. So the main menu of APPLAYDU was designed as a kid bedroom in which each feature was represented by an actual object that the kid knew.
