2013 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

Tileboy was the buzz builder that Nokia aimed for. Much of this was due to the fact that Tileboy has key traits of mobile games like Mega Run and Angry Birds: it’s simple, the game play is easy, and the story has a funny and light-hearted nature. After 2 months, over 16,000 unique users played the game. Of the 16,000+, over 20% played multiple times. Most importantly, over 600 teams entered the competition. All this was achieved organically through the Facebook page of Nokia, as there were no major ATL or BTL campaigns to promote the competition or game.

Creative Execution

The game’s hero, Tileboy, is an aspiring developer like the participants of the competition. Every night he explores the city and collects coins so he can develop his own apps and games. Since the main feature of Windows’ Metro design is live tiles, it was only right that our pixelated hero bring a tile to life through his constant movement. Tileboy is always running and tumbling forward, so the user simply taps the spacebar to make him jump and catch coins. Tileboy can collect Lumia 920 smartphones for extra points. If Tileboy is quick enough, he can even get help from local animals like camels and falcons (in his local Kandora of course). The top scorer of Tileboy won the new Lumia 920 smartphone. The game was featured on a homepage tab of the app, and players could invite friends directly from the game.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Nokia’s Midnight Developer competition challenged university students in the Middle East and Africa to create innovative apps and games for the newly launched Windows 8 mobile platform. To build awareness about the competition, Nokia wanted to release an online game that would attract developers, as well as University students in general. For Nokia, it was also important that the unique design of Windows 8 mobile be integrated into the game. This all led to the creation of Tileboy: a one touch game that we built directly into the Midnight Developer Facebook app. Tileboy linked retro Nokia games like the pixelated Snake, to the Metro design interface of Windows 8 mobile. We were mixing something from the past that the target audience knew well, with something new that they were exploring more and more.