Hubbub has gone into hibernation.

Change Your World

Context

Your World is the brand name of Rot­ter­dam Euro­pean Youth Cap­i­tal 2009. Through­out the year, events are pro­duced for, by and with young peo­ple. One of those events is Change Your World which last­ed a week­end. 300 young peo­ple signed up, each want­i­ng to change the world for the bet­ter in a spe­cif­ic way. On Sat­ur­day, they gave shape to their “move­ments” under the guid­ance of coach­es and celebri­ties. At the end of the day, the five most promis­ing move­ments were select­ed to take part in a finale event on Sun­day. This is where Hub­bub came in.

The ‘Trade A Wish’ move­ment prepar­ing their strategy

Brief

We were asked to cre­ate an urban game for the finale that would trans­form the Rot­ter­dam city cen­tre into a play­ground. Your World want­ed to make sure the city would take notice of the event, it should be high­ly vis­i­ble. At the same time, the game should com­mu­ni­cate some of the val­ues at the core of Change Your World: any mean­ing­ful change is brought about by groups of peo­ple, work­ing togeth­er in the pur­suit of a com­mon goal. The game should also pro­vide a frame­work for the cam­paign­ing the move­ments would be doing on Sunday.

Move­ment ‘Vertrouwen’ campaigning

Process

Hub­bub rapid­ly devel­oped sev­er­al con­cepts for the game, that were refined in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the client. Once we had decid­ed on the game’s core mechan­ics, flow and play­er expe­ri­ence goals we were ready for design. We pro­to­typed and test­ed over nine dis­crete ver­sion of the game’s rules in an iter­a­tive man­ner. The game’s com­plex­i­ty was grad­u­al­ly increased, so that we were sure it would be both deep and bal­anced. Once we were sat­is­fied the design would achieve both our client’s goals and offer a fun expe­ri­ence to the play­ers, the rules were doc­u­ment­ed, the expe­ri­ence visu­al­ized and guide­lines for the pro­duc­tion of the game were added. Dur­ing the event, we co-ordi­nat­ed the finale event: An MC kept the play­ers on track and enter­tained. Brief­in­gs were pro­vid­ed for both play­ers and crew, we act­ed as ref­er­ees and man­aged the event’s schedule.

The move­ments prepar­ing for the start of the game at the base

Solution

The Change Your World urban game Hub­bub cre­at­ed had move­ments bat­tling for ter­ri­to­ry in the Rot­ter­dam city cen­tre. Play­ers bid for own­er­ship of 16 check­points spread across a 400 by 400 meter area by plant­i­ng flags. Who­ev­er had the most flags at the end of a round was allowed to cam­paign at that spe­cif­ic loca­tion. Each move­ment had nine flags to dis­trib­ute, and was allowed to have three play­ers in the field at any time. Play­ers were allowed to hold only one flag at any time, and were for­bid­den to move flags of oth­er move­ments. They had maps of the ter­ri­to­ry, and could com­mu­ni­cate over walkie-talkies.

The result­ing game had play­ers fran­ti­cal­ly run­ning around town in bright­ly coloured out­fits with huge flags to match. Move­ments had to deter­mine which check­points they want­ed to cam­paign at and co-ordi­nate dur­ing play to keep an overview of the play-field. In this way, both the goal of mak­ing the event vis­i­ble in the city, and hav­ing par­tic­i­pants expe­ri­ence the val­ue of col­lab­o­ra­tion in a vis­cer­al man­ner were ful­ly met.

All pho­tos on this page were tak­en by Alper Çuğun.