SLOPE STARS
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Happy Meal in Sweden, McDonald's Sweden developed Happy Goggles. By folding the Happy Meal box, customers could create a pair of Virtual-Reality glasses which made it possible to experience the VR game "Slope Stars" with a smartphone.
The Swedish “Sportlov” recreational holiday, is the time of the year when children in Sweden have one week off to enjoy winter sports. To tie a VR experience to this, DDB Stockholm partnered up with North Kingdom and developed the 360° VR ski game "Slope Stars” (in Swedish “Se upp i backen”). This game was both educational and fun; allowing kids and their parents to enter a world of fantasy and how to stay safe in the ski slopes. The aim was to help kids understand the need to be alert on the slopes and avoid obstacles – including other skiers.
The game concept was a first person POV ski game where you ski downhill an infinite slope and turn left or right to avoid hitting the obstacles along the way. The final score is calculated and based on how long you manage to ski without crashing. By using Gyro technology and a pair of Happy Goggles the experience gets truly realistic and it feel that you actually is behind a pair of ski goggles.
From a UX and design perspective, it is more challenging to design for VR experiences than for traditional games, because you need to take into account both human perception and cognition. We evaluated the experience in terms of fun and engagement, comprehensiveness and ease of use. This helped us create a carefully tailored enjoyable game for the target group of McDonalds Happy Goggles.
"Slope stars" was officially endorsed by the Swedish alpine ski team.