SMERC Games

Dreamworks Animation has spent the last decade developing a large library of properties. Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, Madagascar, How to Train Your Dragon…the list grows with every new release.

Each of these IP's has its own website and each of these websites have games created to promote that IP.

With all these campaigns, Dreamworks has many many games on many many different pages all across the web, but there was nothing linking those games together.

Game traffic flares up with a new film’s ad campaign and then disappears into the dark corners of the web. Dreamworks came to SMERC looking for a way to retain and re-engage existing fans between ad campaigns while simultaneously introducing new fans to the library of quality pre-existing content.

Our solution: Dreamworks Social Arcade

Play games from every Dreamworks IP in one place!

The Dreamworks Arcade is a game portal that leverages DW’s vast library of branded games to create a community that strengthens brand engagement between IPs and increases consumer loyalty.

Built with the Game Cloud unified platform, the Dreamworks Arcade gathers all Dreamworks’ games in one place and extends gameplay across all properties, creating a user experience that rewards exploration of the full catalog of Dreamworks IPs. Essentially, we are gamifying the process of being a Dreamworks fan!

Earn Stars playing Puss in Boots games and use them to buy powerups for Kung Fu Panda games!

Taking advantage of Game Cloud Network’s full social integration and gamification capabilities, the Dreamworks Arcade allows players to create an account with branded avatars and link their account to Facebook. Performance in ANY game in the arcade rewards XP which allows players to gain levels and ranks for their avatars.

Players earn rewards each day just for returning to the Arcade!

Players work towards earning branded achievements which reward Stars. Players use Stars in the Store to buy branded power-ups that increase the length of their games, give them extra turns, or double their points!

Earn Achievements and other rewards by playing games and engaging with the Dreamworks Arcade community!

A fully COPPA-compliant social community offers all the fun of social play in a way that is safe for kids. Players add friends and compete in fun game challenges.

Compete against friends in game challenges!

An activity feed lets players know what their friends are up to and an extensive leaderboard lets players see how their performance compares to the best of the best. Older players are able to share games, progress, and achievements on Facebook.

Link your account to Facebook to Share game actions and Achievements with friends.

Finally, a simple-to-use CMS allows for the easy addition of new games, ensuring that the Dreamworks Arcade is constantly updated with new content.

The social features, gamification elements, and sheer volume of games will keep players coming back between ad campaigns and help maintain brand engagement. New ad campaigns with new games reinvigorate the existing IPs and the circle begins again.

Keeping fans engaged was the goal and we think players will have a hard time turning away from the Dreamworks Arcade.

Check out the Dreamworks Arcade for yourself HERE!

We’ve been spending our days gazing out the windows and wishing for this slow-moving winter to finally move on and let spring in.

However, rather than surrender to our cabin fever, we set about busying ourselves.

First we created an awesome HTML5 platform.

Then we looked around for something to do with it.

With St. Patrick’s Day rapidly approaching, we decided to chase the gloomy grays of winter away with a bright, fun, green game to add to our Game Cloud Network platform. And the game we created was…

Rainbow Tangle

 Help the leprechaun untangle his rainbow!

The clumsy leprechaun has a bit of a problem with his rainbow. Help him untangle it.

Match the shapes to untangle the knots!

Match the colored shapes on the right to remove the combinations on the left. Do it fast because the clock is ticking!

We’re really glad to have been able to focus our energies on something so bright, colorful, and fun and we think you should check it out and see for yourself on desktop, iPhone, iPad, Android, tablet or however you go online.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY RAINBOW TANGLE!

We’ve had the opportunity to work with DreamWorks before on fun games for Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda, and many of their other properties, so we were thrilled when DreamWorks came to us wanting to create a suite of activities to promote their upcoming Croods film.

We were intrigued by the story about a family of the ‘Croodaceous’ era dealing with generational difficulties while looking for a new home…all in a world of fantastic and dangerous creatures.

DreamWorks' newest film The Croods!

We couldn’t wait to get our grubby little hands back in the DreamWorks toybox.

But DreamWorks wanted more than just a game. They wanted to create a Croods activity exploring the rich world and crazy animals of the Croodaceous era. And they wanted fans to be able to experience that world and those animals across all platforms.

So we made the Croods Croodaceous Creature Collector!

Get to know the wild animal combinations represented by the creatures of the Croodaceous era!

Using our new HTML5 Engine, we created a fun matching game that can be played however you access the internet! Fans can explore the fun animal combinations of Croodaceous era creatures on their desktops, iPhones, iPads, Android devices, tablets, and more.

Solve the clues and reveal the hidden Croodaceous creature!

Click the stones to find the characteristics referred to in the riddle.

Learn about the Croodaceous creature you’ve discovered and print fun info sheets at home!

View all the creatures you’ve unlocked and build your Croodaceous collection!

Croods is a bona fide hit and we are proud to have been able to create the Croods Croodaceous Creature Collector to  promote its success and to serve as an example of our new HTML5 engine.

Play Croods Croodaceous Creature Collector HERE!

How we engage with the web is changing

The most difficult task for anyone working in the rapidly changing fields of mobile and social gaming is to recognize and prepare for coming trends. These fields are constantly evolving and our job at SMERC is to anticipate changes and create solutions for them so that we can meet a client’s current needs and help prepare them to meet future needs.

This is how you view the web

The mobile device is becoming the preferred tool for accessing the internet.

The Pew Research Center revealed that 62% of the entire US adult population had used their mobile devices to access the internet in the past 30 days, and that 45% of 18-29 year olds and 17% of ALL mobile device owners rely on their devices for the majority of their online activities. This has nearly doubled over the last three years and the numbers are only going up.

Studies by Morgan Stanley point to the explosive growth of the mobile market and suggest that within a year the number of people who use mobile devices to access the internet will overtake the number of people who exclusively rely on desktop computers.

With so many people relying on their mobile devices to access the internet, it is becoming increasingly necessary for your website, game, or application to be optimized for the mobile experience.  To this end, SMERC has developed a sophisticated HTML5 engine that optimizes performance across platforms.

HTML5: The only solution for cross-platform mobile applications.

Our HTML5 engine allows us to create dynamic games and applications with all the gameplay and social functionality expected from Flash and other programming languages, but with the cross-platform potential that only HTML5 offers.

Whether users access your app on their desktop, iPhone, iPad, Android, or tablet, HTML5 offers a consistent experience across all browsers.

But don’t take our word for it…

Check out the Croodaceous Creature Collector, an activity we created for DreamWorks to promote the theatrical release of The Croods:

Discover the Croodaceous creatures and unlock printable fact sheets!

Click HERE to play the Croods Croodaceous Creature Collector…

OR check out the game we made for our own Game Cloud Network Portal featuring full gamification integration in addition to the addictive gameplay that has become the SMERC standard:

Help the leprechaun untangle his rainbow by matching colored shapes!

CONTACT US to find out how HTML5 can help you meet your needs.

It’s SELF Magazine’s 20^th Anniversary, and to celebrate, SELF decided to pair with HerCampus.com to bring the massively successful annual Workout in the Park event to one college campus. With so many great colleges to choose from, picking just one lucky campus to host the first ever Workout on the Quad event was nearly impossible.

So, rather than making the difficult choice, SELF decided to leave the decision in the hands of the students and approached SMERC to figure out a way to use the award winning Workout in the Park Social Game to let students decide which school should host.

And thusly, the SELF Workout in the Park Social Game Challenge was born!

Students chose their school and competed against players from other schools to earn the most points by completing workouts and finishing quests.

Perform workouts to earn points for your school!

A leaderboard tracked top schools and top players so participants could see how their school was doing and how their contributions stacked up to those of the other players.

Check how your school is doing and how many points you've earned for it on the Leaderboard!

Two weeks later, thousands of participants had entered over 100 major American universities to win the chance to host the Workout on the Quad event.

Leading schools boasted scores representing up to 10,000 in-game workouts performed by students hoping for their school to win.

Stay tuned HERE for the official announcement of the winning school.

See what other new features we’ve got going for SELF Workout in the Park HERE!

SELF Workout in the Park Presented by Nike + Kinect Training!

We’ve bragged before about SELF Workout in the Park. It’s our massive Facebook social app, we’ve said. It makes a fun game out of reaching fitness goals and increasing the health and well-being of the player’s avatar, we’ve bragged. We’ve even not-so-humbly pointed out the many steps we’ve taken to fuel progress towards real-world self improvement goals. We are very proud and not at all shy about it. But we aren’t the only ones working at the intersection between gaming and health.

Nike + Kinect Training for XBOX

Nike and XBOX have partnered to create Nike + Kinect Training, which offers XBOX Kinect users the chance to receive personalized Nike training with real-time coaching. All without having to leave the house. Nike + Kinect Training is a valuable workout experience and a great gaming experience at the same time.

So it makes sense that when XBOX wanted to promote their awesome new workout/gaming hybrid, they turned to another workout/gaming hybrid: SELF Workout in the Park.

To fully showcase Nike + Kinect Training we decided to present players with a total park takeover! Banners above and below the game frame advertise Nike +  Kinect Training, while the loading screen proudly displays new ‘Presented By’ animated images with the Nike + Kinect Training logo.

The Loading Screen includes 'Presented By' animations and branded banner advertisements.

An in-game popup lets players know whats going on and points them to a NEW in-game item: the Kinect Yoga Mat.  This new Yoga Mat, branded with a “Kinect for XBOX360″ logo, is available for a limited time only and offers players a special resource boost whenever they work out on it.

Kinect Yoga Mat

We think Nike and XBOX are doing great things with the Kinect and we are glad to be working with them to make exercise less of a chore and more fun!

Get your own Kinect Yoga Mat for a limited time HERE!

Mister Cartoon, the renowned California tattoo and graffiti artist, came to SMERC looking for a unique way to advertise his partnership with Diesel Jeans to offer a Limited Edition series of high-end wristwatches based on his tattoo designs.

Diesel Limited Edition by Mister Cartoon

Mister Cartoon’s brand is all about the streets,  so no traditional campaign was going to cut it. Instead we set out to create an experience placing users inside Cartoon’s world: a world of concrete, graffiti, tattoos…and cruising in lowriders. We called the experience Time 2 Ride.

Photography by famed urban photographer Estevan Oriol!

Time 2 Ride lets players create a video of themselves cruisin’ and bouncing in a fully tricked out lowrider and then share that video on their Facebook wall!

Share your video on Facebook. Friends can Vote on your video or create their own!

Players provide a picture of themselves and a passenger: upload, select from FB pics, or create one with a webcam! After choosing a background, players hit the switches to see an animated video of themselves bouncing in a classic ’64 Impala.

Watch a video of yourself and a friend in a vintage lowrider!

Create the best video to win an awesome prize!

SMERC tested, Snoop Dogg approved!

You can keep sitting there jealous and slack-jawed, or you can make your own lowrider video at Time-2-Ride.com!

Do you love addictive puzzle games? Do you love plaid shirts and long johns? Do you love chopping down trees? Well step away from that conifer because Tricky Timber has got you covered and the trees are coming down!

Lifetime wanted a fun new addition for their growing library of addictive online games based around the reality programming that defines the Lifetime brand. We love the reality shows with the really tough jobs so we decided to build a game around the manliest job in history: lumberjack! The result was Tricky Timber.

Break out the chainsaws

Players clear the area of trees in as few cuts as possible using full cuts and half cuts to control which direction the trees fall.

Plan out how you want the trees to fall.

Choose your cuts wisely and create stunning domino-style tree falling carnage on thirty completely different levels.

Now take 'em down, domino style!

Make hippies cry and have fun at the same time! It’s the SMERC way!

Check out Tricky Timber for yourself HERE!

We are proud to announce that our recent collaboration with SELF Magazine, the Facebook social game sensation SELF Workout in the Park, has won the Digiday Sammy Award for Best Branded Social Game!

Despite steep competition from some of the biggest movers and shakers in the industry, including Electronic Arts and Samsung, SMERC and partners SELF Magazine, Replayful, and Kontagent received the award for our work on SELF Workout in the Park, the fitness themed Facebook social game with real-world self improvement features.

SELF Workout in the Park

With SELF Workout in the Park, we set out to create a game built from the ground up to represent the three core elements of the SELF Magazine brand: Women’s Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness. Since Best Branded Social Game is an award which honors the best use of social gaming for ‘entertainment, connection, content or branded content,’ I think it’s safe to say we accomplished what we set out to do.

We have always known that SELF Workout in the Park was a winner, but it was great to have all the hard work recognized with one of the most prestigious awards in our field.

You may cheer our victory and touch our capes if you like. Or you can just check out SELF Workout in the Park for yourself HERE!

MTV came to SMERC looking for a way to create an online social experience for their hit show Teen Wolf that would engage fans for the Season 2 Premier and ensure continuous brand engagement.

MTV's hot new reality show about the follicly gifted!

Since Teen Wolf draws much of its dramatic tension from the difficulties faced by ordinary teens forced into extraordinary situations, we decided fans would enjoy the opportunity to place themselves in the shoes of their favorite Teen Wolf characters. Pimples, bad grades, and jocks aren’t enough drama for today’s teens. We wanted to add a little lycanthropy to the mix. To that end, we created Wolf Yourself.

Can't wait to see these attractive youngsters turn into bloodthirsty monsters.

Wolf Yourself is a Facebook/Web app combining the novelty allure of an avatar creation game with the long-term virality of a social infection game to establish and maintain a strong social media presence and to create a lasting compliment to the Teen Wolf brand.

Players upload a picture of themselves and definitely not one they found on teh internets.

Players first provide a picture, either uploaded from their computer, taken with a webcam, or selected from amongst their FB photos.

This is much easier than growing actual sideburns.

Then players customize their avatar, selecting from a variety of hair and eye colors, fang and ear styles, and accessories. If you’re already a werewolf, why not be a werewolf with pink hair, right?

When their avatar is finished, players Wolf Out: using their avatar pictures, Wolf Yourself creates a video animation of the player turning into a werewolf.

The body goes through many changes during adolescence.

Players can post a wolfed out pic to their Facebook wall or post the entire transformation video for everyone to see. Players level up by biting their friends and turning them into werewolves and voting on other players’ wolves using a hot-or-not style voting feature. Gaining levels unlocks new accessories and customization options for a player’s avatar. High-scoring wolves sit proudly atop a Leaderboard for everyone to see.

Teen Wolf fan response has been strong and consistent with over 30,000 wolves shared across Facebook so far and no end in sight.
Check it out for yourself HERE and see how you look when you Wolf Yourself!