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!

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!

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!

It’s been a busy week for SMERC and  SELF Workout in the Park. First we received glowing reviews and player response for our Workout in the Park Mobile app and now we’ve been nominated for a Digiday Sammy Award in the Best Branded Social Game category!

SELF Workout in the Park

The Sammy Awards honors ‘overall excellence and breakthrough achievement in Social Advertising, Media and Marketing.’

The Best Branded Social Game is given for the best use of social gaming for ‘entertainment, connection, content or branded content.”

Past Sammy Award winners include a who’s who list of industry juggernauts and our fellow finalists include all the biggest movers and shakers of today’s social media world.

If we were capable of humility, we would say it’s an honor just to be nominated. If.

Check out the Sammy Awards here.
Or check out SELF Workout in the Park and see for yourself what all the hubbub is about.

When we developed SELF Workout in the Park, our primary task was to create a rewarding game experience centered on reaching fitness goals and increasing the health and well-being of a personal avatar in a fun customizable environment. We achieved that easily enough, but we had another more sinister agenda: to find a way to help players take the inspiration they draw from their Workout in the Park exploits and use it to fuel progress towards real-world self improvement goals.

The Workout in the Park you already know and love.

We decided the best way to do this was to create a way for players to gamify their own real world fitness goals, to chart personal progress, and to apply those goals and that progress towards Workout in the Park.

Essentially, we wanted players to be able to take their Workout in the Park with them into their own real world workout!

 

Our solution is the Workout in the Park Mobile game.

The Workout in the Park you'll come to know and love.

 

 

 

Workout in the Park Mobile, available for FREE on iTunes, allows players to set real world goals, check-in at real world activities and events, and play fun mini-games to earn in-game rewards.

 

 

 

 

Meet your goals and earn in-game rewards!

 

 

 

Set fitness, nutrition, and wellness goals such as Work Out More, Drink More Water, and Get More Sleep. Taking steps to reach these goals not only helps our players be their best selves, it also earns rewards for the player’s avatar!

 

 

 

 

Check In to Fitness, Nutrition, and Wellness activities and events and post your actions to Facebook!

 

 

Check-In at daily fitness, nutrition, or wellness activities. Players receive in-game rewards by checking in when they go for a walk, stop by the health food store, or spend some time relaxing at a café with a friend. Players receive major rewards for checking in at big events like SELF’s massive annual Workout in the Park event!

 

 

 

Play the same Mini-Games you love from the Workout in the Park web app wherever you like on your mobile device and apply the rewards you earn towards your avatar’s park!

Earn Nutrition points playing the Smoothie Challenge, Fitness points with the Fitness Puzzle Challenge, and Wellness points with the Zen Match Challenge.

 

We think Workout in the Park Mobile is the perfect companion to the Workout in the Park web app and completes an unparalleled cross-platform gaming experience that rewards real-world participation and personal fitness growth.

It’s also really fun, and that’s kinda what SMERC is all about.

Download the game here.

Girlgamer took a look at our new Facebook game SELF Workout in the Park and seemed to like what they saw:

Playing SELF Workout in the Park has honestly been a motivating factor in all the real-life exercise I’ve been getting lately. It’s a great mix of instant gratification and short to mid-range goals. A few ladies I know who play the game get really competitive and have fun with it.

We are really glad to hear that people are finding Workout in the Park as motivational as it is fun. We worked hard to create an experience that took the typical social game structure and…ran with it. As GG says,

Rather than invest in a farm, zoo, etc. players invest in themselves (or rather an avatar version of themselves), earning Fitness, Nutrition and Wellness.

It’s awesome that people are picking up what we’re putting down. Click here to read the entire review!

Check out this Craigslist ad we found: 3 girls needed for SELF Magazine Workout in the Park Event

Trust us, it’s not as creepy as it sounds! Self Magazine is looking for real-life NPC’s to show off Workout in the Park at the massive events for which the game is named.

 The Character Brand Ambassadors will represent the brand by providing product information, while interacting with consumers, promoting the new game and handing out product related literature. The Character Brand ambassadors may also be required to play the game on a laptop and assist guests with logging into Facebook, downloading the game application, creating their own avatar, and handing out special promotions or giveaways.

So, if you’re going to one of the three events in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago keep your eyes peeled for Jasmine, Mia, and Chloe. Ask them to show you the game. Ask them about Fitness, Wellness, and Nutrition. Ask for their numbers. But don’t tell them we put you up to that last one.