Case study- using Loquiz app for creating and conducting a customized team game for an event

Creating and conducting a team game that engages the audience takes time and resources. It may be just one short fun part of the event or the meaningful core of the whole occasion. If you have ever conducted scavenger or photo hunts, teambuilding challenges, or charity races then you are probably familiar with the hassle; piles of paperwork, loads of emails exchanged with clients, setting up the locations in landscape or urban environments and counting up the results. Using a game creation app can make things run so much smoother.

Loquiz client Connections from Norway created a scavenger hunt for 250 people to play in a small northern city of Norway called Tromsø.

We asked one of the instructors, Barbara, for some insight into how creating games online and having people play them on smart devices works for her everyday job. She has been creating the customized games for clients and venues, as well as conducting the games, interacting with players and wrapping the whole thing up.

-What are the things that Loquiz has changed in the way you work? Is there anything you miss about old fashioned paper-compass-GPS game creation and conducting?

It has changed the way we prepare events quite a bit. After the learning and implementation period, the process has become a lot faster because everything happens online and it is easier to do changes in the games and venues they are held. Loquiz helps us create games that are more detailed for our client’s needs. On the basic level it has cut the game preparation time 10-fold. Also, using this high tech platform for creating team games on tablet computers is a new concept and a great selling point for the clients.

I do think that the old paper games will continue to be around, but maybe more as a premium-vintage offer.  There is little point in running games on GPS devices – tablets have all the necessary properties for running games plus some added advantages.

Editing questions an their locations online

View of game map in tablet device

-How much do your clients want to collaborate when a new game is created? Has using the Loquiz collaboration feature changed how much clients are involved in the game creation phase?

Every client wants to have a game that is somehow unique to them and some questions related to their company. Loquiz enables clients to enter their own questions directly into the system, so no e-mails required. I have learnt to let the client know about this option very early during the communication, otherwise our contact will stay at the e-mail exchange level.

-What types of questions were used most in the game in Norway: classic multiple answer, photo hunt , picture puzzles and why?

Multiple choice is the most widely used question type. The reasons are that it is clearly understandable for the player, it covers a wide array of possible questions, it is easier to answer (no need to type letters in), and it can be made fun by adding some clearly wrong and amusing answers.

In this game the questions were integrated in the sense that in many places videos and photos were shown. Sometimes within the game, sometimes in the locations by other people. One goal was to make the participants actually talk to the people in locations, so a lot of the questions were meant to guide players to interact with the outside world.

-This game had multiple locations with many questions. How well did the GPS connectivity preform in urban environment?

The city does not pose big challenges for the GPS. The challenge was that Tromsø is so far north. Positioning is weaker near poles because of the satellite orbits. Also the game was half indoors and half outdoors. It made devices loose position every now and then completely.  Loquiz handles this well – you can make questions open indoors and if the satellite reception is poor it avoids opening outside locations so you do not get those false opens.

-How was the data connectivity? Did the feature of “offline” work?

Data connectivity was ok. So the game started, all the teams appeared online and got going and after a while one team did not seem to move anymore. Usually when the connectivity is lost it reappears at some stage and info gets updated. Players will never notice.

But it did not happen for this device. So we actually thought that the team probably gave up playing. But when everybody finished we saw from the device that team actually played entire game without noticing that they were not connected. Devices data connection had crashed and it never returned, so we updated team’s data after they were finished and there was no loss in the game.

-Loquiz app side has different languages to choose from, did you use English or Norwegian version of the app?

It was a full Norwegian language game. Questions were in Norwegian and also the application was in Norwegian language. We worked together with Connections to create Norwegian language content and this was a huge effort from their side as well.

– How important for you was the feature of live overview of playing team’s progress and getting results instantly?

This was not a major need there. It was more for the instructors to check that the game is flowing on as it should. We did not show it live on a big screen.

This article was published originally in Event Industry News on 26.03.2015