How do I set up an Arcade game?

The following guide will walk you through how to set up your first Arcade game in Tradable Bits.

What you'll need:

Arcade unlocked.
Depending on your current plan, you may not automatically have access to the Arcade functionality. To unlock the Arcade feature within Tradable Bits, speak to your Customer Success Team!

What is Arcade?

Arcade is a suite of customizable arcade-style games that teams can use to engage with fans that are more interactive & more gamified. They're the perfect season-long engagement to amp up your addressable marketing contacts + build your database while delighting your fans with high replay-value games.  

Arcade has a GMS that teams can use to personalize each game to their brand and/or sponsor in minutes (white-labelled) + no code. 
The games can be distributed by embed, app or microsite.

Why use Arcade?

Physical inventory within sports is limited. Arcade is a way to jump into digital activations for sponsors, or just for your team with more room for storytelling, richer engagement and more dwell time and return plays.

In Arcade's inaugural launch, games averaged 4+mins of active dwell time (i.e. the fan is playing the game), and an average replay value of 6x per fan. Compare that with the minute it takes to fill out a sweepstakes campaign, or the 30 seconds of eyeball time on in-venue signage.

If you get 1000 fans playing a game, that's 24,000 minutes of attention or 16 days - and like our other campaign types - it's attention that you can track because you gain the fan data of every single player. 

When to use Arcade?

You can use Arcade as a pure season-long engagement play to up your addressable marketing leads for your business, however, we’ve seen the best success using Arcade as an amplifier to existing storytelling initiatives your marketing team is working on.

What we mean by this:
On their own, each Arcade game is compelling enough to engage in and play again and again, but with through-line storytelling? Well, that’s where you see the magic happen.

Some examples of this could look like:

• Pairing up with a Sponsor over an initiative they’re running with your brand, like “if you score above x points, you get y” from us. Arcade should be part of a larger deal you’re running with the brand.
• Using the game as part of a community initiative - like the Trail Blazers, or Raptors did with their “3s for Trees” initiatives
• Turning an existing initiative that’s in-venue into an experience that all your fans can participate in.

Games Available on Arcade

Arcade Launch Checklist

How to make the most of your first Arcade Launch

1. Prizing

To make fans participate, you’ll need the right incentive. Our favourite types of incentives are those that drive repeat plays - so prizes associated with reasons your fans should aim for the leaderboard.

• Examples:
  • If you’re running the Arcade game over a specified period of time, perhaps you have smaller prizes that are available to fans who make it over a threshold of points, and then a larger prize to give out at the end (sweepstakes style), or,
  • You can tie points in the game directly to some wider outcome (i.e. every 3 point shot made in the game + every 3 point shot made on the court = tree planted).

2. Campaign Period

Have a clear start and end date in mind when launching an Arcade game, so you can have a clear idea of what promotion tactics you can commit to, and where to step in to “revive and repromote” longer campaign periods. As we said above, it’s easiest to plan an Arcade game to coincide and amplify your other existing tentpole marketing initiatives.

3. Distribution

Distribution is easily one of the most overlooked components of any successful campaign. What are you doing to drive fans to the game, and where are you meeting them at?

We recommend the following as a base-level strategy for distribution:

• Launch your game in-app (or drive to one of your owned properties so you can increase downloads),
• Include clear notifications on your app, on your website and any other owned channel.
• Use your socials (paid or otherwise) to amplify your distribution so every fan who wants to know, can reach your game.
• If you’re running a game to amplify an existing season-long in-venue engagement, post up the game on QR codes throughout the venue.

4. Choosing Winners

Just like the way you choose your prizing and incentives can impact how engaged fans are throughout the campaign period, so to can your “requirements for choosing a winner.” Play around with different ways to pick the winners - whether it’s the highest point scorer during a campaign period, a randomized draw from the top 10% of scorers, or even a “threshold” to enter into a draw to win prizes.

5. Arcade Builds - What to start with

• Prioritize setting up official rules & terms + conditions first. Building the campaign will go quickly, getting your TOC's and Official Rules approved often takes the longest.
• Follow the Design Guidelines to let your design team know what they need to build. ARCADE follows the same formula as other Tradable Bits campaigns for the landing and thank you pages.

HOW TO SET UP AN ARCADE GAME

1. Overview: What the Arcade user flow looks like:

Arcade consists of 6 different stages:

• The Landing Page + Data Collection: (the same campaign landing page you can set up for any Tradable Bits campaign). This is where you can call out Prizing, Timelines and Rules for the game before the fan plays. It’s also the “data collection” point where the fan has to fill in their details
• Splash Page: This is the “initializing/loading” page, which you can brand. (Optional)
• Game Homepage: This is the main landing page for the Arcade game. This homepage includes instructions on how to play, and a link to what the prize is (if you’ve configured this section). From here, the fan clicks in to play.
• Scoreboard Page: Once the fan has played through the game and gets a score, they’ll land on the “scoreboard” page wher ethey can see how they did. Here, they can submit their score for the chance to win a prize.
• Thank You Page: This is the last page that a fan lands on and it follows the format of all Tradable Bits campaign “Thank You” Pages, where you can include a final CTA for fans.

2. Configuring Arcade

This section will walk through configuration that is the same across all game-types

General Setup

Like all Tradable Bits campaigns, use this section to:

• Name your Arcade Game (internal and external facing names),
• Label your campaign for better segmentation later on (if you’re running a sponsored Arcade Game, label the game with your sponsor’s name, so you can report on all sponsored campaigns in the future). For Labelling use-cases, visit this guide.
• Set the start and end date and timezone
• Choose how you want fans to authenticate
• Set limits on entries
• Pick what data you’d like to collect from fans on your entry form
• Set up your opt-ins for email (to the business or to the whole account)
• Set your Terms & Conditions, Official Rules & Privacy Policy (you can inherit these from the business level to speed things up)

Configuration

This section is where you choose your Arcade Type. This is the game that you’d like to set up. All available games in your package will be available to choose from a drop-down.

This is also where you can choose to add a Leaderboard by toggling on the “Display Leaderboard on Thank You Page” toggle.

Once you choose your Arcade Type, you cannot change it. If you want to switch Arcade Types, please create a new campaign. This is because the content section for each game is slightly different, meaning that switching Arcade Types would reset all of your work in customizing/branding the game.

3. Filling out the Content Section

This tab is where all of your game specific configuration and custom branding will take place, including: Game Colours, Logos, Prizing Descriptions, etc. For all Game Types, you will set up the following:

General Game Settings

1. Game Settings: This is where you choose your “game type,” which is the version of the Arcade Type you want to set up. For example, some Arcade Games have a sport-specific version or a generic version.
2. Game Title: This defaults to the Arcade Type name, but you can change this game title to whatever fits your marketing initiative or branding
3. Sound Settings: Choose whether you enable sound and show a mute button to fans.

 

Team Settings

All Arcade Games consist of two major branding components - team colours and logos (i.e. your own brand), and sponsor/commercial partner colours and logos. This section is where you can upload your brand’s logos and background

Partner Settings

If you want to include commercial partner branding, this is where you can enable sponsor attributes and a sponsor tag. Upload your commercial partner’s logos and preferred background, and if you’d like, customize the sponsor tag that will appear on the game (i.e. brought to you by … [Sponsor name]).

Splash Page Settings

The splash page is what is displayed to fans right before the Game Page loads. Use this section to include the page in the fan-flow, and to set how long you want it up for

Game Page Settings

This is where you can toggle on and off specific functionality tied to each Arcade Game. Depending on which Arcade Game you are building, you may have many options, or just a few. These settings include things like ‘Time per Level,’ ‘Value of different balls’ ‘Words you want included’ and more.

Rule Page Settings

All Arcade Game Types include a “How to Play” section. Use this section in configuration to customize the instructions to fans and brand the language on the “How to Play” page.

Game Over Page Settings

All fun things eventually come to an end. Once your fan runs the course of the Arcade Game, they’re presented with a “Game Over” page. Use this section in configuration to customize your final CTA for fans once they reach the end of the game.

Prizing Page Settings

To give prizes, or to not give prizes… that is the question (we recommend including prizes). This section in configuration is where you enable a prizing page in your game or not. Customize the Prizing page with a title, description and even image of the coveted prize at your fans’ fingertips.

Colour Settings

This is where the game-specific branding happens. For your Landing Page and Thank You page, you will use the “Design Tab.”

Each Game type allows you to choose colours for common sections, like the UI Colour, Main Colour, Accent Colour, Ball Colours, CTA Text Colour and more. Depending on how specifically you want to brand your game, some sections also include Variants, which let you change the colour of more specific game elements.

To change the colour of Variants, click on the blue “Variant >” hyperlink.

Coming soon is a colour map for each game, so your designers can more easily picture which colour will go where in the final fan-facing version.

4. Landing Page & Thank You Page Configuration

Once you’ve filled out the content section for your Arcade game and are happy with it, click over to the design tab to customize the landing page, information collection page and thank you page on the campaign. This follows our regular format for all other campaign types within Tradable Bits, where you can enter a header, background colour, button colours etc.

5. All the Rest

From top-to-bottom work through the rest of the “Setup” Menu like you would with any other Tradable Bits campaign. This is where you set up things like the “share image + meta data,” include a virtual domain, set up tracking tags, and get the microsite address or native embed link.

 

And with that, you’re finished! You should now have a working example of Arcade up on your screen. You can embed the campaign on a website, in an app, or send fans to the campaign microsite.

 

Any outstanding questions? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or contact support@tradablebits.com