About Routes

 

 Project Summary

Routes was a transmedia educational thriller
commissioned by Channel 4 Education
in the UK, with additional funding from The
Wellcome Trust.  It was
produced by Oil Productions. Routes launched
on Jan. 29, 2009 and ran for eight weeks.
The goal was to engage teens, particularly teen girls, with science content.

The experience revolved around a central portal site, RoutesGame.com, as well as several
other blogs, websites, and social media networks. The project consisted of four major pieces:

• Weekly
  minigames demonstrating scientific processes like heredity and the spread
  of an infectious disease through sneezing.

•  A
  documentary piece following
  award-winning comedian Katherine Ryan as she had a DNA test performed and
  grappled with what the results meant for her and her future children.

• An alternate
  reality game that allowed players to help teenager Rachel Burren and
  journalist Matt Blacker solve the mystery of why bioscientist Marcus Schoenberg
  – Rachel’s uncle – was murdered.

• Weekly
  recap webisodes covering the events in the alternate reality game to make
  them accessible for a wider audience.

Numbers

• Over half
  a million unique viewers to date


• Minigames have been played over 23 million times


• 40%
  of players were in the target audience (teens in the UK)


• The total
  production budget was £800,000

Awards

Routes has taken home a number of awards:

• The 2010 IVCA
  Gold in the Web 2.0 category


• The
  2010 IVCA Grand Prix


• A 2009 BIMA
  in the Interactive - Content category

Routes has also been shortlisted or nominated for several
others:

• 2010 Rockie
  Award for Original Online Program (not yet awarded)


• The Prix
  Jeunesse International 2010 Interactivity Prize (not yet awarded)


• BIMAs in
  the categories of Online - Website, Informational, and Children's - Interactive


• 2009 BAFTA
  for Best Children's Interactive


• 2010 MediaGuardian
  Innovation Award for Use of Web Platforms


• UK Writer's
  Guild award

Plot

Routes was launched as a traditional games portal and documentary.
The characters of Matt and Rachel attended the launch party in-character;
they each had a web presence established well before the run of the game.

During the party,
Rachel discovered that her uncle, Markus
Schoenberg – one of the science advisors for the Routes game portal – had
been murdered, launching the murder
mystery component of the experience.

In real time and via
several media, Rachel and Matt investigated Markus’s death. The community of players helped them translate
Portuguese police reports, infiltrate an unscrupulous private security company,
help an informant escape kidnapping, and more.

Ultimately, they pieced
together the facts: Markus had stumbled on a plot in which the Prometha, a
bioscience company, was paying a field agent to obtain illegal DNA samples of
protected plants and animals from Brazil. This agent’s actions inadvertently
wiped out an indigenous tribe, the Murutaibo, by infecting them with measles.
When Markus found out, he was killed to
keep the secret.

In the experience’s finale, players participated in live chat and watched security camera footage in real time as the characters and a select few players broke into
Prometha’s labs to obtain concrete proof.

Media Used

Routes made heavy use of blogs, websites, email, and social media to tell the story. Characters had a social presence on
Facebook, Bebo, and YouTube, and
responded to comments and emails – usually within
a few hours. A few sample links
and sites include:

• The main website: http://www.routesgame.com


• Rachel Burren’s weblog: http://www.rachcon1.com 


•  Matt Blacker’s website: http://www.mattblacker.co.uk


• DEPAA, a fictional environmentalist group: http://www.depaa.org


• Prometha, a fictional pharmaceutical company: http://www.prometha.co.uk

Several Levels of Participation

Throughout the experience, players were given the
opportunity to engage with the content
and story on several levels, as much
or as little as they chose.

• Watching the weekly documentary and ARG recap webisodes


• Playing minigames
  on the main portal site


• Helping and communicating
  with several characters as the story unfolded, even becoming another
  character in the story


• Exploring online content by following clues and discovering new websites


• Attending
  live events, including a launch party and a comedy show


• Assisting
  both online and on location with a finale raid on a bioscience lab to
  obtain evidence of the murderer’s crimes

Andrea Phillips

My role in this project was lead interaction designer. In this role, I performed several key tasks:

• Architecting
  the structure of the interactive experience


• Designing specifications for the games portal and minigame mechanics


•  Scripting the flow and sequence for all live events


• Writing
  specifications and copy for websites


• Defining all
  social media elements


• Responding
  to player activity across all social media


• Tracking
  audience response to fine-tune the experience as necessary

 For more information on me, take a look at my complete interactive resume and my availability page.