Digicel 8.99 Puzzle Game

The Back Story

The week was predictable until Digicel called. They wanted a game to launch their One Rate 8.99 Campaign, and fast. We were facing other deadlines so we were tentative in our response. Let’s see the brief before we commit, was my team’s consensus. Digicel told us firmly they absolutely must have something for Facebook on Friday, launch date for a huge cut in their prepaid cross-network rates to $8.99.

Aha! Time to meet. They sent a single rep, but half Panmedia’s staff crowded into the managing director’s small office. We made Alex Morrisson, Digicel’s Social Media Manager, break the game idea down, in digestible pieces.

It was a sexy idea, but we said in two days we could do only a prototype, then work over the weekend and deliver a finished product on Monday.

They reluctantly agreed. Even as we were writing the specifications we were designing and building the game and setting up the backend on our server. After estimate and sign off, we attacked the project vigorously. It was a tight timeline even with all the assets we had thrown behind the project.

A few hours later while at Chez Maria in a meeting, we get a call to scrap that game and consider a new one. This was a typical agency/client dilemma. Should we bail out, or show we are good troupers.

Digicel said the new game was simpler and should require less time. The team member who was in the meeting with me didn’t agree. But we decided to speak to another team member who was writing the Action Script for the Flash game.

Big problem. Couldn’t reach him on either of his phones. Digicel needed an answer, soon. So we cut short our meeting and headed home to sort out the issues.

While still trying to find the developer, there is tense back and forth with Digicel. We understand their reasons for the change, but we had already made some headway with the first game. Now we have to do a new design and throw out the backend work we had begun.

One of us was just about to drive to the home of the team member who was doing the Flash when he called. He agreed the new idea was more difficult to execute, but came up with a wonderful compromise. We told Digicel we would deliver something at launch that was workable, and later add other elements they wanted.

We must have been convincing because they told us to run with it. Another team member at home was trying to slice the puzzle from the image Digicel sent. After awhile, he realized it would take too long that way. We asked for an image without the puzzle lines drawn on it and used software to slice it.

Meanwhile, yet another team member wrote a description and Digicel sent us a disclaimer and game rules. The backend programming turned out to be a flurry of implementation and continuous testing to deal with the emerging requirements. The entire team worked diligently to bring Digicel’s specific branding requirements, security considerations and game functionality together into a workable prototype in under a day.

We had a momentary panic when we realized the release of the game is in the transition period for Facebook’s new Timeline layout. We contemplated doing it both ways, but, wisely, Digicel decided to install the new format at launch .