Conceptualize

Sophisticated Audience: The game was to be released in five hard-core “football” countries: UK, Germany, France, Mexico, and Spain. We knew that the game had to be based in reality to satisfy this audience. We put our two biggest soccer fans on the project to make sure that the design of the game environment was on target. Every detail including the aspect ratios of the goal versus the kicker had to be spot-on.

Playful Game-Play: Actual penalty shoot-outs are played based on the kicker’s stats and a little bit of luck. The goalie uses his knowledge of how the kicker plays to plan his defense. We knew that stats wouldn’t play a role in this game in this buddy versus buddy Windows Live Messenger game. In order to add more fun to the game play, we knew we had to add some strategy. We slowed down the speed of the ball and restricted the play areas of the goalie to 5 areas to allow the goalie some additional response time and add a little strategic edge.

Execute

Reinforcing Brand Integrity: Adidas spends millions of dollars on their ad campaigns. Plexi had to make sure that our game was in-line to reinforce the rest of their campaign. Adidas’ Tunit had a great look and feel that we were able to take advantage of in our game design. We rotoscoped video of local soccer players to create a design-heavy but realistic game environment.

Dodging Technology Constraints: Developers have to be extra careful when they engineer games for Instant Messenger; users can be connected via dial-up all the way up to a T1 and can play on many types of computer configurations. We used our proprietary 3D Flash engine to create camera pans to add substantial visual interest without impacting the performance of the application too drastically. "

Measure

Exceptional Results: The game garnered over 13 million plays in the two months it was live. It was such a success that the Microsoft Advertising case study calls it “one of the most successful online games in the world.”