Arcade & Meta launch filter for gold-winning garden at Chelsea Flower Show

The Arcade social media AR team has been hard at work on an experience for a very good cause and is delighted to introduce the Rare Space Garden, an Instagram filter designed to give people all around the world a chance to understand some of the principles behind designing a garden for sufferers of rare forms of visual dementia.

The filter was launched to coincide with the famous Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show where the real Rare Space Garden, designed by Charlie Hawkes, was unveiled this week. Charlie’s dementia-friendly design wowed judges and was awarded a coveted Gold medal, as well as Best Sanctuary Garden and Best Construction. The accompanying Instagram filter was designed to give audiences everywhere a small flavour of the process Charlie went through, before inviting them to step into the finished garden via a series of 360 images captured onsite before the show opened to the public.

Meta en The National Brain Appeal approached Arcade earlier in the year and asked if we would partner with them to bring the garden to life in AR for Instagram users everywhere, and we were only too happy to oblige.

“Arcade is all about connecting people to place through play, so when Meta asked us to create a fun and educational world effect filter for this phenomenal cause – and equally fabulous garden – we couldn’t possibly refuse,” said Arcade Co-Founder Alex Book.

“Filters are so often focused on the front camera, augmenting users’ faces in brilliant and hilarious ways, but for us the rear camera and the way it fosters engagement with the world around us is such a fascinating and still under-explored approach. We’re so grateful to the brilliant teams at Meta and The National Brain Appeal for trusting us to bring the Rare Space Garden to Instagram audiences all around the world, and hope we have done justice to their vision.”

Instagram users can try the Rare Space Garden experience on your mobile device by tapping hier. Share your photos from the garden and don’t forget to tag #rarespacegarden!

The Ritual of Sakura pop-up launches in Covent Garden

Arcade partnered with leading experiential agency Backlash to create an immersive pop-up experience for beauty brand Rituals in London’s Covent Garden.

We were asked to design a WebAR experience that ‘Celebrates New Beginnings’, immersing visitors into the world of the new ‘The Ritual of Sakura’ skincare range through a celebration of the Japanese Sakura blossom.

The experience was built using 8th Wall and incorporated a series of scannable markers that triggered different AR experiences, all to a soothing ambient oriental soundtrack.

After catching falling blossoms, discovering sakura-inspired poems, capturing selfies against the scenic backdrop, exploring the Rituals of Sakura range and finally playing a blossom mini-game, visitors end by following the Rituals Instagram account and being rewarded with a brand goody bag for taking part.

Over 1000 visitors to the pop-up enjoyed the experience over the three days it ran and engaged with a smaller version across five stores local to the area.

Penny Grivea, Managing Director of Rituals UK & Ireland, said, “We want to help people improve their wellbeing and focus on harmonising their body, mind, and soul. Our immersive experience celebrates the notion of new beginnings, and Springtime is the perfect opportunity to re-prioritize ourselves, reset our routines and look ahead positively towards the next bright chapter.”

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Glastonbury Stories launches at Glastonbury Abbey

We are thrilled to announce that our latest immersive adventure, Glastonbury Stories, has launched at the world famous Glastonbury Abbey.

Glastonbury Abbey attracts over 100,000 visitors each year and is famous for its stories spanning millennia, including Joseph of Arimathea and the legends of King Arthur – including his possible burial site within the ruined abbey. Glastonbury Stories invites abbey visitors to embark on a quest through time, exploring its rich, evocative history as they journey across the site.

Our adventure casts visitors in the role of a visting pilgrim, following in the footsteps of so many before them. But their task is about more than making the pilgrimage. You see, Glastonbury Abbey is a special place, a thin place, where time does not work in the same way as elsewhere.

You can reach back, and history can reach forward. Medieval artefacts, voices of the past, and even long-lost buildings may slip through portals in time to the present day.

Those who to take up this quest will overhear conversations from long ago and help return lost artefacts to their proper owners, healing these rifts in time. Some may even get a precious glimpse back through time to ghostly echoes of the buildings that once so proudly stood on the site.

So head down to Glastonbury Abbey today, immerse yourself in its astonishing history and, if you dare, take on the challenge of keeping the abbey and its stories safe for generations to come.

The Glastonbury Stories app is free to download and use, and is available on the app stores now. For more details and to download the app on iOS or Android please visit the Glastonbury Abbey website hier.

Arcade to attend SXSW with UK Trade Mission

We are very excited to announce that Arcade will be returning to SXSW in 2023. Having debuted at the event in 2022 with our GPT3-driven interactive episodic series, Alone Together, we are heading back this year as part of the prestigious UK Trade Mission with the Department for Business and Trade.

As well as demo-ing some of our latest work, we will be part of the roundtable discussion, “How Creative Tech Deepens Place-Based Experience” on March 12 at UK House, the home for the best of British at SXSW.

Find out more about the Trade Mission and see what’s on at UK House hier.

You will also find the team at Niantic‘s SXSW HQ showcasing, amongst other things, our Lightship-driven game, Bazaar, designed to create new reasons for communities to engage with local bricks-and-mortar retail.

Bazaar was developed in partnership with Niantic, in response to their ‘Revitalising the High Street’ challenge as part of Digital Catapult’s recent Futurescope programme.

You can read more about Bazaar hier, but if you’re headed to Austin and want to see it in action (or possibly even collect some drops and claim a prize or two) then let us know!

The team will be in town from March 10-14, and hope to see as many of you there as we can at UK House, Niantic or just out and about at SXSW.

Livvy Hinkin and Jon Meggitt presenting Bazaar at Digital Catapult

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Bazaar demonstrator launched at Digital Catapult

The Arcade team was out in force at Digital Catapult last week, showcasing Bazaar at the culmination of Niantic’s wonderful Futurescope programme to over a hundred representatives from across the UK tech and innovation sectors.

Having been selected to partner with Niantic on the ‘Revitalising the High Street’ challenge, we had spent the past few months furiously innovating, putting the new Lightship ARDK to work in the creation of a new type of experience designed to give shoppers a new reason to return to local bricks-and-mortar retail environments.

The result was a prototype that we were very proud to show off to the assembled audience. The film below was played on stage, in which Arcade Co-Founders Jon Meggitt and Alex Book introduced the Bazaar concept and explained its potential impact.

Jon was joined on stage by Client Services Director Livvy Hinkin, who introduced Bazaar’s imagined storyworld in which there is more to High Streets than meets the eye.

In our game, they are special, important places, connected by an ancient magical network. But the magic has started to seep out into the world, and it is up to us to find and return the ‘drops’ to the shops that need their power. Find enough, and reunite them with the shops they came from, and the owners will show their gratitude in the form of free goods, discounts and other rewards.

Livvy Hinkin and Jon Meggitt take the stage at Digital Catapult

POSITIVE EARLY SIGNS

As part of the demonstrator we ran a test week, in which we set up controlled Bazaar testbeds across three high streets, including the recruitment of ten testers and three real world ‘drop shops’ in each location, tasked with putting Bazaar through its paces.

Livvy also took the audiences through the headlines from our research. The feedback was very encouraging, with hundreds of drops collected including the limited edition ‘timed’ drops that had testers racing to get there first. Interest in the full version, should it be developed and launched, was universal. But the most important metric was undoubtedly the impact it could have on people’s propensity to increase engagement with their local high streets, with 91% of testers reporting that they would be more likely to visit as a result of Bazaar.

You can read more about Bazaar in Digital Catapult’s comprehensive post hier.

A FABULOUS EXPERIENCE

But whatever the future holds for Bazaar, our involvement in the Niantic Futurescope programme was one of the most valuable and rewarding experiences we have had to date.

The chance to partner with Niantic, the shining light at the forefront of the ‘real world metaverse’ (to use the phrase they coined), was everything we hoped it would be and we cannot thank them enough for their support, encouragement and enthusiasm at every step of the journey.

One of our biggest learnings is that Niantic, through the Lightship platform, is set to drive the mass scale integration of AR into our everyday lives. We at Arcade are committed to being a part of that journey, and we cannot wait to where it takes us.

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT BAZAAR, GET IN TOUCH

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Arcade launches Zog trail with Magic Light Pictures and Forestry England

Introducing Zog: A Forest Adventure!

We are delighted to announce the launch of our latest immersive experience, Zog: A Forest Adventure, created with Magic Light Pictures for Forestry England.

Using the very latest augmented reality technology, the free app brings to life lovable dragon Zog and some of his friends from the much-loved Zog film, based on the picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, as children and their families follow new interactive trails at 26 Forestry England sites across the country.

Launching on 30 January, the self-led trails encourage children to get exploring and learn more about forests and the trees, plants and wildlife they contain. Featuring lots of bonus activities, the Zog: A Forest Adventure app gives users the chance to interact with the 3D characters from the film as they discover how they can care for the forest and how the forests can care for them in return.

Inspired by the beloved books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Zog: A Forest Adventure invites children to join the dragon, Zog, and his friends on a thrilling journey through the forest. After downloading the app, kids can follow a trail and complete a series of exciting challenges that are brought to life through the magic of AR.

We are proud to have partnered with Magic Light Pictures, the creators behind the successful Gruffalo Spotter apps, to bring this experience to life. Zog: A Forest Adventure is the perfect way to get out into the great outdoors and we can’t wait for families to explore the forests and discover the world of Zog and his friends.

Alex Sanson, Senior Brand Manager at Magic Light said: “Forestry England sites offer the perfect classroom for budding little dragons. The new Zog trails offer a great opportunity to young explorers to learn about all the wonderful ways our forests can look after us and how we can look after them. The AR app adds a fun extra element so that children can explore the character, the story and the forest in a new way.”

Venture into the forest to meet Zog and his friends!

Jon Meggitt, CEO at Arcade said: “Several of us at Arcade have young children and know first-hand just how much Zog means to them. Bringing him and his friends to life in magical AR, and giving families even more reasons to get out into forests across the country, has been one of the most exciting and rewarding projects we have worked on. We’re very proud of the result and can’t wait to see all the little dragons earning their golden stars just like Zog!”

The Zog app adds an exciting extra dimension to the hugely popular Zog family forest trails, and follows the runaway success of Magic Light’s BAFTA-nominated Gruffalo Spotter apps, originally launched with Forestry England in 2017.

The Zog: A Forest Adventure app is available from from 30 January 2023. For more details and to download the app for free on iOS or Android please visit https://www.forestryengland.uk/zog.

Alone Together to demo at Belfast XR Festival

Alone Together has been selected as one of ten stories and experiences to display at the inaugural Belfast XR Festival on Wednesday 9th November.

We are thrilled to be joining some of the world’s leading immersive talents as we present the results of one of our most exciting, creative and innovative partnerships to date with the incomparable Dustin Harvey, Koumbie en Taylor Olson.

Alone Together is an experiment in episodic immersive drama. It uses advanced AI, voice recognition and cutting edge hologram production to depict a near future in which audiences are cast as a rented family member, procured to help their hosts deal with the challenges of everyday life including guilt, anxiety and loss.

Try it yourself at Belfast XR Festival, or get in touch with the team to find out more.

Belfast XR Festival is part of the Belfast Film Festival which runs from 3 to 12 November 2022.

Tickets available hier.

Arcade selected to build experience for the real-world metaverse with Niantic

The Arcade team is over the moon to announce that we are one of three immersive studios selected to build new experiences for the real-world metaverse by Niantic en Digital Catapult.

Having been shortlisted several months ago, we poured all of our creative and technical know-how into a concept we were incredibly proud of, and pitched to the Niantic and Digital Catapult teams at the end of August.

It was an anxious wait, as the prize was an incredible opportunity to partner with Niantic, the world’s leading voice in the consumer-facing augmented reality space, and use their new Lightship platform to push the boundaries of mobile immersive experience. The news came through a few weeks ago but we are finally able to reveal to the world that we won, and we couldn’t be happier!

We are in excellent company alongside No Ghost en Mobile Pie, each studio taking on a different challenge. No Ghost will be working with Studio Wayne McGregor to build a demonstrator that empowers self-expression through movement. Mobile Pie will be extending Cartoon Network’s highly successful mobile game ToonCup into the real world. And we will be working directly with Niantic to develop a digital experience designed to bring people back to the high street.

The prize was a chance to partner with Niantic, creators of Pokemon GO

BAZAAR

Our concept’s working title is Bazaar. It is a digital game with real world rewards, centred around the UK’s thousands of high streets, with a goal of motivating millennial and Gen-Z audiences to re-engage with bricks-and-mortar retail environments.

Bazaar imagines a world in which there is more to High Streets than meets the eye. They are special, important places, connected by an ancient magical network. But the magic has started to seep out into the world, and it is up to us to find and return the ‘drops’ to the shops that need their power. Find enough, and reunite them with the shops they came from, and the owners will show their gratitude in the form of free goods, discounts and other rewards.

High Streets are connected by an ancient magical network - will you find and return the drops that have seeped out into the world?

The first step for all three studios commissioned by this Digital Catapult accelerator is to produce a ‘demonstrator’ – a non-public app that allows test audiences to experience the core gameplay elements of our respective concepts. These will land in early 2023 and could, if everything goes well, pave the way for further phases of development.

But whatever awaits for Bazaar, the next few months ought to be pretty special. Watch this space – and your local high street – for more news soon!

Read the full press release hier, and get in touch with the team if you want to learn more about the real-world metaverse.

Meet Dan!

The wonderful and alliterative Dan Dawkins joined Arcade earlier this year after impressing during his very successful internship.

To mark his first three months with the agency, Emma sat down with Dan to ask him about his journey to and with Arcade, what he is aiming to achieve in future, and any tips for anyone hoping to follow in his footsteps.

If you’ve got any questions for Dan, hit him up at dan@arcade.ltd. Arcade is always on the lookout for bright, talented, creative people, so if you’re interested in joining Dan and the rest of the agency, drop a note to careers@arcade.ltd.

The Hundred Cricket Attax Cards Brought To Life In AR

Many of us remember fondly the thrill of opening a new pack of stickers or cards, seeing which sporting heroes we had picked up this time. Got. Got. Need! Ooh, a shiny!

But how awesome would it have been for those players to leap up out of the cards and show off their skills right in front of us? Well, now they can!

A NEW KIND OF COLLECTIBLE

The world of collectible cards took leap into the future with the release of this year’s Topps Cricket Attax, a set of cards featuring all the superstars from The Hundred, cricket’s newest and most exciting competition.

Not only could fans build up their collection of players from all the teams, they could also see many of them leap up out of the cards and show off their signature skills in magical WebAR!

By simply scanning the QR code on the back of the limited edition cards, fans could open a special web page using just their mobile browser, and point their device at the card to unlock the player as a 3D avatar.

Enjoy watching the player show what makes them so special, pause or slow down the motions to get a unrivalled view of their techniques, and take a photo or video to keep and share.

MEET THE PLAYERS

Topps Cricket Attax AR was built on WebAR platform 8th Wall to complement ‘Meet The Players’, the ground-breaking AR experience that lets fans get even closer to the avatars via the Sky Sports and The Hundred apps.

Users can enjoy a whole variety of skills and even step through portals to visit the players’ home grounds! Learn more about Meet the Players, including the motion capture and avatar creation process hier.

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