MINI Getaway In Stockholm Vs Halo Oddball

This really interesting mixed reality game for MINI came out a few days ago. You use your iPhone to virtually steal the Mini and if you are ‘holding’ onto it at the end of the game you win it. For real.

Check the video.

They’ve also create a neat little google maps mashup showing the location of the Mini and where the players are.

On the surface it sounds like loads of fun, and I wish I could play the game to try out the design as I’ve got quite a few questions on how it plays out.

I can’t help wonder that they might have got the game mechanic slightly wrong. Basically this game is Halo Oddball played out in the real world but there is one key difference. In Oddball, the winner of the game is the person who has held onto the ball for the longest.

When you have the ball you can’t fire so you have to run like a headless chicken away from the hordes of people after you. When you don’t have the ball, everyone is piling in to get the ball. It’s a really skillful and tactical game and one you can be winning and losing every other second – This game is just total carnage.

With the Mini game, as the winner is the person who is holding onto the car at the end, there really isn’t any gameplay advantage for me to go get the car until near the very end. They’ve made the game area quite small and the prize large, so people will be stealing the car off each other but I just think if they’ve used the Oddball scoring system the game would have had a much better game dynamic.

You could argue that by making the game the way they did, they made it easy for new players to join at any time. Pro’s and con’s to both but I think the game would have relied on a lot more skill and cunning the Oddball way rather than just being ‘lucky’ to be the person who has the car at the end of the game.

This isn’t a criticism of their idea as it is brave, on brand and on strategy. Big plaudits to everyone who worked so hard on it as we need more of this type of work.

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