Context
As an ever-expanding player in the publishing world, News Corp Australia needed to boost their user engagement while reaching a wider audience that already amounted to millions of unique visitors a month. Together with News Corp Australia, we created an engaging multi-user platform for trivia players, capturing a vast number of daily users and driving up the rate of return in the company’s portfolio, and rewarding players for their knowledge of daily news and general knowledge.
Challenge
The trivia game platform came with requirements that were both personal and business-orientated.
Firstly, we needed to deliver a fun, enjoyable way for players to test their general knowledge to see who’s the trivia master. To make it happen, we designed a game mechanic that had a competitive, re-playable aspect to it, encouraging daily usage, as well as actual knowledge enhancement amongst players.
Secondly, we had to embed the quiz platform into News Corp’s existing infrastructure – something that no other third-party had done before.
Solution
We designed the trivia platform as a lead-generator product, rewarding users for the more correct answers they know, by offering them points and subscriptions to the business’ mastheads, as well as a chance to win cash prizes.
During development, we maintained an ‘always agile’ working style via daily scrums, regular demonstrations of new features and builds, as well as collaborative working sessions both remote and face-to-face in Sydney. Working this way allowed us to deep-dive into existing News Corp environments, involving both QUALITANCE and client development teams.
Team collaboration was absolutely crucial across both companies; by operating a ‘one team, two companies’ policy – with regular emails, Hangouts, Confluence and Jira usage – we maintained a united way of working from project kick-off. This deliberate effort to create ‘one team’ enabled us to work collaboratively and achieve the best results together.
Core features & technologies
Registration driver
New users register in the platform via News Corps’ existing Auth0 system. Each user has private settings and a public handle for leaderboards.
Lead generation
New users sign up for news.com.au and get funnelled into the News Corp lead generation program, enabling the business to target them with relevant products.
Addictive gameplay
The questions are based on recent news, encouraging website traffic. The logic of the gameplay creates an openness that motivates ‘newbies’ to try it out, and the time limit makes it addictive enough for them to return daily to continue advancing levels.
Scoring system
Each user receives points based on correct answers, with scoring increments based on themed quizzes as well as increasing difficulty. These scores are collated over the player lifetime, enabling them to unlock new levels and higher scores.
Cash prizes
Points enable users to win a cash prize, with the application gathering the user’s ThinkID that allows News Corp’s editors to randomly draw a winner.
Quiz management system
The proprietary back-end admin tool enables the administrators at News Corp to create and edit a quiz before posting it to players. The back-end allows QUALITANCE and News Corp to easily manage users and access a database history report of how players are engaging with the platform. Additionally, leaderboards and placement for sponsors and brands can be created to accommodate unique paid-for engagements in the future.
With ‘In The Know’ live in the market and being played by users, QUALITANCE and News Corp Australia are able to listen to what features the players want most and continue improving the experience. With a backlog of new features in the pipeline, designed to maximize the playability as well as subscription-opportunity with users, ‘In The Know’ will only get better and better. This is only the beginning of the game.
