Forza Horizon - Escape the Grid

  • September - 2012

One of my last Xbox.com projects was also one of the most successful. The Escape the Grid campaign for Forza Horizon was a social media campaign driven by live coverage from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter and resulted in being nominated for an MVC award for audience engagement in 2013.

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One of my last Xbox.com projects was also one of the most successful and rewarding. The 'Escape the Grid' campaign for video game 'Forza Horizon' was a social media campaign driven around live coverage from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Escape the Grid - Event Info
Escape the Grid - Event Info

The 'Escape the Grid' campaign was a complete Single-Page Application to promote the Xbox 360 title 'Forza Horizon'. The web experience itself consisted of a three phase embargo consisting of pre-release awareness (and promotional competitions), live news during the week of release (by means of a promotional tour around the uk). And finally post-release advertising of the game and it's DLC.

Escape the Grid - Video Player
Escape the Grid - Video Player

My role on the project was the building of the web experience for the project. Taking the cut up design and utilizing the facebook, YouTube and twitter APIs to provide an all-in-one experience for the end user.

Escape the Grid - Facebook Gallery
Escape the Grid - Facebook Gallery

The facebook api integration was used throughout the campaign, with the team on the promotional tour providing media coverage which was posted to facebook and then consumed by the single-page application.

Escape the Grid - Road Trip
Escape the Grid - Road Trip

As well as live coverage from social media, I was also responsible for consuming another REST endpoint to monitor location on the road trip, giving live location updates to the users (as well as a points scoreboard from the cars which that were competing in a series of challenges).

Escape the Grid - Post Launch
Escape the Grid - Post Launch

The 'Escape the Grid' campaign was a massive success for the launch of 'Forza Horizon' and one of the most interactive web projects I had been involved in at the time. As a result, the Escape the Grid campaign ended up being nominated for an MVC award in Jan 2013 for audience engagement.

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