9/12/2023 0 Comments Rare safeway monopolyCollection in particular has a wide range of possible interfaces to display progress, from counters (31/45 berries collected) to progress bars to percentages to 1-3 stars being lit up… Safeway Monopoly failed on so many counts with this, which could have been easily solved by cleaner, more visually descriptive board and game piece designs. Games should provide players with a good way of tracking how well they are doing. The board was so confusing, just take a look at how the pieces are laid out. Game pieces each had a complexlabel and no good visual indication of where they should be on the board. This led to a very frustrating gameplay experience, resulting in me writing down all the labels of the game pieces I needed and cross checking the list rather than looking at the board. ![]() There were no colours to help players match sets, or visual indications for which set corresponded to which prize. Game pieces and their spots were labelled by a combination of letters and numbers with no apparent rhyme or reason, like “9J39C” or “8Z05E”, and had pictures of brands on them, presumably for sponsorship or brand awareness reasons. Providing a really confusing collection interface (the Monopoly board and pieces)Ĭollecting is about progression and completion of sets, and the Safeway Monopoly board was confusing beyond anything I’ve ever seen, with no way of judging how well you were doing, or even figuring out where to place a game piece, at a glance. Not winning the lottery is more expected, and thus less of a letdown, than not winning a small prize from Safeway Monopoly after investing lots of time, money and effort in the latter.Ģ. For example, many people play the lottery, where the expectation to win is naturally low, but the small chance that winning is possible makes playing attractive. However, if winning is not possible for a large portion of the players, games can still reduce the amount of disappointment by lowering expectations while maintaining that tiny glimmer of hope. Winning feels great, and that’s why a lot of games guarantee a win or an end state for a given amount of effort. Games should provide players with realistic expectations. This is absolutely not true, so more often than not, the player experiences disappointment and frustration, like I did. Still, this means that shoppers who participate in Safeway Monopoly have the expectation that after attaining a certain number of tickets through their effort at shopping a lot, they must be guaranteed a win, even if just a tiny one, because the odds couldn’t have been that bad. Encouraging players to “play” something they actually have no chance of winningĮveryone knows that the odds of winning the $1 million top prize are slim, but the smaller prizes seem attainable, even though it’s common knowledge that the odds are in the company’s control, with fewer of one ticket per set being printed. Playing Safeway Monopoly got me thinking about collection mechanics in games because of how poorly they were implemented in the design of this promotional event. In my frustration, I took a step back to analyse the problems with this form of “gamified” marketing. ![]() Safeway Monopoly (like the iterations of McDonald’s Monopoly I’d played with a fervour before it) left me feeling disappointed at having wasted my time tearing up game pieces, trying to stick them in the correct places on a convoluted board, and finding out that I was just one ticket away from most of the smaller prizes. I wasn’t holding out hope for the $1 million cash or the vacation home, but given that I had hundreds of game pieces by the end of the promotion, I was confident I’d get something, even just a $5 Safeway gift card. Since I had so many game pieces, I decided to give it a go, convinced that I would come away with at least one prize from the collection of sets of pieces, since collecting all pieces of a given set would win you the corresponding prize. ![]() a free bagel, or 50% off sour cream) and four game pieces to place on a Safeway Monopoly board. I had to do the shopping for a couple of big events, so at the cash register after some large purchases I was given stacks of Safeway Monopoly tickets, each a little paper packet from which you tear out a coupon that’s possibly an Instant Winner (e.g. From February to April this year, Safeway ran its Monopoly promotion.
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