“People love game mechanics. We want to use that to make running exciting to a new group of people” Sam Hill & Ben Barker, PAN Studio

Tell us about your new idea, Run an Empire
Run an Empire is a game that runs through a smartphone app. It uses GPS to record the paths players take when out for a walk or run – local neighbourhoods will become new arenas for strategic play.
To control a territory, a player simply has to sprint, jog or saunter around it. For a competing player to capture it from them, they need to do the same – either faster or more often. Territory can be better protected from invasion by encircling it multiple times.

The key to success is dedication. The game is designed for people like us, not naturally gifted athletes – a slow player can beat a faster opponent if they show more determination.

Rather than a gamified fitness app, we see Run An Empire as a strategy game with sports-like, real-world elements. While there’s certainly a potential health benefit, which we’ll enrich as best we can with player analytics, what we’re really excited about seeing are the strategies players use to achieve victory.

What are your backgrounds?
PAN Studio is a design practice with a specific interest in developing enriching experiences that in some way impart intellectual, sensory or emotional value.

We make digital platforms and services that challenge how we live our lives and how we engage with existing systems. We believe that a collaborative, responsive approach leads to better results and products that audiences actually engage with.

Our background is in design and interaction, and game logic is something we try to apply to everything we design.

How did you come up with the idea?
The nub of the idea came in late 2012, while developing ideas for the first Playable City Award. We went on to develop Hello Lamp Post, but the theme of localised ‘ownership’, combined with play, came up several times.

Health and fitness apps, location and Quantified Self tools, and mobile games are three well-defined, heavily subscribed categories of smartphone app. What was beginning to form for us was the idea of something that worked across all three categories.

What do you hope to achieve with Run an Empire?
Sports can be somewhat divisive. Though the global market is worth billions of pounds, in the United States something like 60 per cent of adults simply “don’t like sports” at all (source: SIFA and ACTIVE Network, 2012).

But many sports possess an incredible culture, and playing them can tap a deep well of sensations and emotions – it’s a shame not to feel more involved with them. Run An Empire is an attempt to reconcile with the intentions behind sport – application of skill, social mediation and play – and make them applicable to a gaming generation.

Our big idea is getting people who don’t currently run, running. We know so many people love genuinely compelling game mechanics, and we want to use that to make running exciting to a whole new group of people.

At the same time, we hope we can show people who already run how powerful a strong game mechanic can be in rewarding them as players.