TM CNY Open House

Leveraging on the increasing volume of users on FB who like simulated games with customisable avatars, we developed a 2nd generation social media game called TM CNY Open House, which builds on the success of our previous TM Raya Open House app. We understood that the importance of family reunions during the festive season, so we created an app for those who are abroad to attend a virtually simulated ‘reunion’.

The Challenge

To develop an app for the festive season in line with TM’s Everyone Connects tagline, while highlighting their product services.

The Big Idea

We utilised artificial intelligence(AI) technology to reflect users’ actions in the app. Visiting with friends and family at their homes is an important Chinese New Year tradition that highlights prosperity, fortune and warm hospitality during festive gatherings. Our app lets users create customisable, festive-looking avatars that interact in expandable virtual houses. To build their avatars and virtual houses, users earn credits and experience points by serving guests with traditional Chinese delicacies of stuffed dumplings, Wu Long Tea and fortune cookies. Users may also decorate their virtual houses, another element of Chinese New Year, and items such Chinese lanterns, plum blossom, paper cuttings, and mandarin oranges are part of the game play to represent prosperity, happiness and good fortune. Users can visit each other's virtual homes over the internet, no matter how far they are apart in real life. Thus, our TM CNY Open House environment showcases TM's tagline ‘everyone connects’. Once a guest visits a user's virtual home, an automated message is posted to his/her wall to say thank you, to gain exposure and generate more plays.