A NEW KIND OF CHALLENGE

As passionate advocates for the power of play, we love the opportunity to use it to tackle new and interesting challenges, and when Landsec U+I approached us, they came up with precisely that.

Landsec is the developer behind a masterplan proposal to redevelop Lewisham Town Centre, a large area packed with commercial, residential, and mixed-use public realm space.

As part of their public consultation, they have a dedicated website (morethanaplace.com) and a physical space (No.25, Lewisham Shopping Centre) through which they were hosting the community and encouraging young people to have an active voice in the future of their town.

Their challenge was to simultaneously engage younger audiences and young families in a new and exciting way whilst also allowing them to understand the impact and scale of the redevelopment – transforming the plans from drawings and physical models into something compelling and playable.

The use of play within the field of Architecture and Construction is often limited, and this felt like a fantastic opportunity to showcase the value of playful engagement to support this crucial part of the process.

NATIVE FORTNITE PLAY

For us and Landsec U+I, the solution seemed tantalisingly simple – bring the masterplan in Fortnite’s UEFN – a platform that offers so much in terms of play familiarity, speed and flexibility for development, and play mechanics that would support the ability for large-scale traversal around the sizable masterplan.

It was important to make this feel familiar to players. We knew that we would have potentially limited time with audiences to allow them to orient themselves around new game interfaces or controls, so a ‘pick-up-and-play’ model was necessary to reduce that onboarding time and maximise the time used for familiarisation with the site’s spatial layout.

We also wanted the associated gameplay to feel native whilst supporting the underlying purpose.  A competitive social game felt closely aligned to the supporting eSports activation from Landsec U+I, so we conceived a teamplay round-based ‘collection’ mechanic that promoted fast-paced play and exploration of the space. 

You’ll find grind rails, air jets, wind tunnels, and jumps a plenty, as you compete against the clock to collect as many balloons as possible.  And of course, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to allow players to skydive into the site from a blimp to start their incredible experience!

The game’s inherent requirement for rapid traversal and spatial orientation neatly brings the audiences closer to the masterplan’s layout and the connection to the surrounding city context, making this future space both playable and understandable

ARCHITECTURAL MODELS IN FORTNITE!?

There were undoubtedly some well-foreseen challenges in bringing architectural models (even simplified masterplan models) into Fortnite via UEFN.  

We were delighted to collaborate very closely with the Landsec architectural team at Studio Egret West to define a suitable process for converting the Masterplan and Context assets from Revit into a format that we could work with while remaining performant.

Establishing this process early on allowed the team to focus on gameplay design and a clean, clear visual aesthetic that aided the play and navigation around the island.

A ROARING SUCCESS!

The launch weekend on the 10th May was amazingly received by the local public, with the team at eSports Youth Club running multiple competitive events within the Lewisham Shopping Centre atrium, after which you can continue to experience the Fortnite Island at the public consultation space at No.25.