Whether it’s season tickets or sofa commentating, few sports can match the level of passion and engagement that football ignites. Yet stepping onto the field and enjoying the roar of the crowds has always been a privilege reserved for professional players. Until now. 

TOCA Social is the world’s first social football entertainment concept, transforming how we meet and play through food, drinks and interactive games based around the world’s most popular sport.

To bring this unique proposition to life, PRELOADED embarked on an innovative journey with the TOCA team to design games built upon cutting-edge computer vision, interactive screens and proprietary hardware – to immerse players in a digital and physical play experience that merges the best of football, social entertainment and gaming.

FOOTBALL FOR EVERYONE

TOCA Social’s ambition is to create an experience that can be enjoyed by everyone, whether they’re a football lover or hater, and whether they can kick a ball or not. This presented a unique challenge for the game design: how do you develop fun and accessible games themed around football that can engage a wider market? 

PRELOADED set out to tackle this challenge by identifying the core skills associated with kicking a ball (precision, accuracy, etc.) and the natural gameplay associated with these. Using ongoing tests with different audience groups – from families to rowdy teenagers – PRELOADED tried out different buckets of social and competitive play patterns. This helped to identify the parts of the gameplay that players understood immediately, without any football-based rules.  

Building upon these user affordances, and taking inspiration from arcade-style games, PRELOADED designed a series of low-threshold football games that are fun and intuitive. Instead of having to face the pressure of a penalty shootout, players can compete to see who’s most skilled at splitting atoms, knocking high-value targets away, or simply smashing a ball at their friend’s face. The result is a gaming experience where everyone can get involved in the action, not just the hardcore football fans.

FULL-TIME SOCIAL

It was important for the gameplay to foster social interactions, shareable moments and a sense of competition. At the start of each session, groups of up to 12 players enter their names and skill level. From that point on, the games are in charge of the fun. 

The quick turn structure gives players a mix of pre-defined gameplay loops with wildcard moments to keep everyone engaged throughout 60 or 90 minutes. Embedded into the structure are obvious breaks in play, allowing food and drinks to be ordered and enjoyed. Throughout the session the leaderboard keeps track of everyone’s performance, culminating in a winner’s ceremony. 

However, to ensure fair play, we had to level the playing field. Using the affordances of the TOCA Touch Trainer, a revolutionary training machine, we could balance the speed, trajectory and difficulty of the ball delivery to each player’s skill level. This allowed us to create a more inclusive game and make the outcome of the competition more unpredictable. So whether you are a beginner or a Harry Kane in the making, you’re guaranteed to have skin in the game.

DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL INTEGRATION

Designing a consistent visitor experience was a key consideration for the game development. However, creating site-specific games in a venue that was yet to exist, with moving technology parts and unknown interrogation points, made for a difficult fixture.

Together with the brilliant TOCA team we built a warehouse set-up of the ‘pitch’ with demo versions of the interactive screens and tracking cameras. Using the warehouse pitch for prototype testing allowed the teams to better understand players’ movements and behaviours during gameplay. This meant we could identify and simplify the integration points of TOCA’s Smart Sight technology with the physical play patterns.

The testing and integration of the digital and physical properties helped not only to create seamless gameplay, but to underpin and improve the user flow of the visitor experience. The PRELOADED team worked hard to reduce the complexity of the play terminal UX. This improved user onboarding and created continuity for visitors as they moved on and off pitch.

Running the game design in parallel with the UX and technical development allowed the PRELOADED team to focus on how the technology should support the visitor experience, creating a consistent and scalable infrastructure, as well as efficiencies for future development. This audience-led approach helped PRELOADED to map out the end-to-end visitor journey and use technology that supports a fun and shared football experience, unique to TOCA Social.

TOCA Social is now open at the O2, book your slot here.

Are you interested in learning more about digital and physical play? Get in touch with our team.