TechRadar Game at Campus Party in Recife

In July, the third edition of Recife's Campus Party took place over two days, giving the local tech community an opportunity to interact with Thoughtworkers and discuss the ideas that were featured in the Technology Radar. 

The Campus Party is an event well known for attracting a young tech-loving audience, including programmers, designers, and computer gamers and robotics enthusiasts alike. Wanting to maximise and encourage interaction at the event, the marketing and recruitment teams held a brainstorming session and decided to create a game.

Through a series of gameplay tests, a group of Thoughtworkers refined and improved the game before launching it at the event.

Here’s the game:

• Each player starts with 5 tokens and 4 cards
• A player needs to challenge another player to play
• Each game has three rounds
• At each round, a player will draw one card from the hand of the opponent and compare with a letter as its own hand in the same category. The categories are divided into: Techniques, Platforms, Tools, Languages and Frameworks, and sub-divided into sub-categories: Adopt (4) Trial (3) Assess (2), and Avoid (1) being the numbers inside the parentheses points in each category
• The player with the highest number wins the round, and in the event of a tie, wins the one who had his card drawn. The cards used in a round cannot be used in the next. Whoever wins the most rounds wins the match. The loser must submit one of his tokens to the winner

During the two-day event, we launched the game in workshops and to the wider audience. The game also well promoted with colorful balloons and screens that showed the details of the game, drawing the attention of everyone at the event. We also broadcasted our presence via social media, with photos and information on Twitter and Facebook. Many people participated in the game, using the Thoughtworks badge that identified them as participants, so that they could be challenged at any time by other gamers. Participation was high, using the Thoughtworks badge that identified them as participants, so that they could be challenged at any time by other gamers.

The final winner of the match, Fábio Alexandre Cavalcanti, gathered 33 tokens and took out the grand prize. According to Fabio, he was so enthralled in the competition he found himself betting everything he had with his friends to achieve his goal.

Using the concept of Serious Games, we helped a lot of people to learn more about the Tech Radar and the way we like to work, and gave insight into our culture. We hope that future events can also disseminate our ideas with the same engagement and charisma of  the participants of the 3rd edition of Campus Party Recife.

If you don't know our Technology Radar, subscribe here. To follow or participate in events such as the Campus Party, check out our events schedule here.