“last slice” game
microsoft
Global coder inception and the first video game only a developer can win.
We had pleasure producing and creatively directing the whole game that was part of the online campaign for the Microsoft Visual Studio, that has won Clio Award (bronze).
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pizza is the answer
the brief
The brief was simple enough. Windows programmers are stuck in their ways. Microsoft is releasing lots of new tools, but struggling to get devs to see the point in trying them. Only 4% of this highly specific group actually watched the educational content designed to get the word out—which isn't surprising. 90% of developers are "self-taught" and prefer hands-on trial to any other learning method. So to get them using the tools without even realizing it, we turned to reddit, github, and a Bitcoin pizza legend to create the nerdiest, most technical branded challenge ever conceived.
how it began
On May 22, 2010, a programmer named Laszlo purchased two large pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins, worth about $30 at the time (later, $100 million)—this internet folklore is widely familiar among developers and provided the perfect narrative. We put devs in the shoes of perhaps the most critical character in the Bitcoin pizza saga: the delivery person, seeking the long-lost 'last slice' of the transaction, the delivery tip.
repository!
In true developer fashion, our journey down the rabbit hole didn't begin on a flashy landing page. It started in the most natural place possible for devs starting a project: Microsoft-owned Github. Eager participants only needed to fork the code, compile, and play the game to get started.
CHEATING WITH VISUAL STUDIO
The only way to win was to cheat. Which was exactly what we wanted devs to do — hack the code with Visual Studio's tools, give themselves superpowers and deliver the legendary
Bitcoin Pizza.
THE SEVEN CIRCLES OF PIZZA
The game was designed to appear deceptively easy in the style of a simple retro 8-bit arcade game. But anyone playing the Last Slice would face difficult, frustrating, and increasingly absurd obstacles until finally arriving at the final level and realizing the game was impossible to win.
RIGHT ADDRESS,
WRONG TOPPINGS
Intrepid developers that successfully hacked the code and delivered the pizza were dismayed to discover that they had the wrong toppings.
What followed was an NSA-level decryption race with virtually no clues or instruction.
SPECIAL DELIVERY
The top 100 global developers to complete the first two challenges received a hardware kit in the mail, disguised as a custom pizza box.
PIZZA PI
Custom circuit boards were designed and manufactured to interface with Raspberry Pi and create a hardware-only I/O interface to collect the toppings.
THE FINAL DELIVERY
Four months and thirty-eight separate coding tasks later, a militant chatbot checked the correct answers and finally the right pizza was delivered to the right house at the right time.
Five champions emerged across the globe within 24 hours of the final challenge launching, bringing a harrowing four months to a rapid close.
Two players managed to post a correct solution hours before the final clue was released. In this case, cheaters did prosper.
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team & recognition
THE LAST SLICE
for: microsoft
tags: online, game, contest
An Doan
Craig Milliken
Andrew Hair
Drew Hankins
Chris Maddock
Brad Hall
Fuchs + Dachs
CLIO AWARD - BRONZE