Welcome to our 1st Magical Park Blog Post

Hello everyone, my name is Melanie Langlotz and I am the founder of Geo AR Games, the creators of the revolutionary digital playground app, Magical Park.

Where the idea came from...

I had the idea for Magical Park in 2011 when I realized that I couldn't get my stepdaughter, who was 7 years old at the time, to go to the park anymore. She was completely hooked on computer games and the park just didn't seem exciting to her anymore. That's when the lightbulb went off and I realized that if we could bring the game content she loved, which at the time were fairies, to the park in the form of an augmented reality app, it would make the park a lot more interesting and exciting for her.

Prototyping

So, we began developing the app in 2012, building a few early prototypes that gave us the confidence that the idea would work. I still remember giving my mobile phone to a 14-year-old boy at Victoria Park in Auckland, New Zealand. We had planted a life-size T-Rex in the park which was set to interact with the player and follow the player, stop and roar and then run after you again. The boy was actually screaming like mad "A T-Rex is chasing me! Ahhhhhh!!!", running towards his Dad, not even looking at the phone anymore. His imagination was running wild! This moment was the turning point that made me truly believe that this idea had the potential to be something special.

Company Launch

In 2015, we finally launched Geo AR Games and released Magical Park, the world's first augmented reality playground app in New Zealand. Since then, we've seen firsthand the positive impact that our app has had on foot traffic and engagement in parks around the world. We are constantly working to improve and enhance the app, and we are excited to share our progress with you in this blog.

Parks Week Success

In 2017, we launched Magical Park with a Parks Week special in New Zealand and Australia, which was a roaring success. We worked closely with local councils and organizations to program 176 parks within just 3 weeks, and our analytics estimated that we had around 24,000 Magical Park visitors during that time! This was a huge milestone for us, as it showed that there was a real demand for our app and that it was resonating with families and kids.

Analytics Portal

However, one of the main challenges we faced after Parks Week was that every City wanted to know their personal park stats, but because we had 176 registered parks and all analytics had to be hand-pulled because we didn't have automated analytics at that stage, we hit a major bottleneck. But from this challenge, we developed an analytics portal which provided personalized analytics for each park, allowing Cities to check their stats and see if their marketing activities were working to attract families to their Magical Park. The analytics portal was launched in 2019 and we further improved our platform to make it easier for Geo AR Games team to program new parks, added safeguards to ensure safety and to make better decisions about where to setup the parks.

The Magical Park Portal

By the end of 2022, we had developed a comprehensive platform or portal which Cities were able to use to manage their parks, check their analytics, and also set up their own test parks. The Magical Park portal makes it easy for Cities to plan and test our digital playground app, including setting the opening hours the app is going to be active, adding a personalized message to their park icon, and controlling which games are available to play. We have linked our resources to the portal for easy access and we will continue to take your recommendations and feature ideas on board to improve the platform. This portal has been a game changer for us and our clients as it has made the process of implementing and managing the app much more efficient and user-friendly. We are looking forward to continue working with Cities around the world to bring the joy and magic of Magical Park to more and more parks.

The first few games

To date, we have 5 seasonal games on offer: Chinese New Year, Easter, American Independence Day, Halloween, and Christmas. Our first four games were Augmentia which features fairies, unicorns, and kittens, Prehistoria which is all about dinosaurs, Alienscape where the player saves aliens from another monster alien and Robotica which is a robot part collection game. After that, we realized that there was a strong need for environmental education, which we addressed in the fifth game, Evergreen, an introduction to recycling.

Accessibility & Inclusivity

We also had a lot of Australian Cities asking us for an Australian nature game and at the same time, the City of Coral Gables in Miami Florida asked us to think more inclusively and make the games accessible for vision-impaired players. What seemed like a crazy idea to begin with started to make sense as we progressed in our game design work on the Australian nature game. With the help from Coral Gables, we realized that adding 3D spatial sound would allow vision-impaired players to play the game because they could hear where the sound was coming from. We redesigned the collection mechanism to be collision-based, so as a player would get close to an animal, it would be automatically collected without needing any User Interface interaction.

As a result, our Australian Explorer game was our very first game which was also accessible for vision-impaired players.

Environmental Games

In 2019, the Australian City of Wyndham sponsored two ocean-themed games, Ocean Animal Rescue and Coral Reef Clean-up which was the start of our team focusing more seriously on environmental education in our games.

The City of Coral Gables had asked us for a "Save the Bees" game and the Geo AR team was excited about the idea. We connected with the Bee Girl Sarah (https://www.beegirl.org/) and the team from Apiculture New Zealand (https://apinz.org.nz/) to learn about bees. We wrote 45 universal Bee facts and designed a bee vision filter so our players could explore their park the way bees would see it. The game was a big hit, and players loved the educational aspect of it.

Encouraged by the success of the "Save the Bees" game, we decided to get started with two more nature games: Arctic and African animals. We based these games on the same 3D spatial audio concept as the Australian Explorer, which allows vision-impaired players to play the game by hearing where the sound is coming from. Both of these games are currently in the testing phase but will be rolled out soon. We are excited to continue creating games that are not only fun but also educational and inclusive. By working closely with experts in different fields, we are able to create games that are both entertaining and informative.

Supporting Culture through Games

Our team member Talia was extremely passionate about her Chinese heritage. She had joined Geo AR through an internship during which she wrote the game concept for the Chinese New Year festival. The Chinese lion Nian, who is scared of the color red, is terrorizing a Panda village and the player has to rescue the pandas to save the New Year. The game was eventually funded by the New Zealand Chinese Heritage Poll Tax grant and features Chinese and Cantonese translation and voice-over.

Our US partner Nexus Alpha was keen on an Independence Day game since this is a significant holiday in the US. We designed a fun farm-style stars & stripes game where the flag has lost all its stripes and stars and the player has to find them in a charming farm setting. Both games proved to be great ways to connect cultures and ethnicities in a city. Our goal is always to create games that are inclusive and reflective of the diverse communities in which they are played. We believe that these games are a fun and engaging way to bring people together and promote cultural understanding.

Where we are at now

In conclusion, we at Geo AR Games are incredibly proud of the work we have done with Magical Park. From our humble beginnings in 2011, we have come a long way to create a digital playground that is not only fun and engaging, but also educational and inclusive. Our goal has always been to get kids and families outside and active, and we are thrilled that our efforts have been so successful. We have worked with over 120 Cities from around the world and have translated the app into German and Swedish and more languages will be added as we continue to grow. We are excited to continue working with Cities around the world to bring the magic of Magical Park to more and more parks, and we look forward to seeing the impact it has on families and communities. Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we look forward to sharing more updates and new features with you in the future.

Thank you for your support, ideas and enthusiasm! We couldn't have done it without you!

Melanie Langlotz

Ceo & Founder, Geo AR Games