Google's in-house creative agency The Zoo has added new features to its "All of Brazil Plays" to coincide with a significant global sporting event taking place in Rio de Janeiro over the next few weeks.
The platform combines creative content, interactive games, local Vlogger videos, destination guides to iconic sights, such as Christ the Redeemer, attractions such as the Museum of Tomorrow, all shown on an integrated Google map.
The collaboration between The Zoo and digital production agency Media Monks includes 42 custom-designed mini-games which can be played with a personalised avatar character.
Users create a character which can travel with them from sport to sport as they play online games, challenging other players on the platform.
This May, Mike Yapp, founder and director of The Zoo, told the creative industry to expect a shift from storytelling to ’hypertelling,’ in which content is enriched through the dynamic combination of various digital media.
"The medium has always attempted to enhance the story, whether it duplicated it by writing and the invention of print, or illustrated, or animated it, or made it into a movie," Yapp said. "We’ve always tried to link the experience tighter and tighter to the true emotional experience."
The new ‘All of Brazil Plays’ platform realises this vision by presenting the user with its rich mix of mixed media stories revolving around Olympic events.
While the platform itself had an early start in August of 2015 and has been evolving slowly. This week it has added a “what’s happening near you now” feature which maps events in real-time in Rio - both Olympic events and local celebrations.
Google Trends will also show the hot topics in context of the day’s events, and new YouTube content will be updated daily featuring the day’s Olympic-related news.
It’s an attractive interface and also intuitive, but most importantly perhaps it promises to be useful to those attending the Olympic events, ensuring they don’t miss out. Those observing the games remotely can also enjoy the ongoing stories and users are encouraged to share on social media via Facebook, Twitter, and even on Google’s somewhat less successful social platform Google+.
Followers of ‘All of Brazil Plays’ can also click to be immediately notified when new content is online. They can choose to be notified of new games or videos or both.
Google has made great advances with destination content on its Trips travel app, with its Local Guides. ‘All Brazil Plays’ also recruits future local guides, with an invitation to sign up included in the platform.
This initiative shows how varied, and nearly limitless, the content presented on Google's Trips app could be when crowd-sourced with local experts.