If you’re a true movie buff, prove it! PopCorn Garage is the ultimate way to test your movie knowledge (and can make for fun, friendship-jeopardizing competitions). That’s why PopCornGarage.com is this week’s Wednesday Website We Love.
PopCorn Garage is an interactive hide-and-seek game and your goal is to find all 66 movie references. Most of the references are from iconic movies and you’ll probably get the obvious ones first; then it gets harder. Watch out for mistakes — three strikes and you’re out. When you lose, the garage door closes and you can look at all the badges you earned. Badges are basically the movies you found and when you click on a badge, you can watch a clip from that movie.
Don’t forget to save your game. FYI, after you’ve lost, you can go back to your last saved game and keep trying to find them all. If you’re like me, you’ll just start entering movies and see if any sticks. Also, when you click on the screen, it shows you all the references you found so far.
What’s one thing this site does well? Its use of gamification, of course. People love games because they’re engaging and when they receive rewards, it makes the user feel accomplished. Using a mix of JavaScript and jQuery, the developers of this site were able to create an interactive game for users with the goal of finding as many movie references as possible. Collecting badges (or getting more than your friends) acts as the reward. The one thing we don’t like is the long loading time. No matter how fun and cool your site is, if users have to wait long, they’ll walk away.
For the most part, we’re mainly talking about this site because it’s fun. However, PopCorn Garage’s concept does have practical uses in business. How you ask? Gamified sites can be an excellent option for a 404 page that allows you to show off your business’s personality. Another practical use is for microsite ad campaigns. Remember the WWWL article we wrote about Solstice.org? That was a microsite built by Old Spice to promote a new product line and because it was interactive, it was a huge hit.
All in all, PopCornGarage.com is a fun, addicting game and that’s why we love it. I got 42. How many can you get?
