How Bloomberg’s mall game came about

Chris Ariens of Adweek writes about how Bloomberg.com developed its The American Mall video game that tells the story of retail’s troubles.

Ariens writes, “A team of Bloomberg reporters, editors, developers and the copy desk spent about three months building the game as part of a larger series on retail, including this data visualization called ‘The Death of Clothing.’

“Houston said they thought about using real brands but decided instead to use names ‘evocative’ of well-known retailers like Victoria’s Conspiracy, Pineapple Republic and Del Burrito.

“Average gamers are playing about 4 minutes per session, though it’s topped one hour for some. And, for now, this is the only game in town for Bloomberg.com, but it is its most ambitious storytelling to date. (The site built The Trading Game, about picking stocks, two years ago.) The highest scorers are those who keep the mall open the longest, as of this writing more than 2,000 days.”

Read more here.