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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MAGELLAN (MAGELLAN. The World, Your Playground!)

Teaser

Summary

Next-generation location-based experiences (LBE) are about to revolutionize our lives taking multiple forms of ubiquitous informative, educative, or recreational services and content in multiple domains such as gaming, cultural heritage, tourism, transport, marketing or education.
They will make use of the latest technologies to create Mixed Realities, blending virtual and real worlds, involving multiple participants, and evolving according to a non-linear interactive scenario and the different actions of the participants.
In this landscape of opportunities, MAGELLAN FTI aims to redefine Location-Based Experiences (LBEs) on mobile devices worldwide, by leveraging a codeless platform for the rapid and cost-effective creation and promotion of LBEs/games. Therefore, by removing inherent barriers of game development, MAGELLAN FTI aims at the untapped value existing within the combination of location based experiences and mixed reality technologies.

Work performed

The objectives of the project can be broken down in four categories: Technology, Games, Marketing and Business development. The MAGELLAN FTI project, being a close-to-market activity, is relying for its success on the following aspects which are of equal importance: a. producing a high-end technology platform, b. verifying the quality of the technology by producing engaging and attractive applications, c. creating a brand and a marketing strategy that can attract the right audience and d. test the market by means of approaching early adopters and potential customers even before the half-way point of the project.
1. Technology
Developing Mixed-Reality based experiences requires a set of high-end technologies which are difficult to master. While the market potential of Mixed Reality based experiences is very high and increasing, the technological obstacles and the production costs are translated into few widely adopted experiences, made essentially by game developing companies. Marketing and design companies are demanding accessible tools for location and mixed reality experiences. For the first year the project objective was to deliver a platform architecture that will be able to scale with the number of players based on a set of micro-services that would make the deployment in cloud infrastructures as easy and scalable as possible. At the same time Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the MAGELLAN platform incorporates an authoring tool that can be used to create complete and publishable mobile games with location and mixed reality features. The tool although still under development is technologically mature concertation instrument that can help authors validate game scenarios and use various forms of content (video, audio, 360 images, 3D images etc.) to create AR and VR activities.
2. Games
The best way to validate and prove the capabilities of the technology is by developing high quality, engaging games and experiences. LOBA and INCONITO, the two design agencies in the consortium, have developed 2 applications using the platform during the first year of the project with a third currently under development. INCONITO developed a noir thriller-type game called â€œBad Omensâ€ using the capabilities of pre-version 1.0 and version 1.0 of the platform and LOBA created an application for a particular region of Portugal aimed at the tourists of the region. The first game is purely for entertainment purposes whereas the game created by LOBA is in accordance with the requirements of the Bairrada region of Portugal and has informational as well as entertainment elements.
3. Marketing
After producing the FTI project collateral (website, power point templates, document templates etc.), the consortium had decided that a new brand name would be required that could resonate better with our target audience and also make it easier for us to protect the trademarks, acquire a matching URL and build a â€œstoryâ€ around it. After agreeing on the â€œFirst Parallelâ€ brand name effort was put towards producing the necessary collateral that would help us in our business development and marketing activities. We are now ready to launch an online advertising campaign with a longer-term goal the participation in key event of the industry.
4. Business Development
It was the intention of the consortium to probe the market in order to better understand the validity of the concept and get some early feedback with respect to the added value that the platform might have for its first customers. For that purpose a series of meetings and presentations took place with various stake holders that may have a potential interest in developing games and experiences using the platform as well as buying the platform itself. Large brands and advertising agencies were targeted and a series of meetings were held in order to create the necessary market awareness prior to product launch.

Final results

LBEs are about to become the next market disruptor in several verticals such as tourism, gaming, education, health, lifestyle etc. Large companies such as Facebook and Apple are already releasing APIs that will enable developers to create mixed reality experiences. The project is at the heart of this new wave of technologies and intends to be one of the first to reach the market. The platform will combine the location element with that of mixed reality technologies and will address users that are accustomed to writing code. We are therefore taping on a niche that still remains untouched yet all evidence shows that it is a growing market. MAGELLAN will tap on all these verticals by enabling the creation of experiences that will merge the physical and digital worlds in mobile experiences and ubiquitous services offering unprecedented user friendliness to exploit the best of both worlds.
The consortium intends to create a new commercial vehicle to exploit the output of the MAGELLAN project. The initial MAGELLAN company business plan has a clear outlook of required personnel and expected turnover during the first year of operations (2019). 6 new engineering jobs are going to be created to support and improve the platform while first year annual turnover will exceed 1M Euro. The productization of the technology and the marketing approach will be completed during the lifetime of the project and will carry out all necessary ground work that will lead to product launch.