Quest Tours in Smartphones and Gamification of Ukraine: An Interview with Yuriy Zozulya.
Background: Yuriy Zozulya is known as the founder of the sports and entertainment park Xpark, the initiator of the KyivSmartCity project, and the digital sports platform MixSport. He is also the president of the wakeboarding federation UWF.
KT: SmartCity, Xpark—and suddenly game development. Why games?
Y.Z : The whole world is competing for people's emotions. The more positive and vibrant the emotions associated with a particular location, the more attractive it becomes for visitors. Now imagine that a neighboring park, stadium, area, or courtyard suddenly transforms into a zone of mysterious missions, sports quests, and adventures. It's no longer a dull, rainy park; it's a space for play, excitement, and adrenaline. We now have the opportunity to connect this virtual and real world through the window of a smartphone with the FreeGen app. We created Xpark as an innovative sports park that aims to be at the forefront of trends in both sports and active pursuits, as well as technology. Since all the youth and indeed all residents are glued to their smartphones, this marketing tool is currently the most effective and impactful. Bright emotions and experiences from being in the park will be enhanced by virtual missions, games, challenges, and quests for all ages and preferences—ranging from sports and entertainment to tourism, history, and education. This will fill the spaces of your streets and cities with fun and enjoyment. Moreover, the understanding of SmartCity, coupled with our long-standing collaboration with Google, has allowed us to create a unique street gaming platform, FreeGen. Everything is interconnected and flows from one to another.
FreeGen winter game квесттур зимой
KT: How do geo-games or quest tours work?
Y.Z : Geo-games can be tourist, sports, entertainment, cultural, educational, and so on. Their main feature is that players need to travel through the area and interact with surrounding objects. We recognize that different audiences participate — children, families, romantic couples, teenagers, and tourists. To provide users with maximum emotions, we need to know their age, gender, preferences, adapt to their mood, and understand their exact location (this is why registration upon entry and in the profile is necessary). The app will then select the nearest gaming missions based on their preferences.
Game missions can be simple and require only visiting and checking in at 10-20 locations, depending on the length and intensity of the routes. Each point on the route can also include a quiz, riddle, puzzle, AR (augmented reality), offline activity, or an instant prize.
For each correct answer, players earn in-game currency, which accumulates in the user's electronic wallet. This currency can be used to purchase prizes in the prize store or to access new, more interesting missions.
One of the key advantages of tourist and recreational quest tours on a smartphone is the lack of necessity to arrange a specific time with a guide, wait for a group of diverse tourists to gather for a tour, or follow a group along a route while trying not to fall behind, even if something piques your interest. A tourist route on a smartphone offers the freedom of adventure and exclusive guidance in an individual comfortable space, whether with friends or solo.
KT: How much can you earn by completing all the missions and quests?
Y.Z : The main benefit of participating in gaming missions is to gain a good mood, bright emotions, and impressions. This is the primary reward. The gaming currency is mainly for prizes from sponsors and partners (hats, merchandise, subscriptions, and certificates for active entertainment). While at some locations, organizers hold lotteries for instant prizes, such as bicycles or electric scooters. You can really earn well if you become a game designer (scripter) for the platform and create popular paid quests.
KT: Which games do you consider to be the most successful?
Y.Z : If we talk about downloads, our single-finger game "Kyiv Against Corona" gained over two million downloads during the lockdown. The essence of the game is that you can help the mayor tackle the pandemic and save the city from the virus. This game was created to distract from depression and fill the time of self-isolation with emotions. However, this type of game does not involve travel and was specifically designed for the lockdown to keep people at home. We held daily instant prize draws among the winners in our chat, which made it exciting and fun.
Among the geolocation games that require moving around Kyiv, the festive gaming mission for the New Year holidays received a lot of positive feedback. Christmas trees decorate every district of Kyiv, yet residents often have no idea just how beautiful they are and what secrets they hold. The quest "Christmas Tree Quest" immersed participants in an adventure through the enchanting, holiday-themed Kyiv. It was particularly well-received by families and couples — we received plenty of joyful selfies!
Among the sporting missions, "Muromets Race" remains the leader. The scenic spots for cyclists and runners make the park more appealing, and there's also the chance to win a prize through a lottery draw — from coffee to an electric scooter. In terms of tourist missions, "Kyiv Scenic" stands out, featuring a journey along the Scenic Alley.
KT: But we see that new quests are regularly appearing in many central parks across cities in Ukraine. Is this a nationwide project?
Y.Z : Yes, this could be a global project. The main thing is to create an interesting scenario and storyline, and applying it to a location—even in Antarctica—takes just a few days. However, it’s crucial, especially for tourist gaming routes, to have a good understanding of the area and exclusive information about local attractions. This is why the most popular tours and missions come from local guides who have in-depth knowledge of their cities. We are actively seeking contacts and preparing a series of paid guided tours across Ukraine. Some progressive municipalities also want to diversify life for residents and tourists with free historical and recreational routes. The organization "Sports for All" covers the most popular sports and cycling routes in all cities. Additionally, entire computer colleges from many cities are joining us, bringing many creative scenarios, as kids are truly imaginative.
KT: Who comes up with these quest tours and missions and how do they make money?
Y.Z : Game routes come from a wide range of contributors, from elementary school children to employees in ministries and marketing departments of major retail chains. Municipalities, retail networks, music festivals, brands, and restaurants earn by attracting and retaining customers at their locations. Community organizations turn social initiatives into engaging games, such as those focused on ecology and recycling.
However, the main business on the platform is driven by game designers who create highly engaging paid games and host them on the FreeGen platform. There is also a group of tour guides who vividly describe their itineraries, and their tours sell well. Once you create an interesting game mission, you can continuously earn income from its sales on the platform directly into your e-wallet. The highest earnings we know of were made by a game scripter, who earned between $1,500 and $6,000 a day. This was a very well-written game featuring hobbits for a California reserve, with a daily visitor count of 40,000. The cost of each game download is just $1.90.
KT: Does FreeGen game helps “X-park”?
Y.Z : Yes, of course. When a visitor comes not just to a park but immediately steps into an exciting game where they can win an electric scooter, their engagement and emotions instantly increase. The introductory and entertaining X-park quest allows visitors to explore all the main locations of the park in a fun way, easing the burden on staff while also helping to sell services by motivating visitors to spend money. For example, a secret clue can be found on one of the trees in the ropes course, by knocking over a can at the shooting range, or discovering a code at the bottom of a cup after purchasing and drinking a beverage, and so on.
Among tourists, the game "Murovets Outpost" is popular, guiding them through the historical sites of the 10th century from the times of Ilya Muromets, virtually replacing a tour guide and adding plenty of entertainment. Meanwhile, bike and Segway rentals send clients to explore the scenic spots of the park via the sports route "Murovets Race," especially since at the end of each route, everyone awaits instant prizes in a no-loss lottery—from a cup of coffee to an expensive electric scooter. However, most visitors to the park, particularly children and teenagers, actively engage in smartphone games, enhancing their emotions and experiences during their visit to X-park.
Геймификация парков и туризма. Интервью с Зозулей Юрием.
KT: What are the prospects for the development of the game platform?
ЮЗ: The goal of FreeGen's gamification is to make cities more exciting, diversify residents' lives, and make them attractive to visitors and tourists. This is especially important for engaging residents in individual activities during quarantine and lockdown periods. The gaming missions are designed to be continuously updated with changes in routes and entertainment, as well as to increase the variety of missions at a single location. This motivates residents to view their familiar city, streets, and parks from a new perspective, discover the city's history, and appreciate the authorities' efforts to improve it.
Quest tours are excellent for quarantine since they do not involve large gatherings—routes can be completed individually or with families while maintaining social distance, all while entering a general ranking of all game participants and seeing the leaders. The sports missions encourage physical activity, prompting participants to move through the city, search for hidden spots, QR codes, and heroes in augmented reality (AR). All games provide vibrant emotions and entertainment through fun puzzles and quizzes, enhancing mood, which is crucial during these depressive times. The gamification of cities is a beneficial and innovative direction for developing urban services for residents as part of the SmartCity initiative. Quest tours allow for ranking city locations among residents who have completed missions. You can find an introductory video on our YouTube channel.
The FreeGen community plans to create up to 300 missions for parks and locations in Kyiv and across Ukraine. Essentially, any resident can create a scenario for a geo-game and publish it on the platform. Detailed instructions are available here. Currently, we are developing sports and entertainment missions for parks in Ukraine.
We also invite game developers and designers to partner with us in creating new engaging game missions in any city in Ukraine. If you're interested in this opportunity, we encourage you to fill out the form to participate in the expert council in the gamification section and take part in the development and scaling of game missions throughout Ukraine.
Form to fill out:
https://forms.gle/Jyhs1bJDCkUSFxv56
KT: Thank you for the interesting story about the new innovative trend of gamification of parks and cities. We hope that soon all of Ukraine will be covered by thousands of such quest tours and game routes.
YZ: Thank you for your attention to our initiative! We hope that gamification will truly help make Ukrainian cities more interesting and attractive for residents and tourists. We believe that soon all of Ukraine will have thousands of such quests and game routes!
Let's talk here
https://t.me/FreeGenGame
Articles on the topic
https://zozulpalevo.blogspot.com/2020/02/freegen-reality-gamification.html
https://zozulpalevo.blogspot.com/2020/05/coronovirus-game-covid-19.html
You can familiarize yourself with the presentation here.
All sports events https://mixsport.pro/ua
Game missions https://freegen.games/
► Go to our website https://xpark.kyiv.ua
And don't forget to take a look here:
►Our Telegram: https://t.me/xpark
►Our Facebook: https://www.fb.com/xpark.kiev.ua/
►Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/x.park.kiev/
#ZozulyaYuriyProject
https://www.facebook.com/yzozul/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt6sgZdeU1z-Ii1icTSGtXmVBAX7gIC2Q
Yuriy Zozulya (businessman, philanthropist, public figure, founder and investor of Хpark, president Ukrainian Wake Federation UWF, officer)
https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Зозуля_Юрій_Андрійович
https://cyclowiki.org/wiki/Юрий_Андреевич_Зозуля
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Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yurazozulya/
X(twiter) (engl)- https://x.com/YZozulya
Tik-tok (link)
Linkdn (engl) https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuri-zozulya-8704b740/
Youtube video blog (ukr engl) (link)
Google blog (ukr engl) (link)
Cenzor blog (engl) (link)
Telegram blog (link)
© All materials in this article are protected by copyright by Yuriy Zozulya. When using theses, especially in presentations, dissertations, and thesis works, referencing this article is mandatory to avoid conflicts related to "plagiarism monitoring."
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