Bytro Labs is a game developing startup from Germany, producing innovative browser games for more than 5 million players worldwide.

To grow further, they were looking for new investors as well as new business opportunities in general.

For that purpose, they asked us to find a way to present themselves as a company to relevant contacts in the most creative and surprising way. Generating conversations, pitch invitations and new business opportunities.

Our idea: The Game Report.

The first business report, which is also game. Because it uses the business data as programming parameters.

The Business Report Game was sent out to around 500 contacts worldwide:

Investors, digital media companies, but also gaming publications and industry opinion leaders.

Within a week, we received more than 300 replies, with a total response rate of 94%.

The responses were overwhelmingly positive – applauding especially the innovative way of explaining the business data through a game – and led to lasting conversations and personal invitations.

In the beginning, the data was naturally present in the form of the regular business report. The most relevant data (e.g. balance sheets) was then selected from it.

Then, a game story that could incorporate these key data sets was written and subsequently designed and programmed.

The challenge was to design a game that was enjoyable as a game without being too challenging, but that would also tell the story of the company with substance. In the process, we found out that it’s important to keep the abstraction of the data at a very low and comprehensible level, instead of interpreting it in a too advanced way.

The use of the business data as programming parameters was the core element of the idea: To let potential investors experience BytroLabs’ business and game developing skills at the same time.

The Game Report was sent out to relevant contacts via email as a simple .txt file, containing the company’s business report to read with any text reader. But: The content was written and formatted in such a way that it also worked as program code.

When you changed the file extension from .txt to .html, the file was automatically opened in the browser application. The business data became programming parameters for a game. So you could read about the company and all the figures – but also experience them like never before, in the form of a game.