Introduction
You vs. D.Rose is an advergame for an Addidas' brand of shoes called the adiZero Rose. You play as yourself in a quick mini-game having just been given a pair of the adiZero Rose shoes and your objective is to match Derrick Rose's moves.
Below is a detailed analysis of this game roughly following Brian Winn's1 Design/Play/Experience framework, including:
Learning
The primary learning goal of You vs. D.Rose is that by wearing these shoes, you can stand a chance against Derrick Rose and are worthy of seeing the inside of Slim Chin's mansion. What the player should learn from playing this game is that:
- Slim Chin is so rich that he can afford to wear gold everything!
- Slim Chin endorses this product, and because he's so rich, you can feel rich/important by wearing these shoes
- By buying and wearing these shoes you can not only feel rich, but you can do cool basketball shoots/dunks like Derrick Rose
- These shoes are awesome and will make you awesome
- That you want to buy these shoes
Storytelling
The premise of the game is that you have been invited to Slim Chin's mansion where he gives you a very short tour of a small part of his mansion. He shows you the basketball court, introduces you to his butler, and finally, introduces you to Derrick Rose who gives you a pair of his own shoes. Playing the game and matching Derrick Rose means that you get a wider tour of the mansion. All of the tours are designed to reinforce the fact that Slim Chin is really rich and by wearing these shoes you can have something in common with him. They could have just gone with traditional advertisement and had Slim Chin and Derrick Rose standing on screen saying that they endorse this product and while that would get the message across, the fact that you know that Slim Chin is this rich, makes his endorsement worth a lot more.
Gameplay
You vs. D. Rose consists of one minigame with two different levels. You are playing a two round game of H-O-R-S-E against D. Rose. First, a clip will be shown of Rose going and doing a dunk. After that, the game instructs you that you need to keep pressing the S and L keys rapidly to "Go freaky fast!" by keeping the arrow within the red area of the meter. You need to keep pressing the two buttons until the number in the center of the meter flashes white at which point you need to press the spacebar. If you press the spacebar on time then you'll pull off the move and Slim Chin will congratulate you. This is all assuming that the game still works as eventually it would stop registering that I had been pressing the spacebar after a while.
If you manage to win both minigames then you get to see one more part of Slim Chin's mansion. This includes things like his gold Jet Ski that he has in a swimming pool or him giving you a big golden chain to wear around your neck.
The only real choices the player gets to make are whether or not to play or not. You can choose to try and play and possibly win and get the reward of seeing all the shiny stuff in Slim Chin's mansion. Or, you can shoot early, fail, and get the game over with faster. After the game is over, it brings you to a screen of the shoe with clickable spots that when clicked, gives a short message about the parts of the shoe explaining how it will make you play better.
User Experience
The entire user interface is colored gold and practically all the text alludes to how fast you'll be going as you play this game now that you're wearing these awesome shoes. Everything is colored gold to give the idea that when you wear these shoes and play this game, suddenly, you can feel rich - or at the very least you can be in the presence of someone really rich. The controls have you pressing the S and L keys rapidly to simulate running and pressing the spacebar to shoot/dunk all probably to help get the "feel" of being on the court with D. Rose. The game itself is completely unnecessary and at times the games and controls don't even work.
Technology
The game seems to be a series of youtube videos embedded into Flash. For a game of this small scale, this was probably the best idea. They possibly could have gotten similar results if they got rid of the game entirely.
Assessment
A few quick searches through google turned up no results on any assessments done on the effect that the game has had on sales of shoes. One way that they could go about doing an assessment on this game include seeing what people think about what a group of people think about the shoe after playing the game as compared to what people think about the game when given a regular commercial or no commercial at all.
Conclusion
In conclusion, You vs. D. Rose isn't a very good simulation of playing basketball but as an advergame whose intent is to aid in the sale of the shoes its advertising, it doesn't have to be. As there hasn't been any form of assessment done on how efficient the game is at getting people to buy it, it's hard to say if it's any good.