category.technology / Collaboration - 1/31/24
There is a planet where meadows are expanses of fabric and trees are giant spools; a place where people can run, jump, and ride a rollercoaster transporting the iconic 101801 coats among elegant buildings with whimsical shapes; a world for meeting, exploring, creating, and learning together.
This world is called Max Mara Coats Adventure, the immersive experience through which the Italian company, founded in 195, enters Roblox — a global immersive platform for connection and communication with 70 million daily active users (as of Q3 of 2023).
Max Mara Coats Adventure is a space full of life, populated by the avatars of the users, who can freely explore its natural landscape and its surreal "Button Buildings," guided by dozens of Teddy Bears - referencing the eponymous, famous Max Mara coat - who will help them overcome different challenges.
At launch, Max Mara Coats Adventure includes three areas: Pattern Lab, a virtual tailoring workshop where users engage in making various clothing items by solving increasingly difficult puzzles; the Color Parkour, a series of courses where users can run and jump in an attempt to collect all the color spheres that make up the brand's palettes; and the WunderKammer, an imaginative "maze of wonders" co-created with Atelier dell’Errore - an artistic collective hosted by the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia - where people can assemble and reassemble parts of fantastic animals into "daimons", the virtual creatures accompanying each player's avatar.
These mechanics are designed to suit the different tastes of users: action, puzzle, exploration, for an experience as diverse as it is meaningful, always focusing not only on the brand’s aesthetic imagery but also on its values of creativity and tailoring expertise.
For example, it is possible to customize clothes created in Pattern Lab with colors discovered in the Parkour.
"Let's say that gaming becomes a gateway, it becomes a tool to be able to dialogue with a generation that certainly in that part of their lives has a proximity to gaming, as well as a learning system.” Luigi Maramotti, Chairman Max Mara Fashion Group, comments and adds “There's something in the game that I really like: a rollercoaster that transports coats all over this world.
I like it because it is also a way of reaffirming that there is a creative industrial dimension and that quality is not only linked to craftsmanship, in fact it is almost the opposite: an industrial dimension, rationalised and with the presence of the human being as an inseparable part, achieves a kind of perfect synthesis."
Great attention has been paid to the immersive and edutainment aspect of the experience, blending educational entertainment, knowledge and empowerment — values that characterize the Max Mara brand since its foundation.
This ranges from the opportunity to enjoy historical and cultural snippets about the physical world of craftsmanship and textile industry through dialogues with the Teddy Bears, to the cooperation among users to achieve collective in-game goals — as can be seen from the location of the Max Mara Villa, the "observatory"
building towering over the virtual world.
The project is made in collaboration with the Milan-based game and narrative design studio We Are Muesli, and the Anglo-American Roblox experiences development company Poptropica LTD.
Max Mara Coats Adventure is out now on Roblox, for Windows and macOS computers, iOS and Android smartphones.
The official web page of the experience is available at https://www.roblox.com/games/14905728989/Max-Mara-Coats-Adventure.
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