Blog
Digital signage 'Smackdown' teaches video game coding
Travelers at the Helsinki tram station learned how to code through digital signage that invited them to program their own character in a wrestling video game.
March 1, 2016 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator
Atomic elbow off the top rope to learn video game programming!
At November's Slush startup fair in Helsinki, the Slush Hackathon pitted coders against each other in a contest to develop an educational program aimed at introducing kids and non-techies to programming. The winner of the last Slush Hackathon was a wrestling game, Slush Smackdown, which was showcased at the busiest tram shelter in Helsinki through a partnership with outdoor advertiser JCDecaux.
The point of the game is to build a simple AI with visual code editor and fight against other people's code in the squared circle. Learning to program in JavaScript can be an arcane and difficult process, but Slush Smackdown aims to make the process more enjoyable by creating a wrestling game in which players control their wrestlers by writing lines of code. Outdoor advertiser JCDecaux teamed up with Slush to deploy a digital signage kiosk at a Helsinki tram station for users to test their skill.
In a video posted by JCDecaux, users wrote code on their tablets and smartphones, and then synced their devices up with the digital signage kiosk. They programmed their wrestlers and then fought against the kiosk computer or against other players. The one who designed the best wrestler artificial intelligence would win the fight.
Essentially, this project enabled users to learn about the bare bones basics of programming, including such concepts as "if/else" constructions and loops. You can watch the kiosk in action in the video below:
About Bradley Cooper
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Digital Signage Today.
