Starbucks Digital Games
Starbucks Summer Game: Adventure Awaits
While Starbucks for Life is an annual holiday game with recurring characters and game mechanics, Summer Game is entirely new every year. The creative team has the opportunity to concept, name, and design a game that will tap into larger Starbucks summer campaigns as well as the cultural moment of the year. In 2023, as more people were getting back to pre-pandemic levels of travel, we wanted to channel the excitement of getting out into the world and experiencing all kinds of classic summer activities, from camping to amusement parks to music festivals. Our skills game had 20 levels, broken into five chapters, and each chapter told a quick story about one activity in the summer journey. The game ran for five weeks, with a chapter unlocking every week, and our promotions used the color palette and illustrations of each week to encourage return visits to the game.
Starbucks for Life 2023
Starbucks for Life is an annual game offered to Starbucks Rewards® members in the app. Players have the opportunity to collect badges and win prizes, including the grand prize for Starbucks for Life (which means a daily Starbucks drink for the next 30 years). There’s also a fun game within the game, Holiday Run, that keeps players engaging with the app as they run to beat their high scores and maybe earn a few extra plays.
Every year, the Creative Studio brings together a team to determine the look, feel, and voice for this year’s Starbucks for Life. 2023 was all about fun creative expression, with a whimsical illustration style and conversational voice. In order to write copy for every single screen of this game, I managed a 70+ page copy document—everything from onboarding to character bios to 404 error pages. But since no one wants to read that document once the game is built, here are a few of my favorite screens from last year’s game.
After designing the game, the next task is to promote it. I worked with a designer to build out weeks of e-mails, app cards, and other media placements to drive players to the game.
Starland: 50th Anniversary Edition
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Starbucks, we launched a trivia game for Starbucks fans to test their knowledge while exploring images of a few iconic locations: the first Starbucks store in Seattle, the Chicago Starbucks Reserve Roastery, and the coffee farm Hacienda Alsacia.
