Australia has a significant population of mobile gamers. Smartphones are a hugely popular gaming platform in Australia - approximately 51% of online Australians aged 16+ own a smartphone, and 58% of men and 59% of women who own a smartphone say they use their phone to play games.

By contrast, the Australian Bureau of Statistics website peaked at around 12,000 unique visitors a month in 2012. Most Australians either don’t understand the relevance of the data or simply aren’t interested – and few would seek out content about statistics from a government site.

However, a successful campaign in 2011 showed us that making the data more visual and relevant to the user could attract a new audience to our content and ignite conversation, interest and sharing around the Census data – so long as we made it relevant to them.

Instead of telling people about the data, we created a game that proves to the user just why it’s important.

Because Run That Town personalises the player’s experience with customised content and real data, it makes our audience central to the experience and allows players to discover the true value of the data for themselves.

Within the game, players can use Census data to make better-informed and more popular decisions.

And by making the content of the game entertaining and personalised, we gave the user a reason to talk about and share their in-game experience, expanding our audience.

Run That Town was launched on April 30. Within days of launch the game was organically picked up and reviewed by various game blogs (including Gizmodo, Kotaku, Polygon, Pocket Gamer, Buzzfeed and CVG) causing an initial spike of over 7,500 downloads within a six day period, that saw the game leapfrog to number 1 in the Entertainment category and number 19 in the Top Free Apps chart on the Apple App store.

Run That Town also made an impact in social media, with over two thousand interactions (shares, likes, comments, tweets, points) between Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram in that same six day period. Since this time Run That Town has been shared by players more than fifteen hundred times on Twitter alone, with 99.77% positive sentiment.

The game has been reviewed on hundreds of blogs, featured on podcasts and national radio, will be announced as FWA Mobile of the Day on June 12, and is now scheduled to feature in a national TV show, giving the game and the Australian Bureau of Statistics further exposure.

To date, more than 53,216 people have downloaded the game - but this is only the beginning. The game has only just launched, the buzz continues to build and downloads are continuing to grow at a rate of more than 2,000 per day.