Most of us think that moving house is a big hassle, as is moving from one city to another, but clearly even more taxing and challenging is moving entire countries – whatever your country of birth and native mother tongue.
While many of us simply think of good ideas but never truly act upon them, self-described Aussie “transplant” Cyril Gaillard, who was born and raised in France but moved to the land down under back in 2009, decided to do something about it.
Known as the founder and CEO of Australia-based game development company Melvia and well-respected for his software development efforts, M’sieu Gaillard decided he and Melvia could use their combined skills in creating interactive trivia games for adults in a way that would help immigrants learn more about Australia in a fun, entertaining and educational way.
Starting with his own experiences in international relocation, Cyril realised that, even after living in Australia for 2 years, he “still didn’t know much about his new home”.
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The game is an iOS app entitled “How Aussie are you? Australian Trivia” for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, and is naturally designed to “educate newcomers about Australia”.
It targets an obviously massive potential market given how “popular Australian is as a permanent destination for many people wishing to relocate from a variety of other countries”.
The game lets “players progress through the five biggest cities of Australia (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide) by correctly answering a series of questions”, with users also able to “select a category to answer questions from, such as - slang, culture, politics, history, sports and geography.”
The app is free to download and lets “players” choose one free city of their choice from the list of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, with an in-app purchase of AUD $2.99 to unlock all the cities.
If it proves to be popular with immigrants, we may well see a flood of such apps appearing.
M’sieu Gaillard may also have to create the same app in other languages (or offer language translations in the app) for those who may find their native tongue an easier language to learn Aussie trivia in, especially if their mastery of the English language is still a work-in-progress.
We can only imagine that Melvia may well want to create similar apps for those in the US, UK, NZ, Canada and other popular destinations - and presumably for other platforms, too, such as Android, Windows Phone and others.
Those, however, are just my initial ideas and reactions to the app, and we wish Cyril Gaillard, his crew and his customers bonne chance!
