BirdRace was an educational online multiplayer game concept for BirdLife International which is a global partnership of conservation organizations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity in general.

BirdRace was inspired by BirdLife’s Flyways and Preventing Extinctions Programmes and designed to educate young people about different species of birds, their habits and characteristics, and their regular cyclical wandering.

The main concept was to convert major flyways into racing tracks and birds into racers, introducing the regular migratory journeys as exciting and adventurous quests. Each player had a customizable avatar, decoratable virtual home, and a number of migratory birds to choose from as their friends. The players would fly the birds and race on tracks inspired by real world flyways and key stopovers. Similar in style to Frisbee Forever (which came out later), the tracks were outlined as a series of rings through which the players needed to go. Some of the rings had a special effect such as increasing the players’ speed, replenishing their energy, multiplying their score, etc. For successfully placing in a race players earned bird eggs; they could then use the eggs as an in-game currency and to raise new birds to race. The game had both a single-player (focused on educating the players about the birds) and multiplayer mode (focused on interacting and competing with other players). Additionally, the game was accompanied by a collectible card game (a la Pokemon or MTG). The card game integrated with the video game and finding certain cards in real life unlocked various benefits and extra features for the player in the game.

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