Pre-release screenshots provided by Valerie Mattocks
Tired of waiting for your virtual plants to grow? Has tapping on cartoon farm fields lost its appeal? Do you ever find yourself staring at an inventory screen and wonder “are these even real words”?
If you’re into high-octane, turbocharged exotics (or you’re a giant sucker for freemium city-building/simulation games), you’re going to want to keep an eye on Dealer Dash, a brand-new mobile game from autoTRADER.ca, launching on iOS and Android later this year. (Disclaimer: autoTRADER pays my salary and the salary of everyone who sits within a twenty-metre radius of me.)
Players start out with a tiny rural dealership lot that they inherit from a distant relative. From there, you have to decide which cars to purchase, when (and where) to expand, and what to price your inventory. Don’t worry if that sounds complicated, because the game will recommend a safe, guaranteed option at every step. But you won’t want to play it safe, not if you want to compete on the leaderboards. From what I’m told, they’ll be handing out actual cash prizes to the top players in each region.
Main map
Chances are, you won’t even need to complete the tutorial to feel completely at ease with the game’s interface – most of mechanics will be familiar to anyone who’s ever grown a patch of carrots or had to figure out if they should buy a new barn or upgrade an existing one. (It’s usually better to buy a new one, in case you’re wondering.)
One of the cooler features of the game is that the inventory pool is drawn from local cars posted on autoTRADER.ca. See a car you want for keeps? Go online and contact the seller. (No, you can’t purchase cars directly from inside the game. Can you imagine the complaints they’d get from disgruntled parents?)
Currently in beta testing, Dealer Dash is set to launch this autumn, just in time to ruin your GPA or life in general. See below for the full press release.
Dealership view
Toronto, ON – Automotive classified advertising leader autoTRADER.ca announced its entry into the competitive mobile games market today with Dealer Dash, releasing in Q3 2015 for iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile. Dealer Dash is a casual, free-to-play title that will allow players to experience the thrill and excitement of managing their own automobile dealership empire.
- Grow your neighbourhood lot into a network of dealerships
- Become a mainstream sales champ or dominate the exotics market
- Challenge other players to bidding wars or band together into a dealer group
- Assemble your inventory using actual available cars from autoTRADER.ca
- Dominate the leaderboards in national and regional challenges every week
Developed entirely in-house at autoTRADER’s Toronto and Vancouver offices, Dealer Dash offers unparalleled realism by combining live data from autoTRADER.ca with a simulation engine based on over 30 years of industry data and analysis. Build your dealership offering from real local cars and react to market demand. Do you stock up on budget cars for students returning to school in the fall, or do you go all-in on all-wheel drive SUVs for the winter? Do you invest in a bigger lot or a high-tech service facility?
In the words of Roger Dubar, Vice-President of Marketing: “Dealer Dash embodies everything autoTRADER is about. We publish classified car ads, yes, but what we actually do is empower the consumer – connecting sellers and buyers, providing expert knowledge and analysis, demystifying some of the largest investments that the average person will make in their lifetime.
“Dealer Dash represents a major step forward in engaging with our audience and the car-buying public in general. Car dealerships can seem intimidating when you don’t know how they operate. What our game does is take this monolithic structure and break it down to the basics. We looked at our incredible success with the autoTRADER.ca apps on iOS and Android, and realized we were in a unique position, with our expertise and know-how, to appeal to car shoppers, even if they’ve never browsed a car listing before.
“I’ll be honest, at first glance, it looks like a major departure from our core business of automotive classified advertising. ‘What are we doing making mobile games?’ ‘It’s crazy!’ That’s the kind of response I got in the boardroom when I first pitched the idea. But you dig a little deeper, and it’s obvious that Dealer Dash is a natural fit with autoTRADER. In fact, we’re so sure of the concept and so pleased with the way the game has performed in playtesting, we’ve already started work on the Bike, Boat and RV expansion. We have so much content on the schedule and we can't wait for players to dive in.”
Since the first issue of Auto Trader magazine hit newsstands in the late 1970s, Trader Corporation has stood at the forefront of Canadian classified advertising. autoTRADER.ca is where serious car buyers begin their search. With over 5 million unique visitors each month, autoTRADER.ca is Canada’s most trusted marketplace.
