Close-up of the interactive game.

Malta is notorious for its potholes but nobody would expect the island’s own pavilion at the international Milan Expo 2015 to showcase this embarrassing characteristic.

The pavilion encourages visitors to play an interactive game on large honey-combed shaped screens, where they have to navigate a yellow bus around the island circumventing potholes along the way.

This game – aptly called Avoid Potholes! – has caused a stir among Maltese visitors who described it as “a joke in bad taste” and said they could not believe what they were seeing at the prestigious fair. “The game was actually promoting potholes, like they’re some quaint feature of Malta,” one Maltese visitor said.

The global commercial fair, which has food as its theme, has 54 national pavilions, including Malta’s. The six-month event opened in Milan last month and has representatives from 145 countries, each vying to promote their best elements.

The scope of the game is not simply to avoid potholes; it takes ‘players’ on a tour around Malta

‘Game promoting Malta’s potholes’

Malta felt potholes should be part of the attraction but locals who visited the pavilion were mortified. “I was invited to play the game by a Maltese girl manning the stand but when I realised what it was, I felt embarrassed. The expo is an extremely prestigious event. This was humour gone wrong – a joke in bad taste.”

Another said: “We slowly walked out with our faces red and our national identity challenged. These are truly dark times for Maltese culture and art.”

However, Antoinette Catania, deputy commissioner general of Malta for the Milan 2015 Expo, defended the game. It looks “at the lighter side of life” and the idea and programming of the pothole game was undertaken by students from the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology, together with their senior lecturers, she said.

“Apart from looking at the lighter side, the scope of the game is not simply to avoid potholes; it takes ‘players’ on a tour around Malta with highlights on diverse locations,” Ms Catania said.

The games, she added, were quite popular and visitors “from all walks of life” were “trying their hand at driving the bus”. “Furthermore, it is an attraction for families with children, who absorb themselves in the game while their parents savour the other attractions that we present at the pavilion,” she said.

Designed by Allestimenti & Pubblicità following an international call, Malta’s pavilion includes a video wall, display cases, touchscreens and images. It boasts between 1,000 and 1,500 visitors a day. Ten million tickets have already been sold for the expo.

This was humour gone wrong

Malta chose the concept of honey as “a symbolic element from our past”, which will “preserve our inheritance into the future”.

The theme of the pavilion is: ‘Derived from the past, preserved for the future’.

One of the disappointed visitors promptly expressed hope that the theme was not some sort of prediction. “I hope they are not referring to potholes,” she said.

Ms Catania said the focus of the pavilion was on the audiovisuals, such as the specifically produced videos showcasing Malta and Gozo and the islands’ 360-degree panoramic images.

Seeing as Malta is showing all its cards with the pothole game, visitors at least know they were not being taken for a ride when they come on holiday.