Project Overview

Buzzy TV enables live audiences at events & venues to play crowd games on digital signage using their own SmartPhones. These games it make it fun, social & rewarding for people to look up from their phones and engage with the people and space around them.

Organisation

Lime Rocket

Team

Mike Gardiner
Byron Papanikoloau
Mitchell Moore
Myles Cooley
Jessica Milosevski
Rebecca Apostolovski
Lauren Wain

Project Brief

Could we get people in social spaces to look up from their SmartPhones, engage with shared media and others around them and love it?

This was the brief and our mission when researching and developing Buzzy TV. We saw a world of opportunity to deliver this buried in what seemed like an ever increasingly anti-social societal change in behaviour. That change was the increased & pervasive usage of SmartPhones in our lives.

We believed we could use play (or games) to make it fun to look up and feel connected if we could turn your SmartPhone into a gamepad. This idea of delivering a live connected and playful experience was where we began.

Project Innovation/Need

Utilising a cloud service and plug n play Android hardware means that any existing TV or digital signage can be enabled for BuzzyTV within minutes. This made it easy for venues to leverage their existing investment in signage and create a more social & playful space.

A free mobile app download allows players to connect to these TVs and use their own SmartPhone as the game controller. This opens up opportunities for massively social event game experiences and the potential for games with 1000s of local players.

Design Challenge

This project provided user interface and user experience challenges. For example how to deliver a multiplayer experience on a big screen that scales for large crowds. The majority of references for local multiplayer games were for no more than 8 players so a lot of our R&D in this area

The technology required has only been available to deliver this within the last 18 months so timing has also played apart in the ongoing success of the project.

User Experience

The project has turned the compelling & sometimes anti-social nature of the SmartPhone on its head by using games to create playful and social experiences in venues and at events. Players download a free app to connect to any enabled TV or big screen and start playing within minutes. Every game earns the player points which if they win can be redeemed for prizes from sponsoring brands.