Crowd games for festivals and outdoor events

Outdoor events are the best-lit and worst-behaved environment this technology operates in. Here is what changes when you take a crowd game outside.

Daylight is a gift

Every indoor venue problem — audience in blackout, lighting states changing mid-game, exposure hunting — largely disappears in daylight. An afternoon festival crowd is the most reliably readable audience there is.

Late afternoon is where it gets interesting, because the light is changing continuously as the sun drops. Locked exposure means the picture will slowly get darker over an hour. Recalibrate between sets rather than once at the start.

The crowd is not seated, or still, or bounded

An indoor audience is in known positions facing a known direction. A festival crowd moves through the space continuously, and the group in front of you during one set is a different group by the next.

That rules out anything depending on a stable population. It suits formats that work on whoever is there right now, with no memory between rounds, and that can be joined or abandoned mid-way without breaking.

Attention is optional

Nobody at a festival is obliged to look at your screen. This is the real difference from a conference: you are competing for attention rather than holding it by default.

Which means the thing on screen has to be legible from a glance and instantly obvious. If understanding it takes a paragraph of explanation, it will not happen. The formats that work are the ones a person can join by looking up, seeing what everyone else is doing, and copying them.

Practical outdoor notes

• Wind. A camera that moves reads as the entire crowd moving. Rig it properly — this is the most common outdoor failure and it is entirely preventable.
• Rain. Weather protection for the camera and the machine, and a plan for what happens if the screen goes off.
• Distance. Outdoor crowds are deeper than indoor ones. Read the front section and tell them they are the ones playing.
• Sound. Microphone input is close to useless next to a PA at festival volume. Camera is the realistic choice outdoors.

Where it fits

Changeovers. The dead fifteen minutes between acts when a crowd is standing around and the stage is empty is the single best-suited slot at any festival — the audience is already there, already facing the stage, and has nothing else to do.