Field notes
What we've learned about crowd participation, hyping a room, and pointing cameras at audiences that would rather not be pointed at.
What is a crowd participation game?
A crowd participation game is one that a whole audience plays at the same time, as a single group, rather than as a set…
Read →Introducing CoMotionPlay
The crowd-games project we have been writing about since January now has its own name, its own home, and a catalogue plan. It is…
Read →What a crowd game needs from your venue
A checklist worth running before anyone commits to putting a crowd game in a show. Every item here has broken a test for us…
Read →Why it runs on one Mac and not a server
An architectural decision that looks lazy and is not: the whole thing runs on one Mac, locally, with no server involved. What the alternative…
Read →Crowd participation for sports and half-time
Sports crowds are the easiest audience for participation technology and the least forgiving environment to run it in. Why the audience is easy They…
Read →Audience participation at weddings without the cringe
Weddings are the hardest room for audience participation, and the one where it pays off most when it lands. Why they are hard A…
Read →The calibration problem: every room is a different shape
Every room is a different shape, at a different distance, with different people in it. That means there is no such thing as a…
Read →Designing a game one person cannot win
The design constraint we keep coming back to: no individual should be able to move the outcome much on their own. It sounds like…
Read →Why we lock camera exposure, and what happens when you don’t
Every camera-driven crowd system rests on one assumption: the only thing changing in the picture is the audience. Automatic exposure destroys that assumption, and…
Read →Where a crowd game fits in a run of show
A crowd game is a warm-up instrument. Put it in the wrong slot and it works against the thing it was supposed to help.…
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