Cross-Country Snowball Fight!

Spring is fast approaching here in NYC, and snow showers are (hopefully) behind us. The LABS group, though, is saddened by this, because it means our interactive 2010 Holiday installation is officially out of season.

The concept we settled on, coming from our initial brainstorms, was to set up some sort of live telepresence game between mcgarrybowen’s New York and Chicago offices. We figured a snowball fight would be a fun diversion, but we had to decide on two things: How does a player throw a snowball, and how does a player get hit by a snowball?

We wanted a mobile device interface for players, but didn’t want anyone to have to download anything to play, so we chose to create a mobile site to serve as the “controller”, and gave it directional buttons to aim an on-screen target and a big “Throw” button to fire.

The challenge then became how to treat the experience of being “hit” with the snowball. If it’s a video-based experience, we could put big “splat” animations on the incoming side’s screen, but that didn’t seem like enough. We needed a more engaging experience, maybe something that the other side could try to dodge. We had the great idea to hook up a projector, in addition to the video screen, shining down onto the users. That way, the throw-er could move a projected target around the opposite city’s office and onto the throw-ee, and incoming snowballs could be projected down onto the floor and travel from the screen to the target.

The final setup included an rolling stand for the TV, but with a high shelf mounted above the TV with a mirror aiming the short-throw projector’s output back down onto the ground and the users. We also included a joystick controller for non-smartphone users, and a bass shaker attached to the back that would rattle the screen whenever it was hit with a snowball. Everything was hooked into a Mac Mini mounted to the back of the TV.

All told, we had over a 37,000 individual interactions with the mobile site including a total of 7,230 snowballs thrown, 5,314 coming from Chicago and 1,916 coming from NYC, enough to cover the office in a 12-foot mound of snow!