Spring Quarter, 2018
Competitors
OUR
OUR SOCIAL SETTING
What's already out there?
With our pre-show prototype, we want to enhance the social atmosphere of going to the movie theater to create a more interactive and exciting experience. By engaging the audience, Pixel Perfect replaces the mundane waiting period before the movie with a chance to create pixel art with the people around you.
PRE-MOVIE INTERACTIONS
What's been done?
Noovie is a spinoff of National Cinemedia, a cinema advertising company. Their product involves the user downloading an app and pointing their phone at the movie screen to play an augmented reality game. These are simple, single player arcade games. Noovie does not have a social aspect implemented in the game play, even though there may be many people in the theater playing their own games simultaneously. What Noovie does is create an interesting experience by allowing the user to use the giant movie theater screen in a novel way, but that does not extend to a shared experience. Pixel Perfect aims to target this social opportunity to leverage all individuals in the theater and create a more exciting gameplay.
TimePlay has a variety of experiences that are closer to what we want to achieve in our prototype. Their solution also involves downloading an app, but the experiences have social components to them, most of which are competitive. One example is a music game where the players compete to see who can get the best score. The track is displayed on the movie screen while the user taps the corresponding shape on their phone in sync with the music, similar to Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Another example is a trivia game where players try to guess the answer to the question displayed on the movie screen by answering on their phone. TimePlay aims to turn these interactive experiences into additional revenue streams for movie theaters while encouraging people to go to the movies more often. This includes creating experiences where the top players can get a discount based on the advertiser sponsoring the experience. An example of this is a game where players throw truffles from a chocolate company into the matching bag. The top player's first name is displayed and they win a sweepstakes prize. While this is closer to what we want to achieve in our prototype, our idea is less about competition and more about collaboration. We also want to focus on a novel game experience, whereas trivia and Rock Band type games have been done many times.
COLLABORATIVE PICTURE CREATION
What's been done?
We found another potential competitor in epuzzle, which allows multiple people to work on a jigsaw puzzle online at the same time. Their platform allows users to either create or join a game, where a puzzle is broken up into many squares and all the squares are mixed up. Users can then click on two puzzle pieces to swap their places. The puzzle is timed, and it is completed when it correctly displays the original image. This platform allows for collaboration of up to 10 players for any given puzzle, which is less people than we are aiming to reach with our own prototype. There is no manner for the individual users to communicate throughout the puzzle process, which we want to focus more on in our own design since the players will be colocated in the movie theater and can talk to one another. There is also no way to ensure that one person doesn’t just complete the entire puzzle on their own, whereas with our design each group must be involved to ensure the picture’s success. Finally, epuzzle does not allow for creative expression, as it is a set puzzle with a predetermined correct answer. Pixel Perfect aims to foster creativity by giving users suggestions of what type of thing to create, but ultimately allowing them freedom of creation.