In January, the rich media team at Springbox was challenged with creating an engaging interactive mobile experience for partygoers at agency’s 2011 SXSWi party. With our mission in hand, we set forth with three basic requirements: that the experience be brief, immersive and intuitively accessible to anybody carrying a mobile phone.

Research and Planning

Our first task was to identify a service that enabled the type of real-time mobile interaction we required. We discovered MegaPhone Labs, a company that provides a platform for translating keys pressed during a phone call into meaningful commands for media interaction, and began testing. In no time we were up and running with a 1-800 number that transmitted our in-call phone key presses into Flash. Pretty slick.

After some performance testing and a few brainstorming sessions, we settled on building a multiplayer version of the classic game of snake. Players would dial a 1-800 number to enter the game, and, once connected, would use the number pad on their phones to move their snake around the board, gobbling up tail-lengthening goodies in an attempt to earn as many points as possible. Throw in the ability to devour each other's tails and we had a recipe for competitive (read: engaging) game play — just add design and code.

The Devil's in the Details

It didn't take long for us to throw together a playable prototype, and after our first play test the tough questions began to emerge. How many players should be able to play at a time? How much space should each player have on the board? How fast should the snakes move? How long should each round last? And how in the world do we tie this snake game in with the SXSW theme of the evening?

Play a round, tweak some settings, and play again. Repeat until fun is had. The theme of the game was left to Springbox's writers and creative team, and before long they had a concept and a name that embodied one of the fastest-growing SXSW trends: obtain as much free stuff as possible. Capture the Swag.

Deployment and Showtime

The game looks great, plays great, and is a big hit with the staff. Mission Accomplished? Not quite. While we had ‘talked’ about our deployment strategy, we hadn’t actually done any legwork to ensure its success. What kind of hardware are we going to run it on? Where will we put the projector? What about a second scoreboard monitor? Where will people stand when playing? Should we account for foot traffic? These were the kind of questions that started slowly popping into our head in the days leading up to the event, until they gradually increased in volume to the point where it felt like we were scrambling to keep up with the challenges. Write code? Sure, we can do that. Set up a multi-user interactive exhibit for a packed event with massive crowds using only a desktop computer, a projector and an internet connection? Let me get back to you.

While we were quite worried for most of the day of, almost everything went great. We had identified the major potential points of failure, and put solutions in place in the event that they did fail. It’s SXSW, what if cell phone reception is bad? Alright, we’ll build an entirely separate game controller using a local network connection that can be played in a web browser on any smart phone (didn’t need it). Ok, what if someone inadvertently kicks the Ethernet cord out of the socket and the game stops responding? Sure, we’ll run around frantically trying to figure out what happened with the phones until someone notices the cable dangling on the ground (definitely needed it). The lesson we learned is that anything can go wrong, and something certainly will.

In the end, the project was a great success.  We estimate that 19% of the 300 or so partygoers who attended over the course of the evening played. During the party’s peak attendance, between 9:00-10:00 PM, 11 people played concurrently. The average player spent around 8:48 in the game — with each individual call lasting about 4:00 minutes. Everyone had a lot of fun, invited their friends to play, and watched other people play.  Swag was captured by all, and that’s really why we built the experience in the first place.