This Company Is Betting That the Future of Video Games Will Be Massive, Interactive Live Events
Why Genvid Entertainment is expanding to create live, interactive video games that allow players to control the action
By Nicole LaPorte
When the interactive reality TV game Rival Peak debuted on Facebook Watch last December, it was a megahit. Users streamed the game — that allowed them to vote on how characters should act, thus influencing whether those characters would be eliminated in the Survivor-like competition each week — from across the globe, racking up over 100 million minutes of views during the first season.
For Genvid Technologies, the interactive streaming technology company that partnered with Facebook on Rival Peak — along with DJ2 Entertainment and Pipeworks Studios — the game was a proof of concept of sorts: There was an intense hunger for video games that allowed users not only to play a character in the game, but also become a part of the game’s narrative and affect how action unfolded by voting on characters’ behavior. The concept is part Choose Your Own Adventure, part Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, with a social component that only interactive streaming allows for. After all, even if millions of people stream Bandersnatch at the same…
