Birmingham Science Park-based interactive game developer seeks investment after receiving red carpet treatment at top North American film festival.
John Sear and Adam Russell of wallFour at the Toronto International Film Festival
Birmingham Science Park-based start-up wallFour’s ground breaking cinema screen game for 100 simultaneous players is becoming one of the most talked about features of the Toronto, Palo Alto, and New York-based film festivals.
‘Renga’ enables a cinema audience to directly control multiple elements of the feature-length game in parallel by pointing hand-held lasers at the screen. The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), held earlier this month – which attracts more than 250,000 people and is only topped by the Cannes equivalent in terms of industry significance – has hailed Renga as ‘the future of interactive cinema’. The Canadian premier of the game was the central attraction at TIFF Nexus; the Festival’s gaming and new media initiative.
Renga is featuring at the Palo Alto International Film Festival, California, at the end of this week (28th and 29th September), where the game creator wallFour will be awarded $1,000 for ‘best new platform’. The Science Park-based entrepreneurs will then take the game onto the New York film festival.
Adam Russell, Co-founder of wallFour, which is based at the Park’s Entrepreneurs for the Future centre, said: “For Renga to be celebrated at the North American film festivals is creating so many proud – and somewhat unbelievable – moments. Rather than pitching our concept, waiting to see if we’ve made the selection, and then funding the trips ourselves, the festival organisers are arranging and paying for our travel and accommodation, with VIP receptions and cash awards in addition!
“We are now looking to maximise this international exposure by actively seeking investment, which will enable us to create a polished, scalable version of the game, which can then be rolled out to cinemas across the globe. At the Toronto International Film Festival, a sell-out cinema audience of 227 people paid 18 Canadian dollars to take part in the experience, sharing 100 laser pointers between them. The positive feedback and press reports have been quite overwhelming, which demonstrates that Renga – a ground-breaking collaborative crowd game – has significant potential for monetisation.”
wallFour’s work is a mix of film, video-gaming and theatre. The company was created by two video-game industry experts, who until recently ran what was one of the leading academic games development courses in the world at the University of Derby. Prior to that, John Sear and Adam Russell both worked in triple-A game development on a number of multi-million pound projects for Codemasters and Lionhead Studios.
Dr David Hardman MBE, CEO of Birmingham Science Park said: “wallFour is a first class example of the creative talent and entrepreneurship that is out there promoting Birmingham’s digital capabilities on a world stage. As a city, we must do all we can to support and invest in home-grown successes like this, while also making every effort to encourage more like-minded tech entrepreneurs to consider starting up their own business here at the Science Park, where there is a highly established support network and vibrant community.
“Companies like wallFour have the potential to make it big in a very short period of time and could create many high value jobs in the process.”
Described as a breakthrough in big-screen interaction, Renga is a communal and collaborative gaming experience shared by 100 players wielding laser-pointers at a cinema theatre-size screen. The challenging and engaging game, which share mechanical similarities with games such as ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Civilization’, is entirely shaped by the audience. Each player is tasked with building and managing the resources of a battered spaceship, whilst defending it from an encroaching on-screen alien force. Played as a series of discrete rounds, the audience must work as a team, communicating with each other and collaborating together – on and off screen – in order to ensure their ship’s survival.
