Spark Turns Gaming Festival into Ultimate Co-op Game

To create a platform for gaming in New Zealand, Spark, in collaboration with Colenso BBDO, delivered the country’s first-of-its-kind gaming festival to Kiwi gamers, Spark Game Arena Live. It redefines what a gaming festival can be with the addition of KILLABYTE - a fully immersive gaming experience that turned every single attendee into a player in an enormous, real-life boss fight.

Upon arrival gamers at the event found themselves part of a secret organisation called D.A.R.T. (Data Anomaly Response Team), tasked with taking down the biggest boss the gaming world has ever seen, Byte. Byte is a giant digital snake who has hacked into the mainframe of the festival itself, on a mission to take gaming back to the brick phone era, when snake was the most ubiquitous game on the planet.  

Players dealt damage to Byte with everything they did at the gaming festival, by spectating tournaments, listening to talks, playing games and even eating food. Touchpoints at every spectacle allowed each player to scan their ‘weapon,’ a unique RFID which dealt damage to Byte and earned players XP. Players could track their progress via a Mission Hub on mobile, as well as participate in a side quest that included collecting hidden Byte scales around the festival, unlocking Killabyte lore and prizes along the way.

“The New Zealand gaming community and industry is largely overlooked by the big global gaming festivals. So when creating NZ’s first ever fully dedicated gaming festival, we didn’t want to just replicate what happens overseas. We wanted to raise the benchmark for gaming festivals altogether,” says Ally Young, spark brand partner. “Killabyte delivered this and more. It’s a massive, immersive, visual spectacular, that gave every attendee an accessible and exciting way to compete against each other. I am hugely proud of our team and what we’ve achieved.”

“Gamers are a pretty discerning audience, so we wanted to create something they’ve never experienced before and then make it unavoidable,” says Kimberley Ragan, Colenso BBDO group creative director. “A gaming festival that doubles as a game, where everyone is fighting together to take down a 20-metre, devious snake is definitely both those things. Then the experience was completed by creating a rich world around Byte, including his lore, origin story, concept art and more, which engaged players could uncover around the festival and use to maximise their position on the leaderboards.”

In addition to Colenso BBDO, Killabyte’s incredible audio-visual experience was developed in collaboration with BUCK, Franklin Rd Music and Sound, Spur, and the backend technical experience by Satellite Media.

Killabyte saw thousands of players compete for prizes throughout the day, with over 4.5 million damage points dealt to Byte via wrist scans and the most engaged players spending over 1.5 hours on the Killabyte mobi site. Byte’s defeat crowned JOYNZ & Bravemage4676 as the overall high scorers, winning each a pool of gaming gear worth $1750. 

And what did Bravemage4676 have to say about winning Killabyte? “I haven’t been a part of anything like that. Ever.”