This would require a special cinema adapted for this purpose. Seating up to a thousand, every seat would have a game console control pad in front. The general idea is that at a set time - i.e. 4:00pm till 5:45pm - one console game - such as quake - is played by the entire audience at the same time. Note that this would not be a multiplayer game.

Quite simply, the game would be played as follows :-

The game starts and the audience all press a button on their control pads. Input from all the control pads is analysed and the average button press would be used to determine the way the onscreen character would react. For example, if most people pushed the left button, the character would move left. If most people then pressed the fire button, the onscreen character would fire his/her gun.

The cinema could be used to play a whole selection of games, such as racing and fighting games.
-- ccaamgw, Jul 10 2000

Egnor's desired link http://www.cinematrix.com/
Collaborative interaction using reflective paddles. [Eeyore, Jul 10 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

I've heard of a system where an audience full of people plays a flight simulator, or Pong, or some other game using placards. Every audience member has a placard that's red on one side and green on the other; they hold it up facing one way or the other depending on their "vote". A camera at the front averages the input and drives the game.

Sadly, I can't find a link...
-- egnor, Jul 10 2000


Given large enough audience, what you get is a truly mediocre game performance. A perfect example of true democracy at work. Add to that the pointlessness of the whole thing and you get a lot of people that are so bored that they spend their time/money on ruining eveyone else's experience by deliberately making stupid votes. Great idea. :-)

Actually, audience controlled movies is something that has been tried using exactly the same system that you suggest. However, those were not really games, but more like interactive movies, and only a handful of descisions were made throughout the movie.
-- mar, Jul 19 2000



random, halfbakery