by Stephane Gaultier , published on 8.02.2010

Cap Digital and OSEO have chosen 3D2+ for the experimental first transmission of a crossmedia TV game on the VHS (Very High Speed) broadband platform. In this broadcast, all the participants will be avatars of viewers connected via their home computers. A flesh-and-blood moderator immersed in a 3D world will get the avatars to play the sort of televised game show which you are all very familiar with. That’s innovation!

This will be the first multiplayer game with a huge television audience to allow the viewer-participant to participate actively in events as they occur. For the viewers, this will be a true crossmedia experience because they will be able to access the virtual studio hosting the television game show from their computers via an Internet connection. If you are lucky enough to be filmed by the studio’s virtual camera (your avatar at least!), you will see yourself talking to the moderator on the television screen opposite while, on your computer, you will see yourself in the subjective camera role in the studio face-to-face with the moderator.

There are two reasons behind the programme’s crossmedia design: to offer an interactive programme combining TV and the Internet for viewers who want to take part in the game, while also catering for passive viewers by presenting a “conventional” TV game show. In this way, it is hoped that crossmedia can reach a broad-based audience and not remain restricted to a small band of “telenauts”, i.e. Internet-based TV (or TV-mediated Internet) users. The experiment will allow us to confirm whether it is possible to cater for both passive viewers and active or even interactive viewers in one and the same programme.

The televised game show will use the 3DCrossMedia platform which makes it possible to organize and produce television broadcasts based on communities’ virtual 3D universes developed by 3D2+ (KidNet, Linus & Boom Club etc.). You can find a video presentation of this platform on the 3D2+ site

A challenge at both the technological and editorial levels, this project is a perfect illustration of TV/Internet convergence which simultaneously calls on the resources of both media. This type of programme mirrors a development that is observed every day by market research institutes: the rise of the multi-screen viewer. It is precisely this viewing experience, which is split into two and, unfortunately for the TV channels, focuses most frequently on the interactive tool rather than on the television set, that the crossmedia programme is trying to tap into. It is therefore a programme that is very likely to attract audiences and which consequently offers advertisers a powerful channel via which they can communicate. It is the way in which television channels can guide the telenaut’s computer to the programme’s Internet site and get telenauts to share their attention evenly between the computer and television screens. This gives advisers two media on which to put across their messages and it is an opportunity they will certainly not want to miss.

The experiment will start in January 2010 and end in June 2010. If you want to be part of it (broadcasters, advertisers, schools, universities, video/graphical/multimedia service providers etc) and take advantage of the wonderful opportunity to analyze reactions that this project offers then please contact us.

Stéphane GAULTIER, President of sg[a]3d2plus.fr