In 2020, faced with sudden lockdowns and massive uncertainty around travel, Blizzard Activision were forced to transition to an all cloud production for their massive tournament productions just weeks before going live.
They needed a production infrastructure that could be operated remotely via cloud services including multiple outputs, data integrations and interactive elements.
Singular Certified Partner Reality Check Solutions (RCS) was the lead on this project and worked closely with the Blizzard Activision team to assess what was required and what was possible in the available time frame. Singular was the only viable option both in terms of the basic operational requirements but also the advanced interactivity.
Creating a solution that could be used across the Overwatch League, League of Legends and World of Warcraft productions that took place in various locations around the world, RCS set about architecting the framework with the Blizzard Activision team.
The events were to be simulcast on both YouTube and Blizzard Activision’s own OTT portal where they would add Intelligent Overlays from Singular in the form of an interactive viewer menu.
The launch saw multiple firsts with RCS working in unison with the Singular team to deliver a first of it’s experience that offered viewers the opportunity to boo or cheer for teams, to view live stats, play quizzes, buy merchandise and select live player cams and more, all through an interactive sidebar delivered via Singular.
The solution harnessed AWS’ IVS solution for all twelve live player cam videos delivered in sub-second latency.
First and foremost they made air. To successfully deliver such a massive undertaking in such a short timeframe was unprecedented especially with the switch to a fully remote cloud-based production.
After launch, the whole season for each title ran on this production backbone delivering content to viewers all over the world.
The interactive menu proved a huge hit with viewers and the real time data coming from Singular Analytics recorded hundreds of thousands of interactions with viewers. It was also a hit with the commercial team at Blizzard Activision who were able to sell each element of the interactive menu to different sponsors, helping to generate additional revenue from this new commercial real estate.
