Giant AR Screen
View the case- Brand
- EMAAR
- Year
- 2018
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- UNIT9
Objective
Emaar Entertainment needed a launch moment loud enough to introduce VR Park, its new Dubai Mall attraction, as mass-market fun rather than a niche gadget. The mall's giant OLED screen above the Dubai Aquarium — one of the most walked-past spots in the building — was running passive video loops, an asset Emaar felt was wasted given its size, record-setting specs, and foot traffic. Turning that screen into a live game meant most mall visitors got their first hands-on taste of VR Park before they ever set foot inside the park itself.
Solution
Shoppers pull out their phones, join over the mall's WiFi, and the giant screen over the aquarium becomes a shared battlefield: alien invaders from The Raft appear layered onto the live video feed of the hall, as if they'd broken into the room in real time. To play, you tilt your phone to swing a crosshair across the screen and tap to fire, tilting and tapping again to reload as more aliens spawn. Anyone in range can jump in on the same wave at the same moment, so a crowd that was just watching a video wall turns into a crowd shooting at it together. There's no app to download and no fixed round — people fire off a few shots and wander away whenever they're done.
- 1
The game runs on a giant curved OLED screen above a mall aquarium, showing a live video feed of the space rather than a fixed clip. Passersby join by connecting their phone to the venue WiFi, with no separate app download involved.
- 2
On joining, each player is assigned a personal cursor color that appears simultaneously on their own phone and on the big screen, letting them pick out their crosshair among everyone else's.
- 3
Animated alien enemies, characters borrowed from the venue's VR attraction, appear layered over the live video of the room, as if they had invaded the physical mall space.
- 4
The core loop is aim-and-shoot: tilting the phone moves the player's colored crosshair across the big screen, and a single tap both fires and reloads.
- 5
Shooting happens in real time with many players active at once, so nearby strangers see every crosshair on the same shared screen and fire on enemies together.
- 6
Players choose their own approach each round: team up with everyone else to clear the alien wave, or play selfishly to rack up personal points.
- 7
Points feed into a shared leaderboard, giving players a reason to keep playing to climb toward the top score.
- 8
The screen experience acts as a funnel into the paid VR attraction next door, introducing visitors to its brand and characters before they buy a ticket.
