Killabyte
- Brand
- Spark
- Year
- 2024
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- Colenso BBDO
Objective
Spark New Zealand, the country's largest telco, wanted a credible, owned platform in gaming rather than a logo on someone else's event — proof it's the network gaming runs on, for an audience that tunes out sponsor badges. New Zealand had never hosted a gaming festival of its own, so Spark built the first one and turned it into a way to convert passive attendance into brand-attributable engagement across every zone, stand and vendor on the floor.
Solution
At the door you choose the 'game' entrance and get handed an EXABAND wristband — that's your weapon for the day. Your phone is the console: a no-download Mission Hub site holds your ticket, your Damage total and the live leaderboard. From there the whole festival is a quest map — tap your band at a sponsor stand, a game booth, an esports area or a food truck and you land a hit on Byte, a giant virus snake trying to drag gaming back to the brick-phone era; a side hunt for physical scales hidden around the venue adds bonus points and lore. About half an hour in, the arena goes dark, Byte fills the overhead screens, hosts call the fight live, enough combined hits trigger a double-damage phase, and everyone raises their phones together for a final EXABLASTER until Byte goes down in a synchronized lights-and-sound finale and that session's top scorer is announced.
Results
Across the one-day event, players logged 51,142 minutes of cumulative play (over 35 days' worth) and racked up 601,677 individual game interactions, including more than 20,000 wristband scans that dealt 4,577,069 Damage points to Byte. More than 3,000 attendees engaged with the Mission Hub platform among roughly 4,000 festival-goers, averaging 13 minutes each (top players stayed active over 90 minutes), and players found 19,996 physical collectibles hidden around the venue. Killabyte was voted the festival's most popular game, ahead of Fortnite, NBA2K and Call of Duty. Post-event research found gamers were 77% more likely to consider Spark for gaming products and ranked Spark #1 as 'network for gamers,' alongside a 349% rise in gaming product orders and a 212.8% rise in gaming accessory revenue.
- 1
At Spark Arena, players choose between an ordinary entrance and a 'game' door that signs them into the festival-wide co-op fight from the first step; their festival wristband, a custom EXABAND, doubles as their weapon. A briefing casts them as recruits of D.A.R.T. (Data Anomaly Response Team), tasked with stopping Byte, a giant digital virus snake built from the original Nokia Snake that wants to drag gaming back to the black-and-white brick-phone era.
- 2
Players open the Mission Hub, a web page requiring no app download, which serves as their personal console for their ticket, event info, points, unlocked artefacts and the live leaderboard.
- 3
The core loop has players roam the arena floor to find scan points at sponsor activations, playable game booths, esports viewing areas, the speaker series and food vendors, then tap their EXABAND at each one to deal Damage to Byte and earn XP.
- 4
Progress updates in real time in the Mission Hub, where players track their rising Damage and XP totals and their position on the live leaderboard, also displayed on the arena's big screens.
- 5
A side quest runs in parallel: physical Byte scales hidden around the venue reward players who find them with bonus points, extra Killabyte lore and prizes.
- 6
About thirty minutes in, the session shifts into a scripted takeover: the house lights drop, Byte appears across the overhead screens in an animation readable from every seat, and hosts narrate how to use wristbands against the boss.
- 7
When the crowd lands enough combined hits, a milestone unlocks a special double-damage sequence that plays out on the arena screens.
- 8
For the finale, all players fire together from their phones in the EXABLASTER, a collective mobile boss-fight moment that defeats Byte and triggers a celebration of synchronised arena lighting, audio and screen content.
- 9
Each session's top scorer is announced from the leaderboard and wins a gaming-gear prize.
