Survivors Interactive
- Brand
- BBC
- Year
- 2008
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Quiz & Trivia
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Perfect Fools
Objective
BBC and Perfect Fools built Survivors Interactive to keep fans engaged between weekly episodes of the Survivors remake and to pull new viewers into the Tuesday 9pm slot. The goal was to give the show's themes of survival and moral choice a life beyond the screen, turning them into something a viewer could act out for themselves.
Solution
A viewer clicks through to a pop-up window and picks one of eight characters from the show, laid out side by side. Inside each character's lane sits a stack of short videos — series clips, cast interviews, survival-expert commentary, and pieces shot specially in character — that the viewer flips through with the arrow keys, or steps back for an overview with the spacebar. Videos are paired with yes/no dilemmas pulled from the show's themes, and each answer feeds a running profile. After at least five answers, that profile resolves into 'Your Survivor Type', a pie chart showing how closely the viewer matches each of the eight characters, while everyone's answers together build a 'Choices Map' plotting the UK's responses region by region.
- 1
The player finds "Survivors Interactive" as a dedicated nav item and homepage promo on the BBC Survivors mini-site and clicks through to launch it; the experience opens in a popup window built in Flash, and without the plugin installed a stub message asks the player to download it first.
- 2
The popup opens on a full-screen scene with a life-size cutout of the current character standing center-stage; arrow keys move horizontally to switch to a neighboring character on an adjacent lit platform, each switch announcing the newly selected character by name, while vertical arrows flip through a stack of upcoming video cards queued above the figure, and the space bar opens an overview of the whole space.
- 3
The active card expands into a full video clip from the TV series; a dilemma question tied to the scene appears over the footage in large stencil type, and the player answers YES or NO, with each answer logged to a running profile rather than simply advancing to the next clip.
- 4
Alongside the main clip, three optional companion items — a series clip, expert commentary, and an actor interview — can be played without leaving the current screen.
- 5
A "Your Survivor Type" panel tracks the player's answers as a wheel of eight characters; it stays empty and locked until at least five dilemmas are answered, after which it fills in with a percentage breakdown, names the character the player is currently closest to, gives a short archetype description, and links to a video of the show's creator discussing that character.
- 6
A separate "Choices Map" panel shows a UK map pinned with the predominant survivor type by region, toggling between UK and outside-UK results.
- 7
The player keeps switching between character tracks and answering dilemmas to sharpen the profile's accuracy, and the pool of clips and questions grows over the course of the season as new material is added after each broadcast episode.
