Interview with magneticNorth
25 September 2012
| interview
| webrtc
Author johan
At the last Protothon we explored the potential of WebRTC through the collaboration of some of the most talented and creative individuals in the world.
UK digital design group magneticNorth flew two of their top chaps over specially to explore this brand new communication tool & they've been WebRTC'd up since building Who Am I? a fully functioning WebRTC game and taking it to Google I/O for thousands to play with. Rad!
We are fascinated by the potential of this platform so we caught up with the Mancunian gentlemen to get their first hand experiences of prototyping the future.
Hi magneticNorth!
First, thank you for coming & collaborating with us in Stockholm. It was a special day. Secondly - as mavericks of the technology we want to ask you a few questions on your thoughts of WebRTC.
What was the response to the new platform and Who Am I at I/O?
We were overwhelmed by the response actually. We created the game prior to the conference and it was well received by the people we showed it to. But when we got to Google I/O and found the wonderful stand that had been created to showcase 'Who Am I?' we were a little worried that it may not live up to its billing! However we had a steady stream of people playing it throughout the conference and we even had repeat visitors. Following a game we would reveal how it was all working 'in the browser' with WebRTC providing the video and audio communication. Most people would then stay and chat about the potential of the technology.
What was you biggest challenge with WebRTC?
The biggest challenge when working with WebRTC was dealing with browsers that were constantly being updated. We were frequently running into situations where the application we were building would stop working, and we had to establish whether this was due to an error in our code or because the latest release of the browser had a broken implementation of the APIs.
Do you plan to develop any other WebRTC games in the future?
We have an internal project that we are working on that uses WebRTC. I can't really say any more about it at the moment but we will keep you posted. I can say it is more of a product than a game.
Where do you think WebRTC will take communication on the web?
I imagine we will see more innovative use of integrated real-time communications. It has the potential to become an expected part of any digital presence.
Anything else you want to tell us about?
We are working on several projects using large format touchscreens that we are quite proud of and an update to our web site. If you are interested, keep an eye on our Twitter stream.
We're massive fans of your work over here. Keep us up to date and happy birthday!
Thanks for the interest,
Adam Todd and the mN team.
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Watch the game in action here: