Times Square turned into a game you could actually play. Two strangers sat on a red sofa, grabbed retro controllers, and volleyed bottle caps on the world’s most famous screen.

WPP Open X led by Grey provided the creative. Subvrsive were tasked with delivering the project. Visualise were brought in by Subvrsive to handle the technical development.

Coca-Cola wanted to turn passive OOH into active connection. The brief: make the Times Square billboard something people could play together.

Approach & Solution

Visualise architected a live, low-latency game system that synced ground-level controllers with the billboard in real time.

Key design choices:

• A cloud-hosted game server controlled game state and rendered outputs that matched the billboard spec.

• A secure link to the screen’s control-room PC drove on-screen visuals with frame-accurate timing.

• A second on-site PC handled the sofa controllers and orchestration.

• Controller data traveled over 5G to the cloud and back with ~10 ms end-to-end latency for instant play.

• The architecture supported intercity and international head-to-head play, enabling future tournaments.

• The same stack could extend to mobile controllers for mass participation.

Execution

What people saw:

• A Coca-Cola-themed, two-player “Pong” style match where first to 10 wins.

• Players sat on a branded sofa in Times Square and used physical retro controllers.

Operational highlights:

• One-day Times Square activation, 4pm–10pm.

• Field production and permitting by partners, including the branded sofa build and site ops.

Obstacles and fixes:

• Latency risk: Solved with 5G + lightweight netcode and predictive smoothing.

• Billboard I/O constraints: Tight integration with the control room pipeline and failover states.

• Crowd flow: Simple match loop, clear on-screen prompts, and crewed queueing.

Results & Impact

• 6.8 million impressions.

• 5 minutes average gameplay per session.

• 6 straight hours of live play.

Qualitative impact:

• Press and industry coverage highlighted the blend of nostalgia and real-time tech in a high-traffic location.

Takeaway & Broader Significance

Playable OOH works when latency, reliability, and site ops are engineered as one system. The same architecture scales to multi-city tournaments and phone-as-controller formats.