The BBC reality series Castaway finally got under way at the week-end. I have been working on some of the interactive elements for a few months now.
Chiefly, I helped to devise the 'Remote Control' feature that allows people to unleash some 'unexpected events' on the Castaway island directly from the web. Right now you can choose to remove half the chickens in the island coop, or hatch out a few extra chicks overnight. Will the audience be nasty or nice? Er...
Alongside this, I also helped to devise a treasure hunt game that involves spotting odd symbols and signs in the BBC1 Sunday shows, collecting them on the web and then using them to identify a secret location. The ultimate prize is a holiday for two in New Zealand that I wouldn't mind winning myself. It's one of the drawbacks of devising this kind of thing that it's always someone else who gets to keep the cool prizes.
It has, though, been very interesting to work on such a massive TV beast that is operating across both BBC1 and BBC3, with live and pre-recorded elements plus a lot of online and red button content. It's great too that we came up with something that's a bit more sophisticated than straight voting, and ties TV and online together in a tighter way than I've seen in previous shows of this ilk.