Our Executive Creative Director, Phil Stuart will join the Thought Leadership Programme – a series of curated panel discussions delivering insight from leaders at the forefront of global change, addressing the ideas and opportunities shaping the UK-US relationship.

Exploring how creative leadership, design and storytelling drive growth across industries and borders, Phil will be moderating ‘The Future of Storytelling: A Transatlantic Dialogue’.

Joining him, Ben Drury (Yoto), Susanna Pollack (Games for Change) and Andrew Zimmerman (JOURNEY) will discuss how changing audience expectations, immersive platforms and GenAI are redefining narrative engagement beyond traditional contexts. They will highlight the strengths of UK-US collaboration and offer a roadmap for sustainable, ethical, and human-centred storytelling.

Here are some other key moments to look out for:

• Building Transatlantic Growth – A flagship opening conversation with UK Secretary of State for Business and Trade Peter Kyle, setting out the future of the UK–US economic relationship and the opportunities it presents for British business.
• Creativity, culture and global influence on the world stage – In conversation sessions with Simon Cowell, Dame Donna Langley, Thomas Heatherwick and Sir Paul Smith, exploring how creative leadership, design and storytelling drive growth across industries and borders.
• The future of AI and emerging technologies – From the Next Wave of Intelligence with James Manyika (Google AI) and Mira Murati, to deep dives on quantum, data and digital trust, Thursday places frontier technology firmly at the heart of UK–US collaboration.
• World-class leadership and performance – High-profile conversations including Sir Gareth Southgate on leading through adversity, major figures from finance, sport and culture, and a headline afternoon session with Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, on innovation and creativity at scale.

Keep an eye out for the trip across our website and social media channels for updates and takeaways!

The biggest shift this year was integrating GenAI into our toolkit. Our mantra was clear: GenAI is an enabler meant to supercharge human creativity, not replace it. We also decided to reduce team sizes. This was designed to deepen active collaboration between members, but it also reflected a new confidence that with the right tools, we can now achieve more with less.

Alongside the Grand Prix Award, we introduced two new categories to celebrate these shifting dynamics:

• The Artisan Award: For the entry demonstrating the most intentional “human-first” design, where the human touch is unmistakable.
• The Ghost in the Machine Award: For the most innovative or “smart” implementation of AI tools to bring a complex idea to life.

The hotly anticipated theme this year was Imperfect by Design. From a very British interactive story, an ethereal hand-tracking musical constellation, a couch-based social game and so much more, we were rewarded with a joyful range of interpretations across the seven teams’ two days work. 

Here’s the rundown:

Britain has been bodging things for a thousand years. Now it’s your turn. English Heritage is aware that our national monuments are falling apart, but nobody is doing anything about it. That’ll Do is a tap-and-drag repair sim where you step in with duct tape, Marmite, and a Morris dancer to make things marginally less terrible. You won’t fix anything properly – but you’ll fix it enough.

Key Features

• Four gloriously decrepit national sites to “stabilise.”
• Eleven items that probably won’t work.
• A repair system so optimistic it borders on a personality disorder.
• Ratings from people who really should get out more.

Embrace the chaos in this couch party game where working together is the only way to succeed. It’s not perfect, but it might just work. Over-Controlled! challenges your communication by splitting the mechanics across the couch.

Key Features

• Four ‘split control’ games: Precision Parking, Sandwich Squad, Tower Physics and Team Email
• 4-player chaotic multiplayer with “split” controls (each player only has one input!).
• Mobile-as-controller integration for perfect couch play.
• Local-server orchestration for seamless play.
• High-score system to prove who is the least dysfunctional.

An ethereal audio experience where you shape constellations from stardust to answer a lone planet’s prayers.

In Fate Song, you play as a celestial being using hand-tracking to conduct the universe. The beauty lies in the imperfection of your movements as you create a cosmic symphony.

Key Features

• Intuitive hand-tracking and gesture-based gameplay.
• Organic creation: The constellations are as imperfect as your human touch.
• Generative audio: The soundtrack is composed in real-time by your actions.
• Frequency recognition systems that translate movement into melody.

It’s like “Telephone,” but with terrible art. Disasterpiece brings players together through the joy of drawing from memory. It’s a race to interpret the abstract before the original idea is lost forever.

Key Features

• Prompt-based drawing that spirals out of control.
• Chain-reaction gameplay: Replicate a quick preview of the previous player’s sketch.
• GenAI-powered core: AI-driven logic facilitates the game flow.
• Hard Mode: A mid-round challenge to test your visual memory.

The “perfect” controller has arrived. Face off with friends in arcade classics to compete and win!

Forget your thumbs – use your features. The F.A.C.E. Console™ turns your expressions into inputs, proving that sometimes the best way to win is to make a scene.

Key Features

• Four arcade-style games controlled entirely by your face.
• AI-powered expression detection system™ for high-fidelity gurning.
• Imperfect input translation: Mastering the nuance of your own eyebrows.
• Keepsake photos capturing your most intense gameplay moments.

Identify the ache, master the Claw. Grasp It! is a game of sensory intuition where the hardest part isn’t knowing what’s wrong – it’s navigating the imperfect tools you have to make it right.

Key Features

• Contextual puzzles based on the visceral subjectivity of being human.
• The Claw: A physical tool as stubborn and flawed as your own intuition.
• Ticking timer: As the nuance ratchets up, can you keep a steady hand?
• Subjective logic: Puzzles that require “feeling” rather than just thinking.

Evolution isn’t perfect—and neither are you. In this co-op experience, you are your own biological response. Tasked with rooting out aggressive mutagens, you and a partner must navigate the body’s inner workings. But there’s a catch: every mutagen you absorb literally changes your control system. To survive, you must adapt.

Key Features

• Tethered co-op: A two-player mechanic where you are physically linked.
• Adaptive controls: Inputs become more complex as your biology mutates.
• Mass-shifting: Pipe mass between players to squeeze through tight spaces.
• The Wildcard: A random third-player spawn to upend your strategy.
• Hybrid design: AI-generated music paired with human-authored levels.

The team spent a week playing each other’s games and then the votes were counted.

The Artisan prize went to Fate Song for its strong visual design and very human, meditative feel. One voter commented on it being a beautiful combination of hand-tracking and music creation.

Taking the Ghost in the Machine Award was F.A.C.E. The use of GenAI to track and understand facial recognition unlocked this retro-inspired mini-game suite. One voter commented that this type of game would only have been possible in 2 days with the use of GenAI.

Finally, Over-Controlled picked up the Grand Prix, described by many as the perfect response to the brief with its imperfect collaborative play, heralding the achievement of creating a networked game with mobile controllers and multiple games within the time frame.

Despite the smaller teams, the quality and complexity of the games increased this year.  Typically, ambitious concepts are sidelined due to the challenge of executing them within such a tight timeframe, but this year the teams – empowered by GenAI – pursued their most exciting ideas with total confidence.

Long live JAMLOADED!

In UNO: Bridge Clash, players get wild with fun-filled team races that transform the classic card game into an epic obstacle course competition. Players match cards to build bridges and get to their team’s golden UNO card, but the real fun begins when disruptive WILD power-ups are activated. Blow up bridges, block opponents, and create total chaos. Think fast to be the first to bring the golden UNO card back to base!

Mattel Digital Studios’ vision is to extend physical play to the virtual world by creating digital experiences and games based on Mattel IP that drive sustained engagement for fans of all ages. By partnering with leading creator ecosystems, Mattel continues to expand how audiences play with its IP across digital worlds – from recent experiences like Masters of the Universe™: He-Man Heroes on Fortnite and Monster High on Roblox, to the breakout success of Barbie Dreamhouse Tycoon, now surpassing 500 million visits.

Play UNO: Bridge Clash on Roblox now.

For the last 15 years, our relationship with technology has been broadly defined by the smartphone and its requirement that we look down and away from the world to interact with it.  But this now appears to have reached a saturation point. Recent data paints a stark picture of Digital Fatigue:

• The Notification Turn-Off: According to Deloitte’s recent Digital Consumer Trends of the Dutch population, 50% of consumers have now permanently silenced notifications for at least one major app to protect their peace, and 1 in 5 have deleted a social media app entirely in the last 12 months.

• Gen Z’s Exhaustion: Far from being happy zombies, Gen Z is the most conflicted generation. A report by Human8 highlights that 73% of Gen Z report feeling “digitally exhausted,” and, in a surprising twist, 53% of UK Gen Z respondents favour stricter social media bans for younger users.

• The Dumbphone Signal: There has been a quiet but steady resurgence in “dumbphone” interest and digital detox tools, driven not by Luddites, but by young digital natives seeking friction to stop the scroll and their parents recognising the detrimental impact of traditional social media on mental health.

This is the defining push-pull challenge audiences face. How can I reject the overt intrusion of technology, whilst also embracing its many positives?

This is where we believe Wearable Play finds its fertile ground. The market is already responding. Smart glasses shipments soared by 110% YoY in the first half of 2025 alone (Counterpoint Research). Why? Because the promise of wearables is not more content, it’s a greater context.  It offers a way to engage with the digital world while keeping our heads up and hands free.

We know that adoption is never uniform. Understanding the audience and their unique requirements is critical to designing Wearable Play experiences for the distinct motivations of different generations.

The Insight: This generation is acutely aware of the Attention Economy trap. They value privacy and are wary of always-on surveillance.

The Opportunity: For them, wearables must offer Calm Tech. They aren’t looking for a chaotic AR overlay that mimics the noise of TikTok. They want wearables that act as a filter – curating reality and enhancing social connection.

The Play: Ephemeral and Social. Play that happens with friends in the real world. Passive Play driven by their day-to-day interactions with their world, friends, colleagues, and social lives.

The Insight: For the cohort born entirely in the 21st century, the distinction between online and offline is archaic. With platforms like Roblox exceeding 25 million daily concurrent users, this generation treats digital spaces as primary hangouts.

The Opportunity: 93% of Gen Alpha prefer mobile gaming, but they are ready for that screen to expand into the world. They expect their physical play to have digital properties. If they pick up a stick, they expect it to be able to cast a spell.

The Play: World-First Immersion. They are the primary audience for blended reality games in which the park, the school, and the living room serve as active game boards.

The Insight: While smartphone ownership in the 50+ demographic has hit 90% (AARP), wearable adoption has traditionally lagged. However, this is changing rapidly as health becomes the killer use-case.

The Opportunity: Trust and Utility. Smartwatches still dominate here because they offer tangible value: ECGs, fall detection, and independence.

The Play: Gamified Wellness. Experiences that turn a daily walk into a discovery tour, or use biometric data (heart rate, steps) to unlock narrative content. The play here is subtle – it’s about making the maintenance of health feel rewarding rather than clinical.

Shifting from a phone in your hand or pocket to a wearable on your face, finger, wrist or around your neck requires a massive leap in trust.

The statistics on trust are somewhat sobering. A recent survey by TrustArc found that 75% of consumers worry their data is being used without permission. Even more critically, back in 2024 GetApp reported that consumer trust in tech companies to safeguard biometric data (face scans, voice, fingerprints) had dropped to just 5%.

Yet, adoption grows.

The differentiator for 2026 and beyond is Value Exchange. Audiences are savvy. They are willing to share their heartbeat, their gaze, and their voice, but only in exchange for genuine value – magic, utility, or delight.

Where traditional mobile apps were focused on capturing attention, Wearable experiences must be about unlocking magic.

So, how do we bridge the gap between Digital Fatigue and the wearable future? The answer lies in how we design the relationship between the user, the device, and the world.

For many, putting a computer on their face or finger still feels alien. Play is the universal medium that reduces this friction. Research into the behaviours of the “Silver Generation” suggests that gamification significantly reduces anxiety about adopting new tech amongst these older demographics, shifting the focus from learning a tool to enjoying an activity. 

For Gen Z, play provides the ‘intrinsic motivation’ needed to embrace possible privacy concerns. When we design wearables as toys first and tools second, we bypass the scepticism associated with pure ‘productivity-focused’ devices. The device stops being a tracker and starts being a magic wand.

One extremely exciting shift is the potential move away from active engagement toward passive play.

We are seeing the rise of passive play – experiences that progress while you live your life, without demanding your constant attention. We saw the early signals of this with Pokémon Sleep and the Pikmin Bloom “Adventure Sync” model, but wearables are supercharging it. 

By utilising passive perception (heart rate variability, step cadence, location context), you are simultaneously playing and living your life.

Finally, the audience is demanding a new contract where presence is the new premium. 

The concept of “Heads-Up Computing” has fast gained traction in academic and UX circles as a design philosophy where technology supports the user’s engagement with the real world rather than distracting from it.

Users want to be the directors of their reality, not just passengers. They want ‘opt-in’ layers where digital content appears only when summoned or contextually perfect.

We can design for ‘glanceable’ interfaces that provide agency. A wearable can be so much more than notifications on your face; it should be a quiet companion that enhances your world. 

When users feel in control of the overlay, their willingness to engage skyrockets.

The audience is ready. They are tired of the rectangle, but they are hungry for magic. I know we are ready to build it for them.

As a studio we are committed to Human-First Authorship. Practically this means anything released to the public or to partners will be crafted by a human. This human-first approach is central to our craft and we don’t expect it to change.

For the Pilot we imagined GenAI not as a tool to replace our craft, but as a way to unlock new creative opportunities and give teams new capabilities. For example, across our key areas of interest, we asked ourselves:

• Prototyping: Can we democratise the making process by giving everyone the ability to bring their ideas to life – creating better space for creative challenges and diverse conversations.
• Playtesting: Can we create new ways to roleplay and test ideas out quickly through a range of in-person and simulated playtesting.
• Visual development: Can we create new approaches to the visual exploration process and innovate in how we visually communicate ideas and direction.
• Research & Strategy: Can we use models to help us synthesise complex domains, evaluate signals vs trends and test strategies across emerging markets.
• Meetings and facilitation: Turning the spoken ideas in a meeting into immediate visuals and structures.

From the outset, the team were given full access to frontier models to be explored within our internal R&D and early-stage partner projects.

After 12 months of cross-departmental use, we asked the team to reflect on what worked – and what didn’t. The results were nuanced, encouraging, and at times challenging.

Rather than a single headline, six key insights emerged that helped us understand where GenAI genuinely adds value – and where restraint matters most.

The most frequently cited success was how GenAI lowered the barrier to making. Non-technical team members were able to spin up high-fidelity prototypes – mostly Gemini-based  – without waiting on specialist support.

The impact wasn’t just speed; it was authorship. Ideas could be shown, tested, and discussed earlier, shifting conversations from abstraction to experience.

Across disciplines, GenAI proved especially powerful as a way to start. Team members used it to structure brain dumps, scaffold early thinking, or generate a first pass at code or text that could then be shaped and refined.

This was particularly valuable for colleagues with dyslexia or communication hurdles, where the friction of starting can outweigh the difficulty of editing.

Routine tasks – formatting data, writing helper scripts, cleaning up text, summarising technical information – were consistently flagged as strong wins.

These automations freed time and cognitive energy for higher-value creative decisions, and they felt least controversial precisely because their scope was clear and their outputs easy to evaluate.

Specific implementations stood out – particularly within the art pipeline (via ComfyUI) – because the results didn’t feel generic or disposable.

In these cases, the craft wasn’t in the generation itself, but in how the tools were directed. Prompting required finesse: a clear creative intent, well-chosen constraints, and an existing vision to aim at. GenAI was embedded into established creative systems and workflows, amplifying direction rather than inventing them wholesale.

Used this way, the tools didn’t replace authorship – they extended it. Creative control stayed firmly with the team, and the outputs felt deliberate, recognisable, and owned.

Alongside the gains, a recurring concern was the recognisable “stink” of AI in final artefacts – especially decks and visual outputs that feel verbose, generic, or lacking human terseness.

The risk wasn’t failure – it was dilution. When generation becomes abundant, editorial pressure can drop. “Good enough” becomes easier to accept, particularly in low-stakes contexts, and standards can quietly drift. The differentiator remains taste, clarity, and intentional restraint.

The most uncomfortable reflections weren’t about what GenAI could do, but what it might quietly erode. Several team members noticed that when problems were solved for them rather than by them, the learning didn’t fully stick. Creative and technical growth depends on productive friction. Remove that friction too early, and understanding can become shallow. This risk isn’t immediate failure, but gradual cognitive debt – skills used less often, instincts that dull over time.

There was also unease about environmental cost. Inevitability alone wasn’t seen as justification. If generation becomes effortless, restraint becomes essential – choosing when the value outweighs the cost, and when human effort is the more responsible path.
These weren’t blockers, but signals – reminders that judgement, responsibility, and long-term thinking can’t be delegated.

Balancing these forces means being clear about what ‘good practice’ looks like for us – and putting the right governance in place to support a new kind of quality control.

As our internal GenAI practice evolves, our focus is on setting the conditions for thoughtful, playful, human work to coexist alongside powerful new tools – without surrendering the judgement that defines our craft.

GenAI is going nowhere. Neither are our taste, restraint, and craft.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months – not as final conclusions, but as part of our ongoing experiment.

One of the biggest blockers in any product development process is conjecture. Teams often get bogged down in assumptions, personal opinions, and endless discussions that stop everything cold. Ideas get slowly debated and opinions get set in stone – but without actually experiencing the idea, how can you determine which direction is truly best and which just sounds good?

The answer? Shift the focus to rapid prototyping! By turning ideas into tangible, hands-on experiences, you immediately gain concrete insights and clear answers. This approach doesn’t just cut through the noise; it helps you move from chatter to actionable, undeniable results.

Using low-fidelity prototypes – such as simple sketches, quick paper mock-ups, or crude cardboard models – is the fastest way to reveal the truth about a concept. This early experimentation helps prove the viability of the core idea by quickly testing key mechanics and player engagement.

Crucially, the prototype’s obvious lack of polish actually elicits honest feedback from testers, as they aren’t distracted by slick visuals or complex features. Even better, that low level of polish means the team hasn’t become emotionally invested, allowing you to pivot faster when the feedback hits.

Ultimately, keeping the prototype simple forces you to distill your game down to its absolute base elements, ensuring you focus only on the things that truly matter.

Rapid prototyping is all about hands-on, playful methods that bring ideas to life quickly and allow for immediate feedback. These techniques help teams visualise, test, and improve designs in real time, making the development process more interactive and efficient. Importantly, these methods also promote equitable fun, making them accessible for everyone on the team to both make and play, democratising the design process.

Here are some ways to engage with prototyping and refine your concepts:

• Sketching: We all sketch without realising it’s a powerful, quick for of prototyping! Sketching involves quick doodles, diagrams, or visual scribbles used to rapidly visualise initial concepts, brainstorm ideas, and explore design alternatives with minimal effort. Don’t worry about perfection; even a stick figure works. If it helps you see the idea, it’s working. Crude is cool.
• Paper Prototyping: Paper prototyping creates simple, interactive mock-ups made from craft supplies or just, well, paper. Use them to simulate user flows, test core mechanics, and gather early feedback on usability before any digital effort begins. Remember, you’re not making a board game, so don’t get hung up on presentation. Ninety percent of the time, a humble stack of Post-it notes is the perfect solution.
• Physical: Physical mock-ups are three-dimensional models built with materials like cardboard or Lego bricks. They quickly represent objects, environments, or user interfaces, making them especially useful for understanding the spatial aspects of a design. You can move Lego characters around to represent players or hide things behind a physical object for a more tangible testing experience.
• Digital Prototyping (Low-fidelity): Digital prototypes are interactive mock-ups created using software tools such as Miro or Adobe XD, ideal for creating clickable simulations and testing more input-based interactions. The temptation to make it neat and polished is real when you’re on a screen. Resist it! Keep the fidelity low. It doesn’t even have to be smart; you can secretly click on hidden hotspots to make it react.
• Wizard of Oz (Roleplay): “Wizard of Oz” is a method where a human operator secretly simulates the functionality of an unimplemented system or AI. This allows users to interact with a seemingly functional prototype before it’s actually built. You don’t even have to be in the same room; consider using a disembodied voice over a video call or chat interface. If in doubt, just wing it! No one else knows the rules, so if you’re quick and consistent, the illusion works beautifully.

Play isn’t just entertainment, it’s a powerful tool for innovation and problem-solving. Rapid prototyping taps into this playful mindset, making the design process faster, more inclusive, and less daunting. By embracing techniques above and committing to iterative, purpose-driven exploration, you can transform how you approach product development.

So, why keep talking when you can start playing? Dive in, and see how rapid prototyping can unlock new possibilities and bring your next project to life in ways you never imagined.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ Wands

The Sell: Diagon Alley™ at Universal Studios, Hogsmeade™ at Islands of Adventure, and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ at Epic Universe offer an incredible backdrop for any budding witch or wizard. If you’re lucky, you get to experience the Ollivanders™ show, where a small group watches as a “wand chooses a wizard.” It’s a piece of intimate theatre which sets the tone for the narrative-led experience that ensues. 

The Play: Once armed with an Interactive Wand, you cast spells across the Harry Potter locations.  This play promise is highly alluring, offering a degree of magical mastery that feels perfectly suited for any Harry Potter fan. 

Bronze medallions embedded in the ground indicate spell-casting locations and the precise wand movement required. While these moments are fun, the real depth comes from completing adventures – quest-like sequences that create a light narrative progression. In Hogsmeade, for example, one adventure’s finale ends at the Duelling Club tent, where you complete a series of spells to earn your place in the ‘club’.

Spell-casting at the windows is a two-stage process: the first spell ‘wakes up’ the window and presents a secondary goal, and the second spell provides feedback that directs you to your next location. It’s a simple system that deepens agency and extends interaction time without needing the app.

There are some really neat touches, where your selected Hogwarts House changes the content you encounter in the windows, as well as some very magical vibration and lighting effects on the wand during certain spells.

Across the parks, a wide variety of interactive windows offer moments of surprise and delight for guests, keeping the experience consistently interesting. The magic extends beyond the windows, too, allowing guests to cast spells on physical props. Notable examples include the magically raining umbrella light in Diagon Alley and the weather-altering spells that transform the sky in Knockturn Alley.

The App: The companion Universal Play App connects to the Interactive Wand via a simple QR code scan. While the 1st-generation wands treated the app as an afterthought, the 2nd-generation wands boast an evolved experience, allowing you to create a wizard profile, earn house points, and track your adventure progress.

While Universal has clearly made efforts to keep players “off-app” – starting with the gorgeously printed maps of Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley and continuing with the newly installed instructional digital books found in the windows – the presence of the app steers the once purely “eyes-up” experience closer to a “heads-down” model. We personally found it a critical reference for completing the Adventures.

The Sell: In contrast to The Wizarding World,  the purchase of peripheral – the Power-Up Band – is done with straightforward, game-like efficiency. 

Available to buy from Kiosk, guests simply choose their favourite design representing a different character from the game. At $45, the price point feels low enough to consider multiple bands per family group. The actual design is satisfyingly tactile, with the RFID encased in soft-touch plastic and attached to a comfortable snap band.

The Play: Super Nintendo World is a bold, chaotic land that perfectly transfers the visual language of the games into a real-world space. 

Entering the park through a “pipe”, with accompanying sound effects, is an awesome transition into the game world. As you walk over the threshold, you are bombarded by a place you recognise and love, but at a scale you don’t. It’s discombobulating in the best possible way.

The world – and the Power-Up Band – truly delivers ‘wide-wall play’ for all. You can collect coins by bashing blocks (and participating in rides), collect keys through physical mini-games (such as bashing ringing alarm clocks), and find collectable achievement ‘stamps’ hidden in plain sight. Collecting three keys grants exclusive access to the Bowser Jr. final battle.

In the adjoining DK land, this system is used to collect the letters “K O N G”, a simple but satisfying pursuit that drives exploration. Various other physical mini-games, like a music sequencer or a DK drumming game, are also available and don’t require a band.

The App: Like the Interactive Wands, the Power-Up Band‘s companion experience is part of the Universal Play App and connects via QR code.

The setup involves choosing a team (e.g. Team Toad) and pairing additional bands to track group progress. It provides leaderboards for guest and team play, alongside meta-game progress for stamps and keys. This progress feels core to the experience, but the app’s potential for overuse is mitigated by in-park screens that allow players to check stats without being glued to their phones – a smart move, particularly for children without phones.

The two experiences demonstrate different approaches to experiential merchandising, ‘eyes-up’ play, and app integration. What insights can be gleaned from their different strategies?

Experiential Merchandising

A core opportunity for peripheral play is that the fundamental purchase is part of the experience. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter™ wands are a masterclass in this “experiential merchandising”. The purchase is framed as a core narrative moment, epitomised in the Ollivanders™ show. This emotional upsell transforms what is ultimately a piece of sculpted plastic into your wand, forging an immediate, personal connection that warrants the price point.

In contrast, Super Nintendo World treats the Power-Up Band more functionally. You buy your band, themed to your favourite character, from a kiosk or vending machine. The focus is on function and character affinity, a “pick up and play” ethos that quickly gets you into the action but lacks much in the way of affinity of ceremony. It feels less like acquiring a magical artefact and more like buying a required accessory to play the game fully. 

This highlights a key strategic question for designers: Is the goal an emotional upsell or immediate access to gameplay? For some brands, the story of the sale is as important as the play that follows; for others, speed-to-play is paramount.

The ultimate goal of peripheral play should be to keep guests’ eyes up, focused on the multi-million-dollar environments around them, not on a screen.

The Power-Up Band’s design offers a compelling lesson in reliably handling high-volume, kinetic games. The simple interaction language of punching and tapping is intuitive and, crucially, never failed once during our visit. This robust and reliable technology provides a satisfying and consistent gameplay loop that encourages physical exploration and keeps guests present in the meticulously designed world.

The Interactive Wands, on the other hand, while offering moments of true magic, can sometimes suffer from finicky technology, which can lead to moments of frustration that break the immersive spell. While the 2nd-generation wands have made improvements, the need for precise movements and the occasional unreliability of the tech highlight the challenge of balancing complex interactions with the need for a seamless “eyes-up” experience. 

This contrast highlights the challenge of balancing complex interactions with a seamless “eyes-up” experience. In our experience, the most powerful moments were the simplest ones where the technology becomes invisible and the magic – or game – just feels real.

Integrating apps with these peripherals is not a compromise or a limitation, but a deliberate design tool that serves a strategic purpose. To frame it as a simple “eyes-up vs. heads-down” trade-off is to miss the point. The real question is how different screen-use models can be linked to intentionally different types of guest experience and long-term engagement.

The app is a strategic tool for driving the metagame for an IP like Super Nintendo World, which is built on games, competition, and collecting. The core gameplay loop – collecting keys to fight Bowser Jr, for example – almost requires an app layer for accurate tracking, progress visibility, and comparison with friends. The app drives progression, leaderboards, team play, and revisit motivation, reframing its integration as an intentional design choice tailored to deliver repeatable, competitive, progression-based fun. 

For the second-generation Interactive Wands, the app adds a layer of progression and quests missing from the first-generation wands. While this does risk shifting focus from the physical world to a screen, it also adds depth and replayability that were previously lacking. 

Designers must use the app to enhance, not detract from, the core physical experience, as this is where true depth and long-term engagement can lie.

The question is not which peripheral is better, but which design strategy best serves a specific IP and its unique goals. The wands excel at narrative immersion, while the Power-Up Band offers a more reliable and replayable experience.

The most important takeaway is that both signal a shift in theme park design. The Interactive Wands teach us the power of experiential merchandising, while the Power-Up Bands demonstrate how to design for robust, high-volume, kinetic play. Both show us that the future of theme park interactivity lies in creating seamless, intuitive, and deeply engaging experiences that allow guests not simply to witness a story, but to truly play a part in a living world.

What is coming next? Watch this space.

Great play should be for everyone. This principle is our blueprint for inclusive and compelling design.

• Low Thresholds: We invite everyone in with intuitive, welcoming first steps. The experience should be immediately accessible, regardless of age, ability, or background.
• Wide Walls: We support different ways to play. Whether you’re a quiet observer, a boisterous collaborator, a solo adventurer, or part of a large family, the world should accommodate your style. We design for intergenerational and culturally diverse experiences that feel relevant and shared.
• High Ceilings: We layer in depth to motivate return visits, mastery, and surprise. The most rewarding worlds always have another secret to uncover or a new skill to master.

We empower guests with agency, purpose, and presence. In our worlds, the most important rule is that the story happens because of you, not to you. We create opportunities for choices with tangible impact, ensuring every guest feels that their presence matters. By giving guests a clear role and committing to that ‘play promise’, we move beyond simple entertainment to create lasting, transformative memories. Guests should leave feeling changed.

In a world of down-turned heads and glowing screens, we design for human, physical, and social interaction. We prioritise embodied play that gets heads up, hands engaged, and eyes on the world and each other. We champion play that celebrates collaboration over pure competition, using tactile, spatial, and cooperative mechanics to build genuine social bonds. The environment itself becomes a responsive character in the story, reacting to guests in ways everyone can see and feel, creating a truly immersive social space.

The best experiences don’t need a manual. We believe in letting the story teach and letting play lead.

• Story as Instruction: The world itself should do the heavy lifting. We don’t explain; we invite. The environment, the characters, and the narrative cues guide the guest on what to do.
• Play as UX: Guests should understand what to do by doing. Learning happens through intuitive, playful interaction. We build game loops that emotionally reinforce the story, making every action feel meaningful. We also create space for “fun failure,” where getting it wrong is just another delightful part of the discovery process.

A powerful experience lives outside the boundaries of a single visit. We consider the full emotional arc of the guest journey. We use anticipation as a core part of the experience, making pre-show moments and digital entry points matter. We think of the story as a service: what does the guest get to carry forward? By creating unlockables, rewards, and extensions to the world through merchandise, media, and memories, we build an interconnected, always-on experience that deepens a guest’s buy-in to the world.

At its heart, play is about connection. We design for joyful community. We deliberately craft moments meant to be shared between family, friends, and even total strangers, engineering big social payoff moments that become the stories people tell for years to come. The experience provides meaningful, playful feedback that sparks conversation, pride, and social sharing. Our ultimate goal is to make every guest feel part of something bigger than themselves – to build a true community, even if it only lasts for a day.

Before a guest can feel empowered or connected, they must first suspend their disbelief. We build immersive and authentic worlds where every single element, from the largest set piece to the smallest interaction, has a clear and cohesive purpose. Technology must earn its place. It requires a narrative justification and should be used only when it can deepen the story, reinforce the theme, or enable the guest’s role. When done right, the technology becomes invisible, a seamless and magical part of the world’s story.

By adhering to these principles, we don’t just build attractions. We build worlds that invite you in, give you a vital role to play, and connect you to the people you share them with. We build the foundations for memories that last a lifetime.

By embracing play, attractions can achieve deeper immersion, boost repeat visits, grow revenue, and forge stronger emotional connections with guests.

It’s time to move beyond bigger rides and create worlds where guests are active participants in their own stories. Let’s build the future of unforgettable experiences!

• GenAI is a Paradigm Shift: It’s not just a new technology, but a fundamental shift comparable to the iPhone or the World Wide Web, set to transform how we interact and, crucially, what we make in the creative industries, not just how we make it.
• New Tools for Game Development: GenAI is introducing powerful tools for content creation, including prompt-based generation of images, 3D assets, textures, and even entire 3D worlds. While still developing, these tools will force a rethinking of traditional game development pipelines.
• Catalyst for New Forms of Play: The most exciting potential of GenAI lies in its ability to enable unprecedented creativity, leading to entirely new and emergent forms of gameplay.
• GenAI Enables Non-Deterministic Play: By leveraging underlying LLMs, GenAI can create dynamic, unpredictable experiences where outcomes aren’t predetermined, fostering deeper player engagement.
• GenAI as Roles within Play: GenAI can take on various in-game roles, such as an Arbiter (e.g., a judge in a courtroom drama, interpreting player actions for emergent outcomes), a Creative Enabler (giving players intuitive tools to shape narratives, characters, or worlds), or a Game Master (dynamically adapting rules and experiences on the fly for personalized gameplay).

Future of Play: Deeper, More Personal, and Alive: GenAI promises to deliver deeper immersion through responsive worlds, enhanced agency via more meaningful player choices, and hyper-personalized experiences tailored to individual players.

While GenAI opens up new possibilities, the talk emphasises that the critical question isn’t just “what can we make,” but “why are we making it?” The underlying purpose should drive the design process, ensuring GenAI-enabled play contributes meaningfully to the world.

Thanks to Games for Change for the platform and to all our partners who inspire and catalyse our work in this space.

At the conference, PRELOADED was also awarded the Industry Leadership Award for our exemplary social impact work within the games industry.

Imagine stepping into a world where a character approaches you, but their dialogue and purpose aren’t predetermined by a script. Instead, they are being generated live by a GenAI model that has a deep understanding of the world’s lore.

At the recent Games for Change Conference in NY, I demonstrated this. With no pre-prompting, the GenAI began to haggle with the player, offering to sell an item and presenting a riddle to be solved. This is GenAI playing with you.

As a designer, I didn’t pre-determine the outcome, and as a player, the experience is emergent. This is non-deterministic play. This style of play, powered by GenAI, will catalyse a wave of new games and play styles that deliver what audiences want: a profound sense of personalisation, meaningful agency, and the thrill of the unexpected.

GenAI’s ability to understand sentiment, adapt dynamically, and foster creativity makes it an ideal games master, character, or opponent, especially in social, non-deterministic games that thrive on human behaviour and creativity.

Here are six roles where GenAI can transform play:

GenAI acts as a dynamic “Dungeon Master,” responding to in-game dynamics by intervening with fun, emergent moments and adding colour and life to the world around you. Think of it as a Stanley Parable narrator with infinite possibilities, capable of changing the rules on the fly based on your decisions.

Play Impact: GenAI is uniquely placed to scaffold this type of play and create the right conditions for the perfect play experience. We are talking about game worlds and experiences that are not constrained by scripts, but are instead living, breathing worlds designed with the intent to maximize the player’s unique and personal experience.

GenAI gives players low-threshold tools to realise their own creative potential. It can create rich sensory output through video, images, voice, or text. Think of games like Scribblenauts or Meta Animdraw, but supercharged.

Play Impact: This means anyone can easily add their own ideas to shape the game world or story, without needing specialist skills. Players can create the ingredients for a story, a character’s backstory, or even new game assets, unlocking the joy of creativity and the thrill of discover.

GenAI enhances the play by taking on a meaningful role alongside human players. It’s not just an NPC; it is an active participant – a loyal companion on a quest, a cunning imposter in a social deduction game like Among Us, or a dynamic rival that adapts to your every move.

Play Impact: This adds new layers of strategy, unexpected twists, and emotional depth to both cooperative and competitive games, creating more complex and engaging social dynamics.

In this role, GenAI operates as a dynamic agent that manages disputes or adjudicates outcomes. It acts as a fair judge or referee.

Play Impact: This opens up entirely new genres. Imagine a courtroom drama game like Ace Attorney where a GenAI judge interprets arguments and evidence to deliver a verdict. Or a debate simulator where an AI evaluates the strength of your reasoning. This allows for deep, impactful negotiation games where nuanced choices truly matter.

GenAI is uniquely placed to scaffold play and create the right conditions for players to let loose and have fun. It can engineer interactions that build bonds, or deliberately sow chaos to maximize entertainment, similar to the fun mechanics in Jackbox games.

Play Impact: By acting as a social facilitator, GenAI can be the spark for meaningful interaction. It can build deeper connections between players by designing scenarios that require collaboration, trust, or even strategic betrayal.

GenAI can support those with low confidence, helping them to be creative and getting the best out of their input in an entertaining way. It acts as a supportive guide, offering suggestions and positive reinforcement.

Play Impact: This makes creative expression and role-playing more accessible to everyone. It provides a safe space for players to experiment, step outside their comfort zones, and grow in confidence. Imagine an AI helping you get into character or explore different dialogue options.

The rise of GenAI is more than just an iteration; it is a paradigm shift. We now have the opportunity to deliver on the long-held promises of interactive entertainment:

• Deeper Immersion: Creating worlds that feel genuinely alive and respond to every action.
• Enhanced Agency: Giving players more meaningful choices that have a real impact.
• Hyper-Personalisation: Experiences tailored uniquely to each individual player and group.

For the first time in a generation, we will be playing types of experiences no one has ever played before. Play that is enabled by GenAI, but driven by human ingenuity, creativity and imagination.