Second Screen Experiences

What is a Second Screen Experience?

I think a great way to think about the second screen experience, is an application that extends the primary experience to a portable device. It should be an extension of the primary experience, that when using it on the second screen, actually has an impact on the primary experience itself.

Grand Theft Auto V, was one of my first interactions with the second screen. I spent a lot of time customizing vehicles, and less on the dog feeding. The car customization was always good, you basically pre-ordered your customization and then drove the car to the shop, in seconds, your customizations are applied and paid for, rather than messing around in the game. In some instances things like this are easier on a device, than via an actual game controller.

Assassins Creed 4’s Second Screen on the Tablet and Smart Phones, lets you manage your fleets, trade routes, maps and information gathering. Any income you generate through the mini games here, directly goes back to you in the game.

It could also be connected to the console as you are playing with to provide relevant maps when you are in particular locations in the game.

The concept around Defiance, was actually pretty exciting and compelling, the events in the TV Show would impact the game, and the events in the game impacts the TV series.However that wasn’t the case, as was reported in IGN’s article “Defiance’s Game-TV Crossover is Disappointing”.

We can only hope that maybe this experiment gets better for season 2, if there is one…

The whole smart watch phenomena and fitness bands are the next generation of very small second screens. While the interactions are much less touch based, they are more activity based and have impact on your personal experiences that expand out to a larger system that can be viewed on larger devices from a tablet to a PC, or even Smart TV.

So what’s next?