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Pop Culture Live
A live, real-money trivia game show hosted by Kevin Jonas, built from scratch to handle huge spikes of concurrent players.
The brief
Every player had to see the same question at the same moment, over a live video stream, with real money on the line. That meant low latency, tight synchronization, and an architecture that wouldn't fall over when an audience arrived all at once.
What we built
- Architected, built and maintained the Pop Culture Live iOS app
- Tuned adaptive streams for the lowest latency and highest quality at sensible cost
- Built an in-app solution that kept the stream synchronized for every player
- Delivered questions securely inside encrypted HLS (m3u8) metadata, cutting server calls and cost
- Integrated server-side ad insertion with DFP Premium and AWS MediaTailor
- Built Mac apps that ran the show: ATEM switchers, HyperDeck recorders, and the AWS Elemental encoder for streaming, ad breaks and game data
- Integrated rewarded video and native ads, and ran push and social campaigns
- Prototyped an Apple TV version and demoed it to investors
- Multiplayer development led by Mike Pritchard
Swift · HLS · Timed metadata · AWS Elemental · AWS MediaTailor · DFP Premium · ATEM · HyperDeck