404 Tech Support

Multiplayer gaming using your smartphone as a second screen

Google announced on the official Google Blog about a new Chrome Experiment called Super Sync Sports. The concept is to use Chrome on both your desktop and mobile devices to play a single player or multiplayer game with your device as a controller. In the title game, you run, swim, or bike against the computer or your friends by using the touch input of the mobile device while everybody looks at the desktop screen to watch their progress.

To run, you make alternating swipes. To swim, you make simultaneous strokes. To cycle, you make two circles in sync. While both of us could play the game as single player, the game wouldn’t load correctly for my wife and I to try out the multiplayer.

To get a game going, you can visit chrome.com/supersyncsports on your computer and go through the prompts. Meanwhile, visit g.co/super in Chrome on any devices that are going to play along. Enter the sync code to get all devices synced together and then go through the process of choosing your avatar and game.

Further details according to the posting to the Google Chrome blog:

Chrome Super Sync Sports is available for Chrome v15 and above, and for Android 4.0+ and iOS 4.3+ devices. It uses the latest modern web technologies, including HTML5 features such as WebSockets for real-time gaming synchronicity on desktop and mobile, and Canvas and CSS3 for rich and engaging visuals.

While Super Sync Sports is only a Chrome Experiment, Brass Monkey is a platform based on this concept of using smartphones as controllers and a web browser as the main screen. The use of second screens are becoming more common with the Nintendo Wii U and Sony’s PS4 will have a built-in touch screen in the controller. Brass Monkey is available for iOS and Android devices. They have a number of games that work with the system, so check it out if this interests you.