General Description
WayTooDigital is a company focused on providing digital solutions to advertising agencies, primarily through the production of “advergames”—games designed to promote a product or brand.

I joined WayTooDigital in September 2011, at its early stages, as the sole developer, later becoming part of the company’s core development team.

The company’s main focus was to create short user experiences lasting between 1 and 3 minutes, often designed for event stands or promoters. Many of these experiences also needed to operate autonomously, welcoming and engaging the public without external assistance.

Beyond advergames, the company also developed projects with social, multiplayer, and mobile elements.

During my nearly four and a half years at WayTooDigital, I contributed to an estimated 50 to 100 different projects. Notable technologies used included Kinect, augmented reality, face tracking, face recognition, RFID, and many others.

Challenges
The main challenge, without a doubt, was the extremely tight timelines inherent to the advertising industry. A project had to be presented, approved, developed, corrected, and re-approved within 4 to 5 days at most, since delivery dates were absolutely immovable, often tied to specific events.

Another challenge was the wide range of technologies involved: Kinect (used for virtual fitting rooms, photo booths, and various interactive games), face tracking and recognition (applied in virtual mirrors), augmented reality (for both games and architectural applications), among many others.

Additionally, projects often required a social layer, integrating connectivity with social networks and user tracking systems for the client’s advertising purposes.

In many cases, games had to be modified during the actual presentation. A common challenge was preparing the product to be adaptable on-site—not just adjusting difficulty or timing parameters, but literally being able to change the game itself in real time.