The countdown to the World Cup has begun, but not everyone can make the trip to Brazil. Even fewer can kick a winning goal. But if you can flick and swipe, then you might get the chance to do both — with the Pelé: King of Football app, our collaboration with Cosi Productions and One Global, available in the iTunes and Google Play stores. Start playing now because time is running out on your chance to win World Cup tickets, the opportunity to meet Pelé, a tryout with the Oldham Athletic A.F.C. (an actual professional team in England), and more!

In a special event at the Apple store in Soho, Pelé had a Q&A with a few of his adoring fans, while our lead developer on the app, Mike LeGrand, walked everyone through the app’s features. You can watch the event here on iTunes.

Intrigued? Follow in Pelé’s footsteps in career mode and work your way from the backstreets of Brazil all the way up to the grandeur of the World Stage or play in Pelé Blitz and pit yourself against your friends and challenge the world in hourly online competitions. Choose from hundreds of uniform combinations, use special power-ups to help you through tricky levels and watch our exclusively recorded interview footage of Pelé. By the way, you can thank the Baltimore Blast (and motion capture) for helping us get the soccer players’ movements just right.

You earn special tickets just through playing, and these enter you into real world prize draws. What are you waiting for, soccer fans? Let’s hit the field!

Pelé: King of Football Game Teaser from Bully Entertainment on Vimeo.

Toyota spot live action shoot in downtown B-more

Bully! recently wrapped the live action component of a broadcast Toyota spot codenamed Millennial’s AR.  Shot in beautiful downtown Baltimore, the spot features near-future glasses tech that allows a sidewalk café patron to scope out the new 2014 Corolla.  From his POV, we see his Face-bubble Friend’s reactions (Bully!’s answer to Facebook,) vehicle features pop out and a prompt to find the nearest Toyota dealer – all in (simulated) augmented reality.

The project (with 186 Advertising – holla!) was an exploration in wearable-tech interface design and gesture recognition – and let us get back to our roots and play in the broadcast space again.

Establishing and POV shots of the Corolla from the vantage point of our coffee drinking actor were expertly choreographed (thanks to HackStone Film Group) and a variety of swipes and gestures where shot on green screen for later compositing.

The spot is slated for release the end of 2013.  The actual glasses with our interface, hopefully sometime soon.

Bully! recently launched a new Augmented Reality game for Mondelēz International promoting the “SOUR THEN SWEET” SOUR PATCH KIDS candy and their X-box game WORLD GONE SOUR.

The game, found on the App Store (here) uses AR image markers (found here and here) to spawn a Bully! created set featuring Dolly Doll, a main boss character from the X-box game.  Dolly, controlled by the mischievous Yellow SOUR PATCH KID character, throws anything at hand – toy blocks, doll heads, firetrucks – at the user.  The user must dodge the projectiles and, with the help of the Green SOUR PATCH KID character, throw tag-alongs (small SOUR PATCH KIDS) back at Dolly to win.

Beyond being among the first AR advergames, a key differentiator of the game is that the user must actually duck to avoid being hit by virtual projectiles – not just move back and forth with on-screen buttons but physically move his or her body to avoid being hit by the Dolly’s  barrage.

This technique, utilizing an operation that comes ‘naturally’ to people as an input to computer interaction, is referred to as a natural user interface (NUI.).  This kind of interaction is being actively explored by groups such as but in its infancy with mobile device experiences.

“One of the things we wanted to explore with the SOUR PATCH project was how NUI inputs could be used to add a new dimension to mobile game play – where the user has to move in real space to interact with virtual content – or in the case of SOUR PATCH game, duck the virtual blocks Dolly Doll throws.” said Carlson Bull, Creative Director and founder of Bully! Entertainment.
“As mobile technology progresses we’ll be able to utilize this kind of real-world interaction to create some very interesting engagements.” Says Bob Berkebile, VP of Technology and Innovation.   “We can envision a new genre of experiences that seamlessly blends natural inputs and virtual content to dramatically enhance game play, learning and brand activations.”

“The SOUR PATCH game is a step toward this future,” said Bull.  “When AR and gesture recognition systems make their way into eye ware, a world of possibilities will open up.”