Playdeo

Playdeo was a London-based entertainment studio that developed what it called "television you can touch": mobile titles that place an interactive, playable space inside live-action video. Founded in 2017 and based in Shoreditch, the studio combined television and film production craft with games and software development, releasing its first title, Avo, in 2019 and its second, Mystery Coast: Treasure Hunt, in 2020.

Avo follows Billie, a young inventor, and an avocado she has brought to life; players draw a path with a finger across the screen to direct the character through episodic, live-action scenes, with a rules-based system selecting among multiple cameras as the player moves. Mystery Coast: Treasure Hunt casts the player alongside Storm and the crew of the Mary Rose, diving shipwrecks to recover, restore and auction treasures, and combines TV-series qualities with free-to-play mobile game mechanics. Both titles were promoted by Apple editorial, with Avo described by Apple's Game of the Day as "groundbreaking playable TV" and Mystery Coast called "a dazzling mash-up of game and live-action video."

By late 2022, trade press reported that the studio had effectively wound down: staff were made redundant from around September 2021, the three cofounders resigned as directors in March 2022 and the company's debts were settled around the same time, with the entity remaining registered but employing no staff and held by its investors.

Founding story

Playdeo was founded in 2017 by Jack Schulze (CEO), Timo Arnall (head of production) and Nick Ludlam (CTO), who had previously worked together at the design studio BERG, which Schulze co-founded. Schulze trained at the Royal College of Art and has work in MoMA's permanent collection; Arnall is a filmmaker and photographer with a PhD in design from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design who had collaborated with Schulze since childhood; Ludlam is a software engineer whose prior work includes NASA, Framestore, The Mill and BERG. The team formed the studio around the idea of building a new kind of entertainment that merges TV production with interactive play.

Business model

Playdeo developed and published its own interactive video shows for mobile devices, handling concepting, live-action production, software engineering, publishing and marketing in-house.

Mystery Coast was described as combining TV-series qualities with free-to-play game mechanics, and included in-game restoration and auctioning of treasures; the titles were distributed through Apple's App Store.

Traction

Two released titles — Avo (2019) and Mystery Coast: Treasure Hunt (2020) — both featured by Apple editorial, with Avo named an Apple Game of the Day and user reviews on the company's site showing five-star ratings.

Latest developments

In November 2022, trade press reported that Apple had hired cofounders Jack Schulze and Timo Arnall, likely for mixed reality work, following the earlier 2019 move of Avo design lead Jonathan Topf to Apple. Playdeo itself had effectively closed, with no staff and ownership resting with its investors; investor Matthew Ball publicly referred to Playdeo as having exited to Apple.