Big Knockout Boxing

The First VR Boxing App

Experience the thrill of Big Knockout Boxing (BKB), the next evolution in boxing, in immersive virtual reality!

This was the first public VR app that my team did. We worked with the Audience Network to build a 360 experience for their “Big Knockout Boxing” franchise.

Not only a first for my team, but the first VR Boxing App. We also celebrated an astonsihing 40% penetration on all VR headsets (2015). We filmed both BKB II and BKB III, along with 3D BTS with NEXT VR and interviewed fighters. 5 Red cameras, Broadcast feed, and slowmotion video, culled down to 2 minutes of faces getting punched.

Magnopus

Much of the production was handled by Magnopus, with an integrated ad platform that allowed us to integrate ads into the app at any time. My team built our own version of the app, that was faster and more secure. It took less than two weeks, and ran on more platforms; however, the agreement was that we use the original code structure for the ad platform--which was buggy and problematic. It was all part of a 3rd party developer agreement with DIRECTV that was beyond understanding. It plagued Magnopus just as much as us.

Filming

roduction was a struggle from beginning to end. The higher-ups at Audience didn’t want to know what 360 video was, so camera placement was constantly being shuffled and adjusted from above the pit, to three rows back, to ten rows back at a different side, on and on. There was also the issue of filming into the pit, as the first time we filmed a fight the pit was a raised stage, and the next time we filmed it was a lowered pit that you had to film down into. It gave such a weird angle that the fights almost felt comical. Much of the scope and production changes we didn’t find out until we arrived. The whole thing felt like a futuristic high school production. I’m not even sure if there were production meetings.