As the first public-facing MILE, Rival Peak was acknowledged by all involved as an experiment in both the technical and social senses: how would Facebook’s massive audience take to a hybrid game/TV series billing itself as an interactive reality show? Rival Peak – and the Wil Wheaton-hosted weekly companion show Rival Speak – proved extremely popular with the broadest swath of consumers, with millions of viewers worldwide participating over the project’s three-month run.

One of the many unique things about Rival Peak was its ability to involve every viewer in shaping the storyline – even those who chose to simply watch without interacting with the streams. Just by observing any of the dozen virtual contestants via their respective individual “camera feeds,” viewers contributed critical points to contestants’ totals, thereby helping them avoid elimination.

Rival Peak set the stage for even more ambitious projects and the formation of Genvid Entertainment, with the The Walking Dead: Last Mile arriving about a year later and multiple other MILEs in the pipeline – each featuring beloved worlds and characters with enormous global followings.

Someday we’ll look back at Rival Peak as one of the first real steps down the path to the Metaverse; there are many MILEs to go before we get there, and we hope you’ll enjoy them all!