A live performance of Wi-Fi-Wars launched the fourth year of Croydon Comedy Festival on Friday.
The immersive show features comedian Steve McNeil and production manager Rob Sedgebeer, who work together on TV show Dara O’Briain’s ‘Go 8 Bit’.
The pair previously attended the festival, run by founder Tom Eveligh, 48, and were keen to return to the event, or so it seemed.
Steve said: “Why do I keep coming back? Tim keeps paying me.
“No, jokes aside, I’ve known Tim for a long time now and he’s doing a really great job.
“Croydon Comedy Festival is very grassroots but he gets loads of very good acts to come and do the line-ups here.”
Wi-Fi Wars is a live interactive video game and comedy performance which sees the audience split into teams in order to compete against each other on retro style games over their smart phones using a Wi-Fi connection set up by Rob.
The audience acquire points both individually, and as a team, attempting to beat their opponents whilst the games play out on a large screen, all controlled by Rob whilst Steve hosts and commentate.
The system allowed the pair to win a World Record for ‘Most People Playing A Single Game of Pong’ when 286 audience members all played the popular retro game together on the 2016 Christmas Lectures.
Steve said: “A very clever, sexy man called Rob Sedgebeer invented a way that an entire audience can log-in on their smart phones and all compete on video games against each other.
“So he does loads of clever things during the show and I shout while it happens.”
As well as ‘Pong’ the performances consists of the 1983 game ‘Track and Field’, the old Nokia phone game ‘Snake’, the smart-phone app game ‘Flappy Bird’ and even a version of ‘whack-a-mole’ created by Rob himself.
“We haven’t had Wi-Fi Wars here for a while,” said Croydon Comedy Festival founder, and IT Consultant, Tim Eveligh, 48.
“We’ve managed to get them back which is very exciting, it’s an extraordinary show, it’s really good fun.”
The festival will continue to run for the rest of June with performances from the likes of Nish Kumar, Ed Gamble and Felicity Ward.
Make sure to visit http://www.croydoncomedyfestival.co.uk/ to find out more and get your tickets and visit www.wifiwars.co.uk to check out Steve and Rob’s work.
