[3] Viewers were able to impact the contestants and their environs in real time via an interactive overlay on the livestreams to do things such as vote on tomorrow’s weather, help or hinder the AI characters in a range of decisions and projects, solve puzzles and so forth.
[5] The Rival Peak “game engine” enabled the twelve AI characters to interact and exist in their simulated world autonomously, like an elaborate ant farm.
By handling all rendering, animation, and data input in the cloud and limiting user interaction to the video streams, any number of simultaneous participants could collectively and individually affect the gameplay natively through the Facebook app, on phones, tablets, and PCs.
EGMNow’s Josh Harmon stated “But more than the experience of watching (or play-watching, perhaps) Rival Peak, it's the technology and artistic approach underpinning the project that's of greatest interest to those of us who play traditional video games.”[10] Harmon also noted that “it’s clear the gaming industry is looking for ways to tell different and more dynamic stories, and Rival Peak’s technology points to another potential way forward,”[11] and “In the coming years, we may once again return to the days when new gaming experiences constantly redefine our expectations of what the medium can be.
And capable of reaching numbers that xCloud and Stadia can only dream about.”[7] GameBusiness.jp, a Japanese trade outlet, described Rival Peak as “the world’s first viewer-led reality show,”[12] and praised the unpredictability of the show caused by “viewer interventions.”[12] And Los Angeles Times game critic Todd Martens drew positive comparisons between Rival Peak and The Sims and Tamagotchi virtual pets.