Augmented Games by Canada’s Moment Factory is a new interactive experience at Illuminate Adelaide 2026. David Wirtgen is General Manager of Augmented Games, a division of Moment Factory, which creates immersive and interactive gaming experiences combining physical activity with digital environments. With nearly 30 years’ experience in the entertainment industry, David combines creative vision, technical expertise and a people-centred approach to deliver innovative and inclusive games for diverse markets and venues around the world. Formerly Vice-President and Head of Innovation at Cirque Éloize, as well as founder of DW Technical Design, he first joined Moment Factory in 2016 as a collaborator. Since then, he has led high-impact projects in North America, Asia and the Middle East. Whether in permanent installations, family entertainment centres (FECs) or public spaces, his work pushes the boundaries of how we play, connect and share experiences in digital worlds. We chat to David Wirtgen about Augmented Games and Illuminate Adelaide.
David, your career spans nearly two decades of multi-media productions across the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and America. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned from working in such diverse cultural contexts, and how does it shape how you approach new projects like Augmented Games?
What inspires me most is the opportunity to create innovative entertainment through our Augmented Games platform, by building a global community of players across markets and regions, transcending cultural barriers, to deliver more meaningful, inclusive and accessible experiences. The potential of this format is immense, both in terms of gameplay and deployment. I am convinced that our offering has the capacity to reach a wide audience and foster the creation of connected, community-focused experiences all over the world.
You started as a touring sound engineer and technical director with Cirque Éloize (1997–2002), then worked with Franco Dragone Entertainment Group, and now you’re General Manager of Moment Factory’s Augmented Games division. How did your journey from live circus entertainment to immersive digital installations evolve, and what connects these seemingly different worlds?
I studied at the Université de Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium to become a sound engineer. I began my career in the entertainment industry by mixing live sound for numerous French and Franco-Canadian singers. However, what truly changed my life and my career was my discovery of contemporary circus with Cirque Éloize in 1998. I then joined Franco Dragone’s team, where I progressed from technical assistant to assistant technical director and then technical director on some of the world’s biggest resident shows.
I have always been, and still am today, keen to learn more about this industry and to find out how I can support it.
AUGMENTED GAMES
Moment Factory is no stranger to Adelaide audiences having presented Mirror Mirror, Resonate and Light Cycles over past years of Illuminate Adelaide. This year you’re brining Augmented Games. Tell us about it.
Augmented Games is a new kind of gaming experience where players themselves become the controller. No connected devices or headsets are required. We invite our visitors to step into an interactive play area and enjoy real-life, on-the-move games that blend the excitement of sport with the fun of video games.
Whilst players battle it out in fast-paced, intuitive matches, spectators have just as much fun watching the action – but nobody stays on the sidelines for long.
We hope that Augmented Games will bring the whole family together around the game, and encourage visitors to get moving, challenge each other and have fun together.
What was your inspiration?
Anchored in Moment Factory’s creative ethos is the belief that play has always been essential to shaping lasting collective experiences and nurturing a sense of community over the years.
Born out of in-house innovation and fuelled by curiosity, our journey began in 2017 when we started organising creative sessions and in-house gatherings to design interactive multimedia experiences. It was these initiatives that laid the foundations for what would become Augmented Games.
Today, Augmented Games is a constantly evolving product that our teams continue to refine. We regularly adapt it to create unique experiences through new game mechanics, new display surfaces and new cross-product collaborations, but above all, to introduce it to new audiences around the world.
There are eight different multiplayer game zones at the Ridley Centre. Can you walk us through a few of the games and explain what physical skills—agility, memory, reflexes—each one tests?
MATRIX: A cooperative game in which a ball behaves unpredictably: it can speed up, grow in size, duplicate itself and more.
TARGET: A reflex-based game in which players compete to activate targets as quickly as possible.
POLYGON: A dynamic elimination game. Each player has three lives to dodge projectiles whilst aiming at their opponents.
SIGHT: A game of precision. Each in their own zone, participants must collect the white targets whilst avoiding the red ones, all on a rotating surface.
OBSTACLES: An agility game. Each player progresses along their own path whilst dodging obstacles that appear unpredictably.
TRAJECTORY: A memory game. Players must follow a lighted path and then replicate it as quickly as possible.
MEMORY: A collaborative memory game in which players must work together to find the correct symbols within a time limit.
Moment Factory emphasises that players become the controller with no screens or headsets. What was the creative philosophy behind removing traditional gaming interfaces, and how does that change the social dynamic of play?
At Moment Factory, we bring people together in the real world by creating moments that inspire collective wonder and foster human connections. Our ambition was to take video games from the screen and into the physical world, using multimedia technology to create fun, interactive gaming experiences inspired by retro games.
TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS
How do Moment Factory’s Augmented Games work in practice? How does the reactive LED floor respond directly to your body’s movements without requiring any special suits or footwear?
There is no detection system built into the floor of the LED tiles. Whether it’s projectors or the LED floor, we use the same tracking technology that Moment Factory has developed over the years and which sets the benchmark for all our projects. The system retrieves data from our motion sensors (LIDAR) and we interpret the players’ position and movement with great precision so that they can interact with the game.
What are the logistics involved in putting together an immersive experience like this? What expertise did your team require?
The games have been specially designed to be easy to install and to configure; the technical skills required are therefore similar to those for installing a standard audio-visual system, the only difference being the calibration of the motion sensors. To do this, we deploy an engineer specialising in our system or a technician from one of our local partners who has been trained by our teams. Our teams in Montreal also provide remote monitoring and can connect to our control system via the internet.
Where was Augmented Games first installed and how has it evolved since then?
The Matrix game was designed in 2018 to test our capacity for innovation and was presented to staff at a team party. We documented the activity and posted it on our social media channels. In no time at all, we received dozens of calls and enquiries from all over the world! From that moment on, we knew we were onto something.
In 2019, a client based in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, was looking to offer a fun activity to participants at a major conference on creativity, innovation and technology. For them, our Matrix game represented exactly that! But they needed more games! So we quickly developed additional games and rolled out an initial prototype version of our augmented games for the occasion. The very positive feedback from the audience and the enthusiasm of the players convinced us to continue developing this new type of experience.
In 2021, we responded to a call for tenders from the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Montreal for the “I Love Working in the City Centre” programme with a version of our augmented reality games comprising six interactive games, named ARcade.
AUDIENCE AND ACCESSIBILITY
Who is the target audience for Augmented Games? Kids and families?
Augmented Games are for everyone! One of the things that makes our platform truly unique is its ability to bring the whole family together, allowing children as young as 5 or 6 to play alongside their parents and grandparents within the same interactive experience – an opportunity that very few experiences around the world are able to offer.
Could you share a bit more about the accessibility features of these games? As they appear to involve running or impact on specific areas, I’d love to understand how they accommodate varying mobility levels? How did you design for broad accessibility, and what does that tell us about the future of inclusive entertainment?
Our Augmented Games are constantly evolving. We regularly update the platform to create unique experiences featuring new gameplay mechanics. Each game offers different levels of difficulty and calls on a variety of skills from players, whether it be speed, memory or coordination.
Augmented Games follows the rhythm of an ever-evolving catalogue of games, designed to be both accessible and highly replayable. For example, during a recent adaptation for an Augmented Games activation at Space Center Houston, we adapted the experience for visitors with reduced mobility, thereby guaranteeing universal accessibility.
What are the challenges involved in creating Augmented Games?
One of the biggest challenges with this type of installation is minimising the system’s response time between the motion detectors capturing movement and the game responding. If the player experiences a delay that is noticeable to the naked eye, it disrupts the fluidity of the action and the game does not work. Our teams have spent several years developing the technical solution to make the system ultra-fast and real-time, enabling it to cope even with rapid movements by players or objects such as footballs.
MOMENT FACTORY’S PREVIOUS YEARS AT ILLUMINATE ADELAIDE
Moment Factory was Artist in Residence at Illuminate Adelaide 2023. What did you take form this experience?
We remain deeply honoured by this recognition. Our teams have the utmost respect for the values of Illuminate Adelaide and for everything the festival has built up over the years. We are constantly inspired by the artists featured and always look forward to discovering the incredible creativity and innovation on display there.
Moment Factory created beloved Illuminate hits like Light Cycles and Resonate. How does Augmented Games build on or diverge from those earlier installations, and what have you learned from Adelaide audiences over the years?
We are delighted to be taking part in Illuminate Adelaide for the fourth time. This festival has become a vital platform for engaging with the Australian public and collaborating with highly talented local teams — a relationship that began with our first involvement in 2021 and has continued to flourish ever since.
This year marks a major milestone for Augmented Games, which will be presented for the very first time in an ‘Arena’ format. This setup will feature eight playing areas, allowing numerous participants to play simultaneously, whilst also introducing ‘Tournament’ mode for even more competitive and dynamic gameplay.
More broadly, Australia plays a central role in Moment Factory’s journey across the Asia-Pacific region, alongside long-term projects in China, Japan and Singapore. We are proud to continue playing a part in major Australian cultural events such as Illuminate Adelaide, and we look forward to developing new large-scale immersive projects in the region over the coming years.
Why should people come to Augmented Games?
Because it’s an experience that everyone can take part in, play at and enjoy. Whether with family or friends, it’s a chance to try something new, have fun being active and competing!
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We thank David Wirtgen from Moment Factory for this interview.
KEY INFO FOR AUGMENTED GAMES
WHAT: Augmented Games
WHEN: daily until 19 July 2026
Sessions every 30 minutes
Hours:
- Monday – Thursday 10am – 8pm
- Friday- Saturday 10am – 8:30pm
- Sunday 10am – 8pm
WHERE :Ridley Centre, Adelaide Showground, WAYVILLE
HOW: Buy your tickets here
HOW MUCH:
