Competitive streak?
Live Gaming Event with Sidemen
Transformed the UK into a 24-hour nationwide arcade across web, AR, Fortnite, and TikTok, boosting EE’s day revenue by 183% and engaging thousands of gamers nationwide.
Challenge
EE’s brief was to build on the previous years campaign and elevate Game Day into a nationwide cultural moment, truly tapping into Gen-Z's gaming culture. The challenge was creating multiple connected games across Fortnite, TikTok, mobile, AR, retail, and broadcast, while delivering a unified live experience at speed. The campaign had to feel playful, premium, and accessible to millions for one day only.
Approach
I worked as Art Director within Nexus, partnering closely with the Design Director and ECD. I moved between teams daily, shaping visual direction, guiding UI, and unblocking design decisions at pace. My role combined concept development, moodboarding, asset direction, and hands-on UX-UI game design, while helping maintain visual cohesion across five games and multiple platforms under intense delivery pressure.
Outcome
I contributed across EE Gull Bop AR on Brighton Pier, Fortnite mini-games Floor Drop and Hot Potato, Endless Runner games, and the TikTok Moonshot Mission to tap into current Gen-Z trends. My work included level concepts, UI systems, environment styling, asset strategy, and interaction direction. Each game fed into a shared reward system driving players toward the Fortnite Treasure Hunt and Game Store.
Impact
The campaign transformed EE’s media inventory, retail network, and social channels into a playable national experience. It drove mass participation, delivered high-profile Twitch visibility through The Sidemen, and strengthened EE’s gaming position. Internally, it demonstrated experiential gaming at scale, setting a benchmark for future EE activations and establishing a repeatable framework for large-scale interactive marketing across platforms nationally.
Rollout of campaign & 5 gaming experiences
Runner
For fast-paced campaigns where things change daily, having someone like Antony who's both creatively strong and adaptable is incredibly valuable.
Adam Lowe, Design Director – EE Gameday at Nexus
Exploration of themes & spinning plates
Exploration meant fast theming and constant plate-spinning across six games, with 25+ people working in parallel tracks. As art director I moved swiftly between teams pushing concepts and unblocking creative decisions at pace to ensure each game progressed into production at critical moments.
Feature of Twitch influencers in gaming culture
Gaming is now driven by personalities and sub-cultures, and has become a sport. Partnering with the Sidemen and live-streaming on Twitch, EE brought celebrity-led gaming into a bold public live event, aligning authentically with Gen Z in a way no other brand had achieved.
Decisions of time vs quality trade-off
The real challenge was balancing time and quality. As a live event, every game had to run flawlessly, with no option for patches like traditional game releases. We worked backwards from fixed timings, ensuring everything launched smoothly while pushing quality as far as possible without introducing risk through perfectionism.
Endless Runner game
Reflection
I know the game industry well, and rolling out 6+ games at that pace and quality was pretty insane!
With so many moving parts to connect, a top notch producer was the most important ingredient
Gaming culture and live broadcast is maturing, proving essential to connect with Gen Z audiences
