OVOS MEDIA GMBH

Their core work

OVOS is a Vienna-based media and game design company that creates interactive learning experiences — games, apps, and digital tools — that make complex topics engaging for broad audiences. In EU projects, they bring their expertise in educational game design, informal learning, and behavioral communication to consortia that need to translate technical or scientific content into something people actually want to engage with. Their work on the GAIA project focused on shifting community energy behavior through digital education tools, while CoM_n_Play-Science applied game mechanics and maker culture to get young people into science. They are, in practice, the organization a research consortium calls when it needs to turn its findings into something a non-expert will understand and use.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (GAIA, 2016–2019), OVOS focused squarely on energy behavior change — building educational tools aimed at getting communities to adopt energy-efficient services, reflecting a real-world application of media for environmental goals. By their second project (CoM_n_Play-Science, 2018–2021), the energy angle dropped away entirely and their keywords shifted to informal science learning, coding, making, and creativity — indicating a deliberate move toward the broader science education and maker movement space. The trajectory suggests OVOS is expanding from narrow behavioral campaigns into a wider role as a learning experience design partner for any domain that needs to engage non-expert audiences.

OVOS appears to be positioning itself as a general-purpose informal learning and game design partner for science and education consortia, moving away from energy-specific behavioral work toward a broader creative-learning mandate.

How they like to work

OVOS has participated in every H2020 project as a consortium partner, never as coordinator — consistent with a specialist role where they are brought in to deliver a defined creative or educational component rather than to lead the research agenda. Despite only two projects, they have worked with 18 distinct partners across 10 countries, suggesting they fit comfortably into large, diverse research consortia and bring a complementary skill set that researchers rarely have in-house. Working with them likely means a focused, deliverable-oriented relationship: they design and produce the engagement layer while the scientific partners own the content and findings.

OVOS has built a surprisingly broad European network for an SME with only two projects — 18 partners across 10 countries, averaging 9 consortium partners per project. No single geographic cluster is identifiable from the data, suggesting they join genuinely pan-European consortia rather than regional ones.

What sets them apart

OVOS occupies a niche that most research-heavy H2020 consortia need but rarely have internally: professional interactive media and game design applied to science communication and behavioral engagement. Unlike university communication departments or generic PR agencies, they bring a product-design mindset — building tools people actually play with — grounded in experience on funded EU projects with measurable learning outcomes. For any consortium that needs to demonstrate public engagement, informal learning impact, or behavior change as part of its deliverables, OVOS is a credible and tested partner.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CoM_n_Play-Science
  The largest of their two projects by EC funding (€242,000) and the clearest expression of their core identity — using coding, making, and games as genuine pedagogical vehicles for science learning, not just outreach decoration.
• GAIA
  Their earliest H2020 engagement, demonstrating that OVOS can apply its media and game design skills to behavior change goals in the energy sector — making them relevant beyond pure education contexts.