Red Paper Heart was approached by HUSH to develop an interactive running game to be installed at the 2012 Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Oregon. Situated right in the backyard of Nike, it was important to bring running to the forefront of the athletic world as an exciting, immersive and modern sport. Working together with HUSH and their partners we created an interactive race, pitting you head to head with not only friends, but atheletes throughout the duration of the event.

After adorning special Nike shoes, players stepped up to sleek self-powered treadmills from which we were reading live running data. In front of the players, a virtual kinect-powered avatar was displayed on a gigantic curved LED wall. Their avatar would not only mimmick their stride, but filled up with color the harder they worked during the race. After an arduous 30 seconds, runners were rewarded with different sized virtual trophies based on their distance, and a generated graph displayed their progress over time during the race.

Over the course of the 10 day event, nearly 2,500 players cumulatively ran over 200 miles firmly sending the message that running can be interactive, and that the best is yet to come.

Made with Red Paper Heart