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DFW Holiday VR Challenge

by 900lbs of Creative

DFW Holiday VR Challenge

THE CHALLENGE

The holidays can be stressful. With everything from travel to gifts on the brain, it can be easy to forget the very people who make it all possible. Dallas-Fort Worth International Airpor is the fourth busiest in the world and is responsible for nearly 1850 flights a day. With all this in mind, they take time every year to show their appreciation to hard-working employees at their annual DFW Holiday Party.

DFW wanted to make the winter of 2018 extra special. They tasked 900lbs of Creative with making a one-of-a-kind holiday themed VR experience for employees to enjoy. Due to the nature of the event, it had to be easy enough to learn, challenging enough to be fun, and efficient enough to handle the throughput of the hundreds in attendance throughout the day.

THE SOLUTION

The experience was to designated to be held in DFW Airports Executive Boardroom, which would be transformed into a Dr. Suess-eque holiday wonderland. 900lbs worked with the DFW team to build a theme around this concept with fun, easy-to-use arcade mechanics and a live-updating scoreboard for friend competition between coworkers.

The Holiday VR Challenge is all about saving the holidays! Once the headset is on, players are immersed in a scrappy snowball fight with a playful Holiday Thief in his cave hideout. Players must compete to see who can save the most presents, be a true citizen of holiday spirit, and become the ultimate holiday champion!

The immersive and chaotic experience challenges players to score points by rescuing as many gifts as possible using their handly vacuum-bat. Snowballs launched from tubes and thief himself and can be batted into targets around the cave to release an avalanche of gifts. Then, the player must continue to defend themselves by batting or blocking snowballs as they vacuum the gifts up off the cave floor.

The game showcases custom 3d environment design, props, user interface, VR design, motion controls, game system programming and integration for generating high scores on a 2nd screen display. For an added touch of personality, DFW’s brand was highlighted with custom colors and logo placement throughout the 3D artwork, including an animated toy plane with a DFW Airport banner that flies around the player upon completion.

With a short 5 week deadline, we worked closely with the DFW team and Pop Parties Event Planning to create the perfect game that would drive friendly competition while being fun for anybody, with or without VR experience.

THE RESULTS

DFW Airport’s holiday party was a colossal success with overwhelming praise from players. Hundreds of employees took a swing at the Holiday VR Challenge and many returned multiple times to beat previous scores, watch friends, or just play “one more time”! 900lbs is proud to be a partner with DFW Airport and this was an amazing way to showcase our team’s ability to create a unique experience for the hard-working employees who fuel DFW Airport and their holiday spirit!