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Let the light games begin: Resn shines with ‘Olympic first’ online gaming experience

The interactive smarty-pants at Wellington agency Resn have forged a global reputation for awesomeness with its work for a range of big global clients including Puma, Domino’s and Toyota. And now, as the London Olympics get set for blast off, it is claiming an ‘Olympic first’, with an online experience created with Paris agency CLM BBDO for French energy company EDF that claims to have reinvented the way the humble computer mouse is used for gaming. 

  • Check out a few of the games here

EDF is an official partner of the 2012 London Olympics and the EDF Light Games experience, which aligns with its slogan of “bringing light to make the athletes shine brighter”, serves up Olympic events kayaking, fencing, long jump, archery, cycling, rowing and swimming. 

Due to a shortage of flat work surfaces, Resn decided to track the mouse light (or mobile phone) with a user’s webcam, which means the optical light is used as the controller.

Resn’s technical approach was to implement sophisticated image recognition through a user’s webcam to allow control of both the games and the website itself using gestural controls of either the mouse’s own optical light or of a special mobile phone enhanced site.

“In-game environmental elements such as water were represented as 3D beams of light, created using the latest in hardware accelerated Stage3D shaders (which are pretty hard to build but look pretty stunning). For users whose machines pre-date social media we also built a fall back with good old software accelerated 3D, so no one’s mum would miss out.”

All music and soundFX were composed and recorded by Resn’s talented in-house band, which are available for weddings or your next corporate function.

Accompanying the desktop browser experience is a version of the kayaking event created exclusively for the iPad (download it here). Using the brand new Adobe Air 3.2, Resn was able to take the game to “a new stupendous level of handheld, accelerometer imbued retina delight”.

And to top it off, a real live touch screen version of the game has been installed in at the EDF Pavillion in London.

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