Get hands-on with the Volkswagen Rivalry

The Situation

Design a mobile native-app experience web video game then bring it to life in the real world through Twitch? Why not.

Launched shortly after the diesel-gate crisis, the competition was driven at promoting the new Jetta GLI by facing it off against the Golf GTI. Comprehensive legal, safety, and international branding concerns compressed the team's timeline and made for new challenges in the builds. 

The Final Technology

Rival Road kicked off as a web browser racing game pitting two Volkswagen models against each other. Players raced to earn individual points and place on a nationwide leaderboard to compete for a chance to win a custom VW experience. These points were then translated into advantages in a live-streamed race, where professional RC car drivers raced mini-models across a surrealistic course. Live on Twitch, viewers chose which obstacles to activate during the race and sabotage the course in real time. 

The purpose of my role was to take a hands-on, informed, technical approach for a highly complex and technical concept that was handed off with little research, no feasibility checks, and a concerned client. I was responsible to initial project assessment, team organization, execution, legal reviews and client approvals. The depth and breadth of the hardware knowledge required me to become more informed and immersed in the hardware process. I approached the hardware engineering needs with the same care as the web development team - focusing on determining project success, pushing them forward, understanding their needs and pain points, and supporting them whenever I could. The broadcast and social postings were divided into separate teams with separate leadership when we began closing in to the final broadcast date, due to specialties in house and the volume of team members required to execute the project. 

The game was designed to give players the feel of racing their own Volkswagen cars, thinking through each, individual interaction during gameplay. Leveraging industrial designers from the hardware team, characters were designed to be indicative of the real cars, including hex color matching for the players’ cars and custom recording of actual VW engines. Highway safety standards were consulted, and legal teams reviewed each possible interaction to give a realistic feel to the game. Through this detail, we accomplished a native app feel on a web app platform, allowing users to have device recognition and profile creation through Facebook and Twitter. The resulting game was captivating, with low drop-off rate and 25% returning users.

Andrew K focused on developing the game, Thomas D on the rest of the website, with support from Taylor G for custom soundtrack design. I spent time hands-on with every aspect of the build process, from writing technical requirements and interaction design in the game design document to holding a blue microphone for Taylor's custom sound recordings and performing QA. Multiple additional team members supported in the QA process.

While the track was visually impressive, the hardware team showed their true ingenuity in developing RC models of the Volkswagen product. Starting from stock CAD models, industrial designers modified the models to match the GTI and GLI real life cars, while making the same accommodations for external and safety parts as stock car racing — replacing windows and lights with sticker replicas and removing breakable parts. These revised models were then converted into models for 3D printing, printed in pieces and re-assembled. The ‘master’ prints were polished, molded in silicone, and recast in a high-temperature epoxy to be vacuum-formed as shells for the RC cars. After forming, the PETG shells were cut from their sheet, painted, and detailed to look like the real cars and attached to durable, fast, professional RC racing cars for the drivers to use and abuse. We ended up turning out 2 brand new shells every hour and finished more than 50 shells for the event.

CJ Picklesimer of Scalar Electronics managed the hardware team's development from the day-to-day perspective, while I ensured timely approvals, BOM orders, and legal approvals. We worked well together as a team, learning from each other, and ensuring a well designed and capable build.