Light Games — Kayak (iPad)
- Brand
- EDF
- Year
- 2012
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Racing & Sports
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Resn
- With
- CLM BBDO
Objective
EDF was the official energy partner of the London 2012 Olympics, supplying the Games with low-carbon electricity — a fact that's easy to state and hard to feel. CLM BBDO gave it a simpler shape instead: EDF carries the light that lets athletes shine. The Light Games let people act that idea out rather than just read it in a tagline.
Solution
Players open the Kayak episode of EDF's Light Games, built exclusively for iPad, and steer by tilting the tablet — lean it left or right and the kayaker, drawn entirely from glowing lines of light against a dark course, leans and paddles to match. There's no webcam step here: unlike the browser games in the series, which track a lit phone screen or a light-up mouse held up to a webcam, this version reads the iPad's own motion sensor, so play starts the moment you pick up the device. The same build also ran on a touchscreen inside EDF's pavilion at the London Games, letting visitors race the course by hand right on the Olympic site.
- 1
The player opens the Light Games site, available in English or French, a promotional showcase for EDF's London 2012 Olympic sponsorship built entirely out of glowing light rays.
- 2
The player picks one of seven Olympic disciplines to play: kayaking, fencing, long jump, archery, cycling, rowing, or swimming.
- 3
In the browser version, the player holds a light source — a lit computer mouse or a phone screen — up to the webcam, which tracks the glow and uses it as the controller; moving the light steers the athlete through a scene where both the character and surroundings are rendered from light rays.
- 4
A separate iPad app carries only the Kayaking episode, replacing the webcam-light control with the tablet's accelerometer: the player tilts the iPad to steer the kayak.
- 5
At the London Olympics site, visitors can play the same game in person on a touchscreen version installed in EDF's pavilion.
