Racer
Open the game- Brand
- Year
- 2013
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Racing & Sports
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- AV&C
- With
- Active Theory
- With
- Plan8
- With
- HUSH
Objective
Google needed a hands-on way to prove to developers at its own conference that the modern web, running purely in Chrome, could handle real-time multiplayer, cross-device sync, and mobile gaming without a single native app or download. Framing it as a public 'experiment' let the company turn an abstract platform pitch into something attendees could touch, race, and post to social media themselves.
Solution
A player walks up to the table, sets a phone down on a marked spot, and opens g.co/racer in the browser — nothing to download. After typing in their initials, they join a race against up to four other players, each driving a different colored car on a shared overhead screen. Steering comes down to one gesture: holding a finger on the screen speeds the car up, lifting it brakes, and taking a corner too hot sends the car spinning off the track in an arcade-style 1980s wipeout. A Giorgio Moroder soundtrack booms from the table's own speakers and shifts with every acceleration, coast, and crash, with bass players can feel underfoot. When the race ends, the result posts straight to a leaderboard ranking that day's players.
Results
The installation drew about 2,000 visitors over the three days of Google I/O 2013, with more than 650 individual players racing per day.
- 1
A player approaches the shared game table, where lit hotspots mark where to place a phone, then opens g.co/racer in the phone's browser — no app download required.
- 2
The player enters initials, which carry over to the leaderboard, and the phone syncs into a shared race with up to five players, each assigned a car in one of five colors.
- 3
The race itself plays out on a shared overhead screen showing the track and all cars at once; each player's phone works only as a controller.
- 4
Control is a single gesture: touching and holding the screen accelerates, releasing it brakes, and releasing too late into a turn sends the car off the track into an arcade-style crash rendered in 1980s graphics.
- 5
A synth soundtrack responds live to the players' actions — accelerating, coasting, drifting, and crashing — throughout the race.
- 6
The installation offers multiple races on tracks of varying difficulty, so a repeat run differs from the first.
- 7
After the finish, results are posted to a leaderboard that ranks players and tracks a running daily tally.
