High school football players are more likely to suffer from dehydration than other athletes, but many athletes don’t know the symptoms of dehydration or what they feel like. Gatorade needed a memorable way to educate athletes so they could walk away understanding the warning signs of dehydration and how hydration affects performance.

So, to help athletes stay hydrated on the field, we created a way for them to feel the effects of dehydration in virtual reality. Gatorade built Beat the Blitz, a groundbreaking virtual reality simulation designed to illustrate the symptoms of dehydration through an exciting and educational game. Beat the Blitz tests the limits of VR to create a compelling way to help teens understand their hydration needs.

The experience features former All-Pro quarterback Peyton Manning, who not only teaches athletes how to play the game, but also brings them inside the body to show the effects of dehydration.

First we designed the game’s experience. The goal was to create gameplay that was immersive enough to have replay value with true-to-life physics and player movement. During development, we worked with the Gatorade Sports Science Institute to understand and portray the science behind hydration — bringing it to life in a realistic and accessible way for teen athletes. We turned to Microsoft to volumetrically capture Peyton Manning so he could be included in the experience as a brand ambassador and life-size athlete for users to interact with.

Beat the Blitz is touring elite football camps across the country through the summer, fully immersing players so they can see and feel the effects of dehydration with the help of a custom-built VR football helmet and haptic vests. Experiencing the effects of dehydration like never before will help teen athletes learn a powerful lesson while being entertained.

Beat the Blitz was also available as a free download for Vive and Oculus Rift users. To share more information on why Gatorade created Beat the Blitz, a behind-the-scenes video was distributed via social and pre-roll.

With more than 10K downloads on high end VR headsets, Beat the Blitz users have averaged 59.5 minutes of play time. The behind-the-scenes video that explained Gatorade’s rationale for creating the experience captured more than 2.75 million views. The experience was debuted at the NFL combine, where future NFL players Josh Allen and Sam Darnold demonstrated the technology, garnering 73.7 million media impressions, and was mentioned in Bleacher Report, the New York Post, FanRag Sports, and more. The VR experience will continue traveling to football camps through the summer.