To help athletes learn the importance of staying hydrated on the field, we created a way to allow 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.

The game features former All-Pro quarterback Peyton Manning, who not only teaches athletes how to play the it, but also brings them inside the body to show the effects of dehydration. Beat the Blitz pushes innovation in VR to create a compelling way to help teens understand their hydration needs.

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 will continue to travel to elite football camps across the country throughout the summer, fully immersing players so they can see and feel dehydration with the help of a custom-built VR football helmet and haptic vests. Experiencing the effects of dehydration can help teen athletes learn a powerful lesson while being entertained.

Beat the Blitz is 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 12,000 downloads, 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 on Youtube. The experience was debuted at the NFL combine, where 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.

Today’s teen athletes know what Gatorade is, but don’t necessarily understand why it’s important or how hydration impacts their performance. But how do you make teens sign up for a science lesson? You make it feel real. We turned to VR so teens could see and experience the effects of dehydration for themselves through a gaming experience.

Over 50 years ago, Gatorade was invented to keep football players of the University of Florida hydrated in the heat of summer. And now, football players know what Gatorade is but still know very little about the warning signs of dehydration or how it affects their performance. This is a challenge because studies show high school football players are more likely to suffer from dehydration than other athletes*. So, Gatorade needed a memorable way to educate teen athletes so they understood the symptoms of dehydration and why it’s important to stay hydrated.

* Kerr ZY, Casa DJ, Marshall SW, Comstock RD. Epidemiology of Exertional Heat Illness Among U.S. High School Athletes. Am J Prev Med 2013;44(1):8 -14.