Oberhasli

Oberhasli was a collaboration between infamous DJ/Producer deadmau5 (Joel Zimmerman) to build a virtual world to connect with his fans in the metaverse. The Oberhasli project included a hub world with portals to first-party mini games and worlds greated by fans inspired by his music.

The crown jewel of the project was a live interactive concert teleporting the player a visual-narrative journey set to an exclusive set performed by deadmau5 and includes guest artist canadian-singer, Lights.

I directed the oberhasli project including the production of the live concert in collaboration with our Chief Creative officer Jordan Maynard, Environment Art Director Sasha Baryshnikova, Lead Character artist John Miller, and my amazing team of artists and designers to bring this to fruition.

Trailer

To get a better idea of the project, below is a trailer we put together to advertise the event.

Full Concert

Below is a live recording from a player of the full event. I love this video because it also includes the genuine reactions from deadmau5 fans in the chat.

Process

The structure of the concert was to start in an engaging, yet expected, virtual concert venue before literally dropping the floor from under the players as they journey through a visual narrative. The player flies through 5 unique environments in an on-rails experience with interactive elements such as items to collect while Joel stays front-and-center as your personal DJ.

Eventually your journey leads to an ominous foundry/factory where the climax of your adventure unfolds with a giant meka-mouse chasing you back through the previous environments while you narrowly escape his destruction.

We iterated throughout preproduction heavily through prototyping and meticulous storyboarding to ensure a compelling and quality event.

Many technical challenges needed to be overcome. We wanted the event to be truly “Live” and allow multiple players to be experience the same thing at the same time — synchronizing the concert not only between players, but also to the exact beats of the music. This pushed core to its limits and some engine-side work also needed to be done to accomodate.