Groove Jones partnered with The Infinite Agency to create an interactive game experience for their Southwest Airlines’ Getaways campaign. The goal was to design a custom application that blended animated video storytelling with a body tracking game, giving guests a playful way to engage with the Southwest Airlines’ key benefits and promoting sweepstakes entries.

The experience appeared at high-traffic tourist locations in a variety of cities served by SWA, like Denver, Baltimore, and Chicago.

About the Game Play

The experience opens with simple, user-friendly instructions, then walks players through three clear steps.

Step 1 – Select Your Traveler: Raise your hand over a traveler avatar to choose the one you want. The selection is hands-free and instant, so anyone can jump in and play.

Step 2 – Pack Your Bags: Lean right or left to move your avatar and catch falling travel icons. Each icon drops into one of the two bags your avatar carries, reinforcing Southwest’s “2 Bags Fly Free” policy. The more you pack into those bags, the higher your score will be.

Step 3 – Catch Bonuses: Snag special bonus icons to earn a 5x score multiplier, inspired by earning 5x Rapid Rewards points on Getaways packages.

After selection, players guide the avatar back and forth to pick up as many travel icons as possible. The round is timed at 60 seconds, so every catch counts. The more icons you collect, the more points you rack up. As players level up, a short bonus round puts packing skills to the test.

At the end of the game, players see their final score alongside a Southwest jet animation and a call to action to enter for a chance to win a Getaway.

Destinations in Play

There are three destinations that we illustrated along with The Infinite Agency team, based on Las Vegas, Orlando, and a Tropical getaway. These appear in the game, serving as the background environment.

The Game Getaway Destinations

Before anyone steps up to play, the game plays an attract loop of animated location vignettes. Each destination follows a simple pattern: the animated scene plays first, followed by a bold on-screen message that reinforces the visual. The sequence cycles continuously until a guest raises a hand to begin the game.

Behind the Scenes: Using GenVFX to Create Destination Videos and Game Art

We needed to produce a series of custom video vignettes featuring Southwest Airlines’ enticing vacation destinations along with teal colored campaign elements (golf flag, jeep, water, and poolside cocktails). Traditionally we would have gone onsite and shot these or used VFX to composite or color correct elements in stock video. For this production we used our GenVFX pipeline. The process began with client-provided mood images, which guided us in capturing a relaxing, open, and calm atmosphere, a view that you might see when looking out the window of a Southwest jet.

We utilized our GenVFX pipeline that leveraged multiple toolsets, including ChatGPT and Photoshop, to generate static images that aligned with our reference imagery provided by the client. These static images were then brought to life using Hailuoai.video, with ChatGPT iteratively refining text prompts until we achieved compelling 10-second video clips. We then used Topaz Video’s Starlight model to upscale them into crisp 4K videos, suitable for the oversized displays on which the game was played.

To create the 3D game items, we focused on a specific workflow. First, we defined the desired look: a 3D skeuomorphic icon style that would be easy to read and stand out from the 2D backgrounds. After generating a single icon image, we used ChatGPT to create image turnarounds. We then fed these images into the Tripo3D API with Blender, which generated fully textured 3D models that matched our concepts. To ensure they ran smoothly in our real-time gaming environment, we performed a simple decimation process to optimize geometry. This workflow allowed us to quickly iterate and implement client feedback, as switching out items was streamlined and fast. Since the stylized look for the 4K monitor didn’t require overly complex detail, the image-to-3D AI process was the perfect solution for creating all 12 items.

For the backgrounds, we blended AI with traditional illustration. Starting from client references, we used AI to generate dimensional scenes for Vegas, Orlando, and the beach. After generating initial images, we traced and refined them in Illustrator, which allowed us to produce 8K high-resolution assets and separate them into ground, foreground, mid-ground, and background layers. This separation gave us the flexibility to bring scenes to life in Unity with parallax effects and procedural animations, such as waves rippling on the beach, a rotating Ferris wheel and swaying palms in Orlando, and animated spotlights rocking back and forth in Vegas.

Fabrication of the Physical Window

The game is played within a physical structure that looks like the inside of a Southwest Airline plane. The window was fabricated as a custom-milled enclosure made from CNC-cut MDF, a composite wood material. The pieces were assembled into a clamshell-style structure designed to resemble the look of an actual airplane window.

This enclosure housed an outdoor-rated 4K display, along with a powerful PC and speakers. A depth-sensing camera was mounted below the window to track the guest’s movements.