Updraft

An orb drifts across the screen. Gaps come at it. The only thing holding it up is the room.

Stand and it climbs. Crouch and it drops. Not one person’s stand — everyone’s, averaged into a single height, so the orb sits wherever the room collectively is. Half the room standing puts it in the middle. That is the whole mechanic, and it takes about four seconds to explain from a stage.

Why it works on a crowd

Because it is legible. A person who stands up can see the orb move, immediately, and can see that it moved less than they expected — which tells them, without anyone explaining it, that this is not about them. The next thing they do is look at the people next to them.

That look is the product. Everything else is a flying ball.

What it asks of the room

Physical effort, briefly. People need to be able to stand and crouch, so it suits a seated audience with room to move, and suits shorter bursts rather than a ten-minute session. If part of your audience cannot stand, the game still works — it reads the whole room, so nobody’s non-participation breaks it.

What it asks of you

Posture mode, which means an empty-room reference and a proper calibration: crouch, capture, stand, capture. It also means the camera position matters more here than in any movement-based title, because you are measuring a state rather than a change. Get the camera high. A low, close mount compresses the difference between crouching and standing to the point where calibration becomes twitchy.

The docs cover the setup, and how it works explains why exposure lock is not optional.

Running it in a show

Two to four minutes is the sweet spot. Long enough for the room to get good, short enough that nobody’s legs give out. It works well immediately before a keynote — the room is warm, standing, and looking at the screen already — and badly straight after lunch.