OhHeckYeah

06.25.2014

OhHeckYeah began as an immersive street arcade and public art installation on the streets of Denver, CO, USA during the summer months of 2014. With design by Legwork, development by Mode Set (Cacheflowe), soundtrack by the Colorado Symphony, and a host of collaborations between local artists, city government agencies and the project's founder Brian Corrigan, OhHeckYeah is a gaming and community experience that transformed Denver's streets into a friendly playground intended to build human connection.

Originally funded by Artplace America, OhHeckYeah has partnered with a litany of local cultural institutions, including the Denver Art Museum, the History Colorado Museum, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Clyfford Still Museum, the Colorado Symphony, the Denver Theater District, the Downtown Denver Partnership, Denver Startup Week, Colorado Tourism, Denver Comic Con, TEDx Mile High, the city of Greely, and many more. The project is also being used as an open source educational platform that has visited elementary to post-graduate schools including University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Colorado Denver, Metro State University, Boulder Digital Works, Center of Visual Arts, Garfield Elementary and more.

In 2014 with seed funding from ArtPlace America, the Denver Theatre District was transformed into a first-of-its-kind street arcade. Studies continually show that play of any kind makes us more creative, curious and happy. It even contributes to helping build trust between strangers. By infusing art, technology and play into the built environment, we were able to provide a place for strangers to meet and connect. In the first two months over 40,000 people played life-sized video games together on the sidewalks of the downtown district. OhHeckYeah demonstrated that playful interactions have the power to connect people in meaningful ways.

- Brian Corrigan

OhHeckYeah was featured in this Rocky Mountain PBS piece.

Towards the end of the 2014 installation, OhHeckYeah hosted PechaKucha talks from some of the people who made the project happen. You can hear my talk about the technological road to OHY here.

In May of 2015, OhHeckYeah transformed Krentzman Quad at Northeastern University into a larger-than-life immersive street arcade. The project provided a unique academic and creative opportunity for the game design students in the College of Arts, Media and Design. Throughout the semester, student from Professor Gillian Smith’s Game Programming class worked with OhHeckYeah to develop a unique game to unveil at the Commencement week event. This project was made possible by Northeastern's Public Art Initiative and the Northeastern Center for the Arts.

Partnering with the Colorado Symphony, OhHeckYeah created an interactive video gaming experience during the intermission of Video Games Live at the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater in August of 2015.

Game Trailers: