In the project The Virtual Marathon, tsunamii.net assumed the role of the developer and publisher of this brand new interactive, multi-player online game.

The game is a very simple running game which people could play online when they log onto the Virtual Marathon website www.virtual-marathon.net. Players could choose to participate in virtual races in Singapore, Tokyo, Brisbane, Los Angeles and London. When a player logged onto a race, he logged onto a web server located in the corresponding real city.

In addition to developing the game, a branding for the game was developed and a series of promotional videos was produced to promote the game. The game was presented through marketing and promotional campaigns which used the familiar fund-raising and entrepreneurial language which are often articulated in gaming, sports and technology. This approach of presenting the work was intended to blur the boundary between art and the commercial gaming world, which it sought to imitate.

Although the work presented an online multi-player environment, which was very optimistic, the actual reality of the game and the performance of the virtual runners depended on their internet connection, physical location and the speed of their computers. If the players chose to stay with their internet connections, physical locations and their computers, they would soon realize that their “running” speeds changed when they ran on different races. In this way, it was in the actual playing of the game that the players would realize that the Internet is not a “smooth and flat” space but is in fact, an “uneven” playing field.

This work was premiered at the NTT ICC at the Open Nature Exhibition as an installation, website and a game application.