When Red Bull says jump, you ask, “How high?” In this case it was 128,100 ft to be exact. Felix Baumgartner’s mind-boggling jump was the first time a human being broke the speed of sound when he maxed out at 833mph. And, yeah: there’s a game for that.
Users control Felix’s angle, yaw or spin, position and ultimately, speed, as he careens through the stratosphere into the thicker troposphere; drastic movements at high speeds could become catastrophic and uncontrollable. A number of issues play into the scoring algorithm including average speed, high speed, atmospheric density, time of jump, and proximity to landing target.
The Red Bull brand rarely pulls punches, but they actually did when it came time to publically release the game. Fearing for Felix’s life during the jump itself, and having a game that so realistically recreated the jump, the Austrian company was afraid people would be running sets of the game to try and compute Felix’s survival odds. And if something did happen to Felix, they didn’t want a game as a lasting memorial.