Mixed-reality panther crashes Carolina Panthers game

We here at PC Gamer are aficionados of the horror that is old graphics card art, featuring such design classics as 'frog in a mech suit', 'creepy naked goblin' and 'alien made out of aluminium'. The promise of performance has never been made in weirder ways.

The crowd of 70,000 people watching the Carolina Panthers versus the New York Jets this Sunday probably weren't thinking of the Radeon X550's box art, but something along those lines is what they got. This match, in the Panther's home stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, featured the debut of an Unreal Engine panther that jumps around the stadium interior and roof, pausing only to rip up a virtual New York Jets banner.

The panther seems a bit of an ungracious host. And also just... not very pleasant? Big Zuul vibes. I guess half-time entertainment will always be a thing, but does it have to be an unskippable boss cutscene? What's wrong with a good old marching band and Gunnersaurus, eh.

The mixed-reality panther was shown on in-stadium videoboards and pumped through the sound system. If it seems vaguely familiar that's probably because creators The Famous Group have produced adjacent happenings for gaming companies like Riot (at the 2017 LoL world championship finals, above), and also made a mixed-reality raven for the Baltimore Ravens back in 2019. The LoL one is fantastic, perhaps because the event itself seems a more obvious fit for a giant CG dragon, and the spectacle of a live band performing and teams taking to the stage amidst the chaos.

As for the Carolina Panthers: well, it's a good thing they won the match after this spectacle, imagine doing this to your opponents' flag then taking a beating. I'm also glad it exists because there were people in the comments asking if it was real. Yeah, the mainstream media really slept on that giant panther that stomped like 500 people and half a football team.

Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

Read more
Three RTX 5090 graphics cards on display at the Asus suite, CES 2025.
The RTX 5090 Founders Edition might be svelte but the Asus ROG Astral cards are absolute chonkers
A display at CES 2025 showing several huge transparent screens mounted and motorised around a chandelier, lit up in purple.
Even I was impressed by LG's gigantic transparent OLED chandelier of hopes and dreams, but I'm still not buying one
A TV with immersive lighting showing a ghost from Phasmophobia on screen.
Terrifying horror nopefest Phasmophobia combined with immersive room lighting looks like an easy way to give yourself a chronic case of the brown trousers
Football players flying through the air
PC Gamer's simulated Super Bowl 2025 predicts Eagles victory, player getting hit so hard he flies out of the stadium and into the parking lot
Yeston Sakura Atlantis RX 9070 XT graphics card on a beach with a wave gently crashing into it
GPU manufacturer Yeston's done the unthinkable by dunking its new 'Atlantis' RX 9070 XT graphics card in the ocean
Half-Life 2 running on 8 MB VRAM on a tiny resolution in Windows XP with graphics settings disabled or lowered to ridiculously light levels
Getting Half-Life 2 to work on 8 MB of VRAM means turning it into an eerily befitting voidscape: 'there were absolutely no effects left'
Latest in Gaming Industry
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
As layoffs and studio closures continue to deathroll the western AAA industry, analyst points out 5 of 8 major Japanese companies hit all-time share prices this year
A still from a video announcement of Game Informer's return, featuring the magazine's Halo 2 issue.
Game Informer is back from the dead: 'The whole team has returned'
Typing on internet search toolbar: What am I doing?
How a Microsoft exec managed to pitch Microsoft Word through the genius tactic of being able to actually use it in a 'type-off' demanded by clients: 'I was the only one who'd actually been a secretary'
Half-Life wallpaper - Gordon Freeman
Former Valve exec says the company struggled to sell Half-Life until coming up with the ultimate 'one simple trick' of marketing manoeuvres: slapping a 'Game of the Year' sticker on the box
Gabe Newell looks into the camera, behind him is a prop of a turret from Team Fortress 2.
Gabe Newell's cult of personality is intense, but a Valve exec who worked with him says his superpower is how he 'delighted in people on the team just being really good at what they did'
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway