WATCH_DOGS | Character TRAILER

CREATIVE DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR, EDITOR, WRITER

Ubisoft was in trouble with Watch_Dogs. They had released two trailers that the audience hated. People were cancelling pre-orders. They needed something exciting to turn things around.

By accident, the new and unknown agency FWS ended up in the hot seat, having originally been given a minor asset slot in the campaign.

Suddenly, the original brief was out the window: this trailer needed to have all the game defining weight of a reveal or launch asset. A massive media buy was now planned in an attempt to turn things around.

FWS delivered, and on release, the metrics were fantastic - some of the best Ubisoft had recorded. Pre-orders shot up along with renewed interest in the game, putting the launch back on track.

Creatively it was difficult at first because of the change in brief. But we threw everything we could at it, creating multiple different versions in only a couple of weeks.

Visually we knew exactly what we wanted. We went in head first to make a Tony Scott/Michael Mann/David Fincher mash-up thriller. This was what excited us about the game. We stole shots from all our favourite movies to recreate their atmosphere, upped the explosion count and re-wrote the games hard boiled dialogue to introduce the characters more effectively.

But what makes it a personal favourite is the developers response.

They told us there had been a slump in morale after the previous trailers. They didn’t like the game they were seeing in the trailers and they were struggling to finish the game under pressure. When this trailer was released there was a wave across the office as people saw it; they got excited about their own game again. It gave them the energy to push hard in the home straight to polish the game for delivery. You can’t hope for a better response than that.