Gamifying a Gaming Trailer

Three years after the launch, console sales were starting to flatten. Now, we need to convince the gamers playing the same old games on older consoles that the PS4 was where it was at.

Instead of a typical gaming trailer, we gamified the trailer with real-life rewards.

We told the story of a young king resting on his laurels, whose halcyon days of slaying dragons and fighting battles were behind him. In their place, ancient advisors and tedious entertainment bored him to tears. So he decides high-octane thrills are his royal prerogative and escapes into a PlayStation 4 universe swarming with monsters, spaceships, high-powered laser cannons and adventure. The King’s story was, of course, a proxy for gamers stuck in the past - who needed a nudge into the future of gaming.

As well as hitting TV screens, the spot was posted on Facebook. Hidden in the film were iconic treasures from past Playstation games – so-called gaming ‘Easter eggs’ – including a cyclops skull from the God of War series; Uncharted 2's yeti-like foe undergoing an autopsy; and a courtyard version of Street Fighter V. As expected, gamers flooded the comments once they’d spotted them. Now here comes the best part.

In a first-of-its-kind, real-time, direct-response campaign, the fictional king started replying to fans’ comments rewarding them with the real-life versions of the treasures they’d found in the film. Personalised clips revealed the treasures’ secrets and gamers’ names were added to the crates in which they were sent out using real-time CGI. The relics were then sent out alongside hand-quilled letters.

300 giveaways later and we’d pulled off the biggest integrated campaign in history for a gaming platform.