Ubisoft Canada
Explore Ancient Egypt

The Goal

Assassin’s Creed is one of history’s most successful video game franchises. Nevertheless, after ten years it had hit a slump, with sales declining year over year. This slump was attributed to the failure of two successive Assassin’s Creed releases to live up to the hype of their trailers and ad campaigns.

Ubisoft took an atypical two-year pause before launching Assassin’s Creed Origins. This demonstrated to fans that Ubisoft had put more effort into this new release, which was billed as a rebirth of the saga. Because gamers had already lost trust in the franchise, we were tasked with proving that this new Assassin's Creed was worth their time and attention. Our challenge was to create hype that gamers could believe in. Success would be measured by selling more Assassin’s Creed Origins copies than the previous release.

Target

Throughout its history, the franchise has gained, and lost, more than its fair share of fans. Thus, one of the key targets of the campaign was lapsed Assassin’s Creed players; that is, active gamers who we identified as having played at least one franchise release in the past while not having played either of the two most recent releases. Meanwhile, those die-hard gamers who had stuck with the franchise through thick and thin were the brand’s most vocal proponents, and are very active on social media. They love to be the first to share information on promising upcoming games, and most importantly, they have the ears of our lapsed players.

To succeed, the brand knew it had to first target its existing fans and give them exclusive access to the game so that they would be compelled to then spread the word about the new release.

The Insight and Strategy

The agency found that gamers did not trust Ubisoft’s traditional trailers, no matter how good they looked, so the team went with a different approach. Assassin’s Creed Origins claims to be the most accurate reproduction of ancient Egypt ever made. With its many wonders of ancient civilization, Egypt is an all-time, best-selling destination for tourists, so if this game is as close to reality as it claims, why not invite people to visit it – as tourists?

The team launched ExploreAncientEgypt.com, a website where people could book guided tours within the actual game and bring back digital memories of Ancient Egypt in the form of imitation Instagram stories. Just like any tourist, happy visitors would be compelled to share their stories to make their friends envious.

The Plan

The team created three themed tours shot directly within the game engine so that the game would look exactly as it is. It also created a feature that let gamers share glimpses of what the team shot.

Since the tours were private and limited (a first come, first-served mechanic), the brand attracted the biggest fans (die-hard gamers who are always in the know) of the franchise to its website. The tours, limited to groups of 30, went on over two weeks.

Technology and Tools

To create three interactive video tours, the team spent weeks shooting within the game engine. Since the game’s world is systemic and lives its own “life”, nothing could be staged. So just as a documentary director would, the agency waited for the perfect sequences to unfold and used no post-production to touch them up, so that gamers visited a game that looks exactly as it is. It even worked with a historian to write the tour guide’s speech, giving information about the regions as gamers explored them. At the centre of the experience was an Instagram story-like feature that explorers could use to snap cool moments and share them on social media.

User Experience

Just like a tourism website, visitors could book a tour and select a date and time from a schedule. The guided tours let them discover the game’s setting. Users could capture live sequences and customize them. This way, mini-videos showcasing exclusive content from this highly anticipated game were shared by the fans whose thousands of “honest trailers” flooded social media feeds.

Supporting Channels

The social networks of fans became a supporting channel.

The Results

On average, visitors spent 14 minutes on the tours. Thousands of “stories” were shared.
Some 1.5 million units of the game were sold in the first week, which is twice as much as the previous title of the saga.