Every video game has a hero. But what about the others? Assassin’s Creed Odyssey had thousands of background characters, the Non-Playable Characters who populate the world and whom every player ignores completely. For the launch of Odyssey, set in Ancient Greece, we gave them a voice.
For one week, dozens of NPCs took over Ubisoft’s Instagram and Facebook stories, posting in the visual language of real social media, from the point of view of virtual people living inside the game. A shepherd furious about a hero mowing down his goats. A Spartan who can never take his helmet off. An angry potter who cannot bear the hero’s behaviour any longer. Brought to life using new mocap animation technology, the campaign ran across 25 countries on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. The format was built for the platform: native, light, genuinely funny.
Gamers, who hate marketing, loved it because it did not feel like any.
