Brief
With their upcoming release of Centipede Blast, a kick-starter backed, fast-paced, family-friendly card game, Atari commissioned us to produce a promotional advert that would support the launch of the game, in a creative, unique and eye-catching way, all whilst making sure to capture the rich Atari legacy in all it's glory.
As with a lot of clients work, engagement generation and campaign performance was key, but maintaining the essence of the Atari name and brand was of equal importance, and something Atari were very keen to protect.
The mission was simple - Promote a game, but make it interesting!
Scope
1 | Translating Atari's decades-long legacy into contemporary digital content. |
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2 | Generating immediate impact within short-medium form content. |
3 | Balancing cinematic storytelling with clear commercial outcomes. |
4 | Delivering content for conversion-focused platforms. |
5 | Generating hype and buzz around 'Centipede Blast', a new unreleased board game, based of a concept first released in 1981. |
Approach
During our initial planning stages, Atari asked us to present a couple of concepts that we could co-develop to turn into the desired outcome. As is often the case with many of our clients, Atari were so impressed by our detailed treatments, independent research and initial concepts, they were happy to hand total creative control over to our team.
Drawing directly from the rich history of Atari, we knew we wanted to set the video in the basements of the famous original Atari offices, headquartered in Silicon Valley. Amongst Atari fans, this location is drenched in mystery and lore, so it was the perfect backdrop to our tense, curiosity driven video.
Whilst a "classic" brand, Atari is very much still drawing new audiences in of all ages, so we knew it was important that the video withheld to modern, cinematic standards. Paying close attention to keep the retro fans happy, the video is packed full of Atari easter eggs and references. How many can you spot?
Popular in gaming culture at the time of release, realistic first-person games such as Bodycam and Don't Scream were topping the Steam charts, so we knew the first-person exploration video would peak the interest of social media scrollers. With the concept down, work began on developing a short-film style, rooted in powerful storytelling with elements of horror, exploration and history.
Taking just over a week to shoot, the hallway and main room were blocked out quickly, as assets in the main-room were pre-modelled by our friends over at Portals. Filmed and built inside of Unreal Engine 5, it is usually common practise of ours to create camera plots, and pre-setup everything that you see on screen - For example, usually, we would animate the door opening at a specific time in the video etc - This project however, was filmed LIVE! Our camera operator mapped out the movements, knew the rough points that needed to be hit and went ahead and pressed record! Purposely done like this to give a live feeling that you do not get with mapped out cameras, we love how realistic the footage turned out to be.
Originally designed to be one continuous video, Atari said they wanted to build even more hype between releases so they chose to split the video and stagger content release. Part 2 of the video also features our reimagining of the original Centipede soundtrack, created in house here at Big Yellow Fishes!
Results & Outcome
With just over 9.2k views and 128 comments (and counting), "Lost Atari transmission", as it is now lovingly titled, is one of the most successful videos on the Atari YouTube channel, achieving 100% funding within a few days. Atari were extremely pleased with the project and the publicity it achieved, planting the seed for what would become a brilliant relationship between ourselves and our friends over at Atari!
More work
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