Creating The World’s First Live Motion Capture Game Show

Our long-standing client, gaming giant Supercell, was thinking of doing something special for the 8th birthday of its iconic game, Clash of Clans. They needed something that would bring the community together to celebrate and enjoy the day – despite lockdown. This is how the world’s first live motion capture game show was born…

The first what?

World’s first live motion capture game show. Quite the mouthful, even more difficult to digest if you’re setting it up. But we were damn excited. 

The idea was sparked by one central piece of insight: the Clash of Clans community (the die-hard bit of it anyway) knows everything there is to know about the game. They’re passionate and proud of their knowledge. We wanted to give them a chance to shine.

So we partnered with our production partner Psyop to create a game show hosted by the Party King (a celebratory version of the Clash of Clans character, the Barbarian King). This is where motion capture came in: his every move was recorded in real-time as the show went on.

How do you even do that?

With state-of-the-art motion capture technology, a great team and nerves of steel. This was a first-of-its-kind content push which needed a lot of innovative thinking to make it actually work. The entire film was created during lockdown, shot in real-time via Zoom across four global locations: London, Helsinki, New York and Los Angeles. Talk about a challenge!

 “Working with Supercell and our production partner, Psyop, who brought the mocap to life, it was a herculean effort over four time zones, with everything taking place over Zoom. The end result is a first for the tech – and a great piece of content for the community.” – Andrew Bentham, our Associate Creative Director
 

Beyond our innovation ambitions, we wanted to make sure we weren’t losing sight of the ultimate goal: creating a piece of content that entertained and engaged the community. We began the fun by sending out personalised invitations to two beloved Clash of Clans gaming influencers and awaited their response…

To spice up the game, we pitted together two groups of two: Darian and Eino, community managers at Clash Of Clans, and Galadon and Lady B, two of the most Clashy influencers we could find.

Then the Game show, which took a look back at eight years of Clashy mayhem and fan moments, began. The film, inspired by 90’s rock concerts, saw the Party King grill the two sets of contestants with some tricky (and funny) questions. The Larger-than-life host sang, played guitar and burst into song, awarding points to the two teams as they battled for the chance to be crowned KING OF CLASH.

Did it work?

Hell yes. In the first week, we had over 1.5 million views across videos/channels and got some ego boosting comments from the community. We were happy to see the community so engaged and getting all celebratory for the 8th birthday of their favourite game.