Ubisoft Germany & Biborg Immerse Gamers in Post-apocalyptic Chaos

Paris and London-based Digital agency Biborg has designed a documentary series to accompany the launch of Ubisoft Tom Clancy's The Division 'post-pandemic thriller' video game. Partnering with R+I Creative and VICE Germany teams, Biborg produced three 'what if' documentaries of 13-minutes exploring the credibility of a pandemic apocalypse, and its human and social consequences. A constant back and forth between Tom Clancy’s The Division universe and the real facts immerses us in the darkest of the worlds, and it may very well be ours.

Tom Clancy's The Division is an upcoming online open world third-person shooter role-playing video game featuring realistic survival elements. The game was developed by Ubisoft Massive and published by Ubisoft, and is set to be launched on March 8th 2016. It is one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

“Welcome to a persistent and dynamic open world, your mission is to restore order, investigate the source of the virus, and take back New York. In only days, without food or water, society collapses into chaos. With Tom Clancy's The Division Into Chaos we will reach an audience beyond gamers which are interested by modern societal topics like this one with a documentary giving a good understanding of the game’s immersive content related to The Division, blurring boundaries between the game and reality. Tom Clancy’s The Division is an ultra realistic game showing how a modern society has become fragile and complex and how a city would react to the chaos following a pandemic. It submerges players into a brutal and dangerous world where they will have to survive and fight against others while being caught in a large scale conspiracy” explains Salah Al-Dujaili, Brand Manager at Ubisoft Germany.

He continues: "We didn’t want people to play it like it’s the end of the world. We want people to actually feel like it could be the end of the world! To immerse the gamers in this collapsed version of New York City, we asked Biborg to design a documentary series about the chaos following a pandemic."

Are we prepared for such a pandemic? How would we survive in a hostile urban environment? How would a city react to the chaos following such a disaster? Partnering with R+I, the creator of the inspiring 'Influencers' (2010) and VICE Germany teams, Biborg organized 7 interviews with bio terrorism experts, survivalism professionals, national security teams, and the game designers to get their insights and reveal a clear and frightening parallelism between the game and reality. This web documentary is composed of 3 episodes of 13 minutes.

 “We chose an investigative reporter tone, enriched with game sequences and real archives. We shot in Berlin, Malmö and New-York. Without betraying the plot, the aim of this web doc was to produce Brand Content and to bring forward the game play, the story, and some visuals of the game in a subtle and immersive way,” explains Ismael El-Hakim, Associate Director at Biborg. “But you could tell we wanted to bring the potential reality of a pandemic disaster in a subtle and immersive way too!”

The documentary will be available for the audience on streaming platform maxdome on March 2nd, and also be pushed on YouTube. A one minute teaser will be available on Ubisoft’s social media channels.