Army spent €200K on video game ‘stunt’
150-SECOND TRAILER AIMED AT KIDS
THE Defence Forces spent nearly €200,000 on a 150-second ‘video game’ that was filmed on a GoPro camera with the aim of enticing young people to join the military.
DVDs of a trailer for the game were to be left on after-school bus and train services with a view to targeting schoolchildren, according to internal correspondence seen by The Star.
More than €50,000 was spent on a marketing campaign for the ‘video game’ that deliberately concealed the fact that it was a recruitment tool for the Defence Forces.
“It’s important that nothing can be obviously traced back to you guys about this,” one of its developers wrote in an email to military personnel regarding the promotion of the game.
A number of high-profile influencers were also paid to promote the game on social-media platforms, while ads were placed in the front window of computer shops “as a stunt”.
The game, which is called A New Dawn, comprises two-and-a-half minutes of footage showing a military training exercise. The ‘player’ is given six binary choices at various intervals, which either continue the video or end the ‘game’.
Footage
A creative and advertising agency in Dublin was paid €192,134 by the Defence Forces to produce the ‘video game’ – working out at over €1,000 per second of footage.
In the lead-up to its official launch, the marketing campaign aimed to create the false impression that A New Dawn was a real video game, and mock-ups of a PlayStation 4 game cover were produced.
The title was also chosen because it sounded like “a plausible game name” that had “that command and aspiration that names like ‘Call of Duty’ provide”, according to an email from the advertising company.
As part of the plan to falsely present A New Dawn as a real video game, an email from the company stated that copies of a trailer for the game were going to be left on school transport in mock-up DVD boxes.
“We are going to plant some of the DVD boxes with a letter implying it was leaked on DART/Dublin Buses home from school,” an account manager wrote. A spokesman for the Defence Forces said this did not occur.
A New Dawn was officially launched in 2017.