When creating the campaign for God of War Ragnarok’s launch, we were tasked with two commercial objectives. First, beat the previous entry in the franchise’s sales performance - a God-sized task (God of War 2018 sold 5 million units in its first month and 10 million in its first year). Second: make Ragnarok the most successful first-party launch in PlayStation’s history, a distinction that was, at the time, held by The Last of Us (4.1 million first-week sales). We realized that if we wanted to beat these records, God of War's penetration among mainstream (read: non-gamer) audiences would need to significantly increase. So our task was clear: expose the franchise to new audiences in a way that grabbed their attention in a way they'd never see coming.

The spot embraced the filmic language of the documentary to enhance the comedic storytelling that was flawlessly brought to life by world class talent. If the game was this cinematic Shakespearean drama set in a violent fantasy world, then the spots should feel like a grounded documentary of spontaneous conversations happening between real people. Our implementation for hand-held moves, pans, and zooms underscored awkward silences and punchlines ultimately enhancing the script and humor. Additionally, the production design was a humorously abstracted version of the God of War world to take the nine realms and transform it into something our real life fathers could experience with their kids ultimately bringing to life one of PlayStations most iconic characters in a way nobody would have imagined.

God of War Ragnarok became the fastest selling first party launch game in PlayStation’s history selling 5.1 million copies in the first 5 days - a new franchise record, beating the 5 million units that 2018 sold in its first month in just under a week. Ragnarok eventually eclipsed 11 million sales in only 3 months - a feat the 2018 game took over a full year to manage. Credit is due to the spot's featured celebrities, who we chose to help the game transcend the gaming trades, resulting in the franchise showing up in Forbes, ESPN, HypeBeast, Huffington Post, Bleacher Report, Fatherly and more. In addition to huge numbers on paid media placements on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter, the piece generated over 20M organic views across PlayStation’s and talents' socials as well as with hundreds of reaction videos across YouTube and TikTok made by fans of all ages.