Nothing brings friends together like a little friendly competition. This spot explores the relationship of Alex and Justin, as they battle for bragging rights through a range of gaming worlds. The action starts with a little real life one-on-one basketball action, and a trade-off of the age-old question, “Whatchu got?” Apparently, Justin has NBA star, Kevin Durant. The two friends find themselves in the middle of the game world of NBA 2k15 (2K Sports), as KD scores the winner from Justin’s pass. Back to the real world and catching their breath, they stare as the concrete court cracks beneath their feet, leaping to safety as the chasm widens, flying straight into the world of Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft). They travel rapidly through the Himalayan landscape of Kyrat, using a combination of a squirrel wingsuit, a grappling hook, and ATVs, all the while being chased by the Royal Army (some riding weaponized elephants!). The banter and buddy-baiting continue as they escape onto a beach and morph into the eagerly anticipated world of Destiny (Bungie/Activision). Fully geared up, these best of friends decide to stop competing and start cooperating, and march toward their enemy, side-by-side.

For “Friendly Competition” we carefully selected a studio to helm one of the most demanding VFX jobs of the year.

To create the octane-fuelled sixty seconds of visual effects, the studio relied on close collaboration with Sony and the development teams behind the three games. This entailed scrupulous study of the original games, and arduous assimilation into the real world milieu. To recreate the feel of these games authentically, the studio went to great lengths to deconstruct and understand the games under the hood. The team parsed through all source elements to determine which ones were created by hand and which were rendered dynamically from the game engine – an important delineation when replicating the shaders. Often game engines use screen-space post-effects to achieve certain looks (depth of field, motion-blur), and the studio made a conscious effort to mimic these approaches to maintain fidelity.

What makes the spot so epic, is the merging of three disparate game fantasies with unique aesthetics into one world. Visually, of course, this was the biggest challenge to overcome: how to seamlessly blend the game aesthetics together, while remaining individually true to each game