With over 500 days between the Season 7 finale and the Season 8 premiere, HBO wanted to give fans the opportunity to dive into where the story left off — and prepare to “fight for the living” against Westeros’ biggest threat: The Army of the Dead. By creating a collection of virtual, mixed and augmented reality that utilized real world spaces and took cues from physical sets, the Game of Thrones team was able to give fans engaging and one-of-a-kind experiences that brought the epic fantasy series to life as never before.

Game of Thrones provided fans with everything needed to get excited for the epic final season by creating a collection of immersive digital experiences including virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality.

The rollout began with an Instagram AR camera effect dropped in tandem with the much-anticipated trailer release. The effect allowed users to celebrate the final season’s theme of “fire and ice” on their Instagram stories.

At South by Southwest, Game of Thrones welcomed fans into a battle camp where four discoverable Snapchat AR effects elevated the experience. By featuring iconic elements of the show via an immersive layer within the activation, it seamlessly married the physical with the digital.

HBO then leveraged Magic Leap technology. The Dead Must Die: A Magic Leap Encounter combines mixed reality content with animatronic set pieces as users fight a wight and witness a terrifying White Walker step into their world.

GoT teamed up with Framestore to produce an immersive VR experience in which fans are brought on an epic journey to fight a vicious wight polar bear and the Army of the Dead. Fans are further immersed via 4D elements, including a motion floor alongside heat, cold and wind effects.

For premiere day, the team worked with Snapchat to create a selfie lens giving fans the chance to interact with a baby dragon, and in the worldview see the full grown dragon fly across the sky.

Finally, GoT took Manhattan, with a first-ever branded landmarker AR experience in which visitors to NYC’s Flatiron Building were able to see an ice dragon land on the iconic building.

By engaging with experiences that transcended the television screen, fans and press alike embraced their part in the war to come; and led to HBO’s biggest night of streaming to date.