We had to celebrate the French release of the video game Batman Arkham Origins. The game tells the story of the young Batman who just arrived in Gotham. The city is run by Black Mask and the Joker, who put a price on Batman's head and hire multiple assassins to get rid of him.

We were strongly inspired by the game storyline, and decided to let the fans try their luck and pass interviews with the Joker to become the assassin who would have the privilege to kill the Bat. At the end, the selected candidate would sign a 2000 euros a month contract to play the game and track Batman down in the multiplayer mode.

The fans had first to pass a quick online test. Selected profiles would then have the chance to actually talk to the Joker through Google Hangout interviews. We used sensor-less motion system capture that would reproduce the facial expressions of an actor, that we would map on the Joker in-game 3D model. The best candidates would then have a final interview with Black Mask, and one would sign the 2000-euro contract.

The ultimate fantasy to talk to the Joker, in conjunction with the technology that we used naturally brought in video game journalists and influent bloggers to directly participate in the campaign and share their performance within their social audience.

We really wanted the fans to meet the in-game character of the Joker, so make-up and costumes weren’t an option. We also wanted the Joker to react as a real person, so scripting was also out of the equation. We went for a sensor less motion system capture (Faceshift), which we connected to a Unity module that rendered the Joker 3D model from the game in real-time. Unity’s video output was streamed live through Google Hangouts, giving the feeling to the candidates that there were talking to the real in-game Joker.

For 8 hours a day, during a week, interviews took place on Google Hangouts and streamed live on a YouTube player integrated within the campaign site. Each interview was published as a separate video. At the end of the week, we had about 250 live interviews, 16 hours of footage, over 500.000 views and an impressive 10% share rate.