Watch Dogs, Ubisoft is watching you

Watch Dogs is an upcoming and much anticipated video game developed by Ubisoft, which has developped great materials to promote its launch.

One year ago Ubisoft released the first demo video of Watch Dogs.

10,6 Millions views later and few months before the release of the game, in November, Ubisoft seems inspired by its universe made of data surveillance, and hacking.

In Europe, BETC Digital has produced a very nice website called WeAreData, which gathers available geolocated data about Paris, London and Berlin. You can discover infographics of realtime data such as subways activities, electricity consumption and lots of social media publications. You can even watch what other users are looking at on the website through Facebook connect.

At a time when privacy is a concern for a lot of people, when countries are spying each other population (cf Prism/Snowden case) such a topic couldn’t be more contemporary.

The data visualization is very well executed, and although there is no real purpose or interactivity, there is something hypnotizing that makes you easily wander through the maps like a peeping Tom.

Ubisoft has very well understood the value of content, and produced some nice dedicated promotional materials :

And if you want to know more you can check the interesting Making of :

Now let’s go across the Atlantic and let’s have a look at Watch Dogs Live, an immersive online and real-world mobile application, developped in Canada. It allows you to become an infamous hacker by letting you hack real locations in your city

The incentive is big, as you can win a car. The approach is clever, using IRL experience through the ultimate geolocated data device. “Your phone is your weapon” as it is said in this trailer :

As it seems the application is only available in Canada, I can’t give you any feedback, but the customer ratings look quite high on the app store. The design looks loyal to the game environment.

If you live in Canada don’t hesitate to give us some feedback.

All these contents and experience should allow players to get involved with the franchise in anticipation of the game’s release.