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Robyn Hardman, Digital Consultant
Predicting Your World: Watch_Dogs 2 Advertises with Algorithms
One of the most eagerly anticipated video game releases of the year, Watch_Dogs 2 has come out to great acclaim across the world. In the lead up to its release, developer Ubisoft came out with a clever way to spread awareness.
The crux of Watch_Dogs 2 is that tech is spying on you – the government and big companies know everything about you, from where you live to what you had for breakfast that day. In the game, protagonist Marcus Holloway is framed for a crime he didn’t commit by this level of monitoring, and it’s up to hacker group Dedsec to help him out.
To try and demonstrate how Marcus could have been framed, Ubisoft teamed up with the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge to create Predictive World – an online app that takes your Facebook data and uses a specially created algorithm to evaluate the kind of person you are and what effect this might have on things like your employability, potential to commit crime and your satisfaction with life.
It’s by no means completely accurate – the chart above, which belongs to me, told me that I was only 3% satisfied with my life because I like The Hunger Games! However, it does throw up some interesting recommendations based on publically available data. It’s a particularly great marketing tactic because it appeals to a generation that are often accused of ‘oversharing’ on social media, demonstrating that no data is as meaningless as it may seem.
To some extent, that’s very true in the marketing world. At Mighty, we go through analytics and other data with a fine-toothed comb to try and understand what’s making our clients’ audiences tick, and whether or not we can use that information to our advantage. We’re constantly trying to make the best use of Facebook and Google’s algorithms to reach the people we need to. We’re always looking at what followers are engaging with to make sure we can tailor content to suit.
And our favourite thing about Predictive World? Despite making a point about what companies can evaluate from your data, you’re still given the option to share that data with your friends on social media. After all, Ubisoft still have a game to promote.
If you want to try out Predictive World for yourself, head to predictiveworld.watchdogs.com
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