Brief
We were approached by HBO to create an experience that uses technology to create a sophisticated, responsive and highly personalised virtual creature, that lives through a users phones via Augmented Reality. This would allow fans to immerse themselves in the House Of The Dragon world and raise their own dragon.
Approach
The main conceit behind DracARys is exploring what it would mean for the dragons of Westeros to exist in our world – an idea that very much has AR at its core. Designing the creative experience around the concept of AR ensured there are less leaps of understanding required by the user to immerse themselves in our world. It should be easier for them to enjoy playing with their dragons if they can take what they see on their phone screens at face value.
For our dragons to feel convincingly integrated into the world we really needed to lean into the new developments in AR technology which were the driving force behind the project in the first place. Consumer facing Augmented Reality has evolved in stages, from the days where we could attach digital content to flat floor planes, to Pokemon GO which used GPS locations to turn the globe into a canvas. We wanted to, and knew we could, go better – to have a creature that would recognise the space immediately around it and behave accordingly.