Ubisoft discusses Watch_Dogs’ E3 2013 trailer leak
Watch_Dogs’ E3 2013 trailer leaked out right before Ubisoft’s press conference. The video popped up online on Sunday, but Ubisoft’s briefing wouldn’t be taking place until Monday.
Naturally, the leak was a disappointment for Ubisoft. Head of sales and marketing Tony Key reacted to the situation with Polygon and discussed the difficulty in keeping secrets:
“When you spend so much time and effort on something and it leaks out a day early, it’s disappointing for everyone involved. It was supposed to be a big moment at our briefing. If half the people have already seen it, then it’s half as effective.”
“There’s a lot of other triggers in place. It’s not just what’s shown in the briefing, it’s all the assets that are about to be released associated with that, the press packages, the uploads to YouTube, the mobilization of your social media efforts. You may even have TV advertising tied to an announcement. We have an entirely integrated machine around these pulse points and when things don’t hit when they are supposed to it causes a lot of inefficiency and generally lowers the impact.”
“It’s hard to keep a secret. It seems like it always happens differently. Every time there is a leak, we figure out what went wrong and we address it. There’s always new ways for leaks to get out, and we keep discovering them. It’s not unique to Ubisoft. We’re constantly trying to build processes that maintain confidentiality. We’re never going to give up trying to do that.”
“The reception for Watch Dogs last year was one of those, once-every-three-or-four-years occurrences, and that’s a high bar to hold anyone to. But the reason why Watch Dogs got such an amazing reception last year was that it was a next generation game, even though we didn’t say it was. That was the first next generation game that people saw and continued to be one of the few games showing off next generation gameplay, right up until yesterday.”
