The purpose behind Clash of Clans’ 10-year anniversary campaign was to reignite fans’ love of the game. So we decided to make more for them to love by totally inventing three decades of Clash prequels, plus a dramatic story to justify why fans had never seen or heard of any of them before.

We knew Clash fans like to go DEEP (it’s a very active fandom), and would lose interest quickly if we made something that was obviously a joke or too easy to disprove. We also needed to make sure we were staying authentic to the game and its characters so that this all felt like something that was coming from within the community, not some “mean trick” from a bunch of outsiders.

We made sure to do our research, and dig deep not just on the game itself, but jokes within the fandom. We wanted everything we did to feel layered, so fans could have fun unearthing more and more content as they worked to disprove that any of this ever happened. In order to make our false history as believable as possible, we:

- Introduced the idea that Clash of Clans’ main character would be traveling back in time through a series of animated commercials.

- Teased influencers with cryptic influencer boxes filled with era-specific merchandise, and a note written on an old game manual.

- Created 3 decades of nostalgic, era-specific games and released them within the Clash of Clans app.

- Filmed, edited, and released an entirely made-up 20-minute documentary about the invention of those games –– the rise, the fall, and the re-invention of Clash of Clans as we know it today.

- Collaborated with era-specific brands and “re-released” branded collabs, including 80s Garbage Pail Kids cards of all the Clash characters, a 90s General Mills cereal called Choco Boom Booms, an 00s energy drink called Elixx, and four decades’ worth of Champion apparel.

- Hid easter eggs all over the Internet to help reinforce the believability of everything we were doing: An IMDB page for the movie referenced in the documentary, a Grailed listing for a vintage 80s Clash t-shirt, a Reddit AMA with one of the “founders,” a YouTube compilation of all the 80s & 90s Clash commercials… We even updated the official Clash of Clans website with an updated timeline that began in 1982.

Fans were dumbfounded at the depth of the deep-faking, and immediately began sharing all the content and easter eggs they found. It didn’t just reignite their love of the game, it re-engaged the community and got them excited about something besides another game update. They had something to gush about, argue about, and even troll one another with. By making a bunch of content that was supposed to feel old, we made the game feel new again.