I got in contact with Rare this morning to discuss these videos and see if we can’t learn a little more about them. Hit the jump for some background on the Believa Pinata “sort of” campaign.
When the first Believe commercial was posted on Youtube, I thought it was pretty clear that it was an unofficial parody by a Halo fan. Turns out that assumption was more or less correct, as video creator James Thomas is indeed a Halo fan who made an unofficial spoof video — the only important difference being that he “just so happened” to be a member of Rare as well.
James wanted to make a funny parody vid, but he didn’t want to make it “official” and get bogged down in marketing rubbish that would rob the footage of its meme-like, amateurish look. So, for £50, some of the boys in Rare shot the commercial “guerrilla style” and released it onto Youtube.
Shortly after … Rare gets a call from Microsoft, asking if they had anything to do with the video? The makers of the video explained that they had, apologized for not officially informing anyone, but suggested they’d like to keep the video up. Fortunately, Microsoft loved the idea and was very encouraging.
Henceforth, the Believa Piñata adverts continue, with this brand new vid that works as an unofficially official promotional campaign for Viva Piñata. Funnily, that was never the intention, as it was simply a fan vid made by a guy who simply happened to be working on VP, but it’s all turned out quite nicely.
He gave us hope indeed.
