Title	VIDEO GAME VETERANS
Brand	IVAW
Product/Service	VIDEO GAME
Category	A08. ORIGINAL GAME OR USE OF GAMING
Entrant Company	THE CYRANOS McCANN Barcelona, SPAIN
Contributing Company	THE CYRANOS McCANN Barcelona, SPAIN

Name	Company	Position
Leandro Raposo	The Cyranos Mccann	Creative President
Pablo Colonnese	The Cyranos Mccann	Executive Creative Director
David Fernández/Jon Lavin/Joaquín Espagnol	The Cyranos Mccann	Creative Director
Jaume Rufach	The Cyranos Mccann	Copywriter
Eduard Cubel	The Cyranos Mccann	Art Director
Oriol Bombí	The Cyranos Mccann	Head Of Strategic Planning
Alba Riart	The Cyranos Mccann	Production Manager
Marta Grasa	The Cyranos Mccann	Account Director
Jesús Vergés	The Cyranos Mccann	Account Executive

The Campaign

IVAW works to support American soldiers and veterans who are under pressure not to speak out. IVAW’s specific aims also include bringing a rounded view of the conflict to a society whose access to information depends on mass media over which the government and the military exert a strong influence. The intention of this campaign was to refute the REALISM claimed by video games, by showing the true reality of war, its only truth. The only truth that nobody tells you when you go along to enlist. To do it without access to major media and only $3,000.

Results

IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) was set up in 2004 following a conference organised by Veterans for Peace in Boston. It works to support American soldiers and veterans who are under pressure not to speak out. IVAW’s specific aims also include bringing a rounded view of the conflict to a society whose access to information depends on mass media over which the government and the military exert a strong influence. IVAW’s intention with this campaign was to reach this audience in an effective, memorable way and even to invite commitment and somehow counteract the large numbers of messages in favour of the conflict generated in the mass media. To do this we used a different medium, one that generated an experience. We developed a video game: THE TRUTH OF THE WAR, which clearly expressed the only truth about the war that they don’t tell you about very much: your own death. The first video game where you only get one life. We developed it and sold it for $0.99 without anybody knowing what they were buying, and achieved over 250,000 downloads, $98,325 in donations and, most importantly, brought our message in an original way to a particularly hard-to-reach target audience. The intention was to refute the REALISM claimed by video games, by showing the true reality of war, its only truth. The only truth that nobody tells you when you go along to enlist. To do it without access to major media. To do it with a budget of just $3,000.

The target audience on this occasion was young people and teenagers. Many of the propaganda messages seeking to justify war are traditionally aimed at this group and the organisation considers them to be among the direct or indirect victims of the war.

The action ended with the chance to fight against the war itself or get the amount paid for the video game refunded. 67% donated the amount to IVAW 33% wanted their money back 15% bought another game from Nurendsoft 55% rated it positively