Turtle Beach's new campaign: we got your realistic experience right here

Remember that campaign for Turtle Beach that Droga5 said was going to launch "really shortly", after its Fiveight creative win?

Well those guys weren't kidding around.  And they aren't kidding around with the launch of said campaign for gaming audio peripheral designer, manufacturer and marketer Turtle Beach.

The campaign focuses on a custom YouTube channel that follows the adventures of one first person shooter fan, Phil the Kiwi Gamer (okay his name's just "Phil" but his handle is StatiC) and what happens when a gaming distributor and a creative agency decide to send said gamer into a war zone.

You heard me.  You like FPS? You got it, buddy.

The teaser (see below) involves taking a Kiwi gamer to the Iraqi border  in a five part series and has scenes of Phil on a road in Iraq with his hands up, firing a real M4 and soldiers inspecting the vehicle.

The campaign aimed to show how enhanced a gaming experience could become with Turtle Beach's headsets, said Ben Ward, director of marketing for Fiveight, the New Zealand-owned distributor for Warner Brothers Interactive, SEGA, Ubisoft and Turtle Beach.

“Playing a game with a pair of headsets is a very different experience from playing a game without a pair of headsets.  You can hear noises and sounds that you can’t hear from your TV.”

The campaign looked to further build the Turtle Brand in the New Zealand market, where it was currently number one in gaming console head sets, Mr Ward said.  He said video game developers could spend form $5 million up to $50 million on developing a game and a fair portion of this was spent on sound.  Specifically with war-oriented games, the competitive online element was a lot of the target audience, he said.

The cameras documented Phil’s journey, Mr Ward said. 

This included images of gunfire and at one point, a graveyard, and one wonders how Phil dealt with the difference between the blasé gunning down of animated characters compared with the real life experiences of war.

Mr Ward said gaming was a form of entertainment and going to the real world was a different situation.

“I suppose what it actually outlined was probably two polar opposites in terms of real world versus video games, which is I suppose the one thing I took out of it.”

As to whether Phil visits the frontlines, all Droga5 partner Mike O’Sullivan would say was that there were some logistical mishaps in the upcoming series which made for interesting watching.