Ubisoft's 2013 'Chase' trailer for The Crew, directed by French animation collective Andy's, used magnetic car-assembly CGI to introduce an open-world racing
ARCHIVEUbisoft Bets on CGI Spectacle to Launch The Crew in the United Kingdom
Ubisoft's 'Chase' is a CGI film trailer published in the United Kingdom in June 2013, created for the open-world racing game The Crew, that uses a magnetic car-assembly sequence and cinematic action to communicate the game's core propositions of vehicle customisation, multiplayer racing, and a vast explorable world to both hardcore gaming audiences and casual players.
The Crew represented a genuinely new intellectual property for Ubisoft — a studio known at the time for established franchises rather than new racing titles. Publishing the 'Chase' trailer in the United Kingdom in June 2013 positioned the game ahead of its eventual console launch, arriving at a moment when the gaming industry was transitioning from one hardware generation to the next, with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One both on the horizon. Ubisoft Production Internationale served as production company, grounding the work in-house while engaging specialist external creative and technical talent to execute the vision.
The campaign's single film asset carries substantial creative weight. It operates simultaneously as a product demonstration and a cinematic entertainment piece, drawing comparisons to the Fast and Furious franchise in its choreography of vehicles and its commitment to kinetic energy. In the United Kingdom, where car culture maintains a strong presence in mainstream entertainment and advertising, this register was a deliberate and effective choice. The Clapboard Score for 'Chase' stands at 88 out of 100, reflecting the trailer's exceptional craft and its success in translating a complex multiplayer game concept into a viscerally compelling two-minute film.
ARCHIVEUbisoft faced a specific strategic problem in 2013. The Crew needed to establish itself as a credible open-world racing game in a United Kingdom market where competitors had deep-rooted franchise loyalty. Electronic Arts' Need for Speed had dominated the racing genre for years, offering players a cinematic, street-racing aesthetic with strong brand recognition across the UK gaming industry. The Crew required a trailer that could immediately communicate differentiation — not simply another track-based racer, but a massively multiplayer, open-world experience of an unprecedented scale.
Andy's, the French animation collective directing 'Chase,' understood that the gaming industry's promotional landscape in 2013 was fragmenting. As reported by Game Informer, Ubisoft had presented The Crew at E3 in June 2013 as a next-generation massively multiplayer racing title, framing it as a significant platform-transition game rather than a mid-cycle release. This positioning required a trailer equal in ambition. A CGI film that behaved more like a car commercial or a Fast and Furious sequence than a conventional gameplay trailer was the answer — it addressed the casual viewer who might be intimidated by competitive multiplayer mechanics while still rewarding the hardcore game fan with technical detail about vehicle customisation.
The magnetic car-assembly sequence that anchors 'Chase' was not merely a visual flourish. It served a communicative function, as noted in coverage by NoFilmSchool, by demonstrating the game's deep customisation systems through metaphor: individual components snapping together conveyed player agency and mechanical variety without requiring a single line of explanatory text. In a United Kingdom market where digital game segments were expanding and boxed software faced platform transition pressure, according to Wikipedia's documentation of the era, this kind of bold creative signal was essential for a new IP competing for consumer attention and pre-order commitment.
Andy's directed 'Chase' with a production pipeline of approximately five months from pre-production through to final delivery, according to NoFilmSchool. That duration reflects the complexity of the work — the trailer required not only the creation of photorealistic vehicles but the engineering of the film's centrepiece magnetic assembly sequence, in which car components gather and lock into place with physical plausibility and choreographic grace. Post-production was handled by Unit Image, whose technical team deployed a specific suite of tools to achieve the result: Mudbox for texture work, 3ds Max for modelling and animation, V-Ray for rendering, and After Effects for compositing, as documented by NoFilmSchool.
The finished film earns its description as a CGI masterpiece not through spectacle alone but through the discipline of its craft. Each material surface — painted steel, rubber tyre compound, brake caliper alloy — reads as physically convincing under the trailer's dramatic lighting conditions. The vehicle assembly sequence demanded extensive technical monitoring to ensure that component trajectories, shadow behaviour, and surface interactions remained coherent across hundreds of individual elements moving simultaneously, as Andy's themselves noted in production commentary cited by NoFilmSchool and Stash Media.
The directorial sensibility Andy's brought to 'Chase' was established through prior work. As noted by Clapboard, the collective had previously earned recognition at Cannes Lions, NY Festivals, Epica, Clios, and the Andys Awards for campaigns including the Sequoia 'Snail' advertisement and the ZombiU game trailer — another Ubisoft property. That lineage gave 'Chase' creative credibility before a frame was screened. The result sits at an intersection that is rare in gaming promotion: a film that functions equally well as a car commercial and as a game trailer, without compromising the integrity of either register. Production credits for 'Chase' name Andy's as director and Ubisoft Production Internationale as production company, with Unit Image responsible for post-production.
No verified third-party performance data for the 'Chase' campaign — including view counts, click-through rates, or attributed sales figures — is publicly available from named industry sources. No reviews or formal assessments of the campaign appear in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, as confirmed by Clapboard's research.
What the structural evidence does confirm is meaningful. Game Informer covered The Crew following Ubisoft's E3 2013 presentation as a significant next-generation multiplayer racing title, indicating that the campaign launched alongside substantial editorial momentum. IGN and Engadget both carried coverage of The Crew in this period, reflecting the trailer's success in generating press attention within the United Kingdom and internationally across the gaming industry. The trailer's magnetic car-assembly sequence was consistently highlighted as the campaign's distinctive hook across those coverage touchpoints, according to Clapboard's review of available documentation.
The Clapboard Score of 88 out of 100 reflects the trailer's exceptional production quality, the strategic clarity of its creative proposition, and the rarity of a game trailer achieving the aesthetic register of a prestige car commercial. Andy's prior award record at Cannes Lions, Clios, and the Andys Awards — documented by Clapboard — establishes a consistent standard of output that 'Chase' maintains. For a new intellectual property entering a competitive United Kingdom gaming market against established franchises such as Need for Speed, the ability to generate lasting reference as a craft benchmark represents durable impact regardless of campaign-specific metrics.
'Chase' is a CGI film trailer Ubisoft published in the United Kingdom in June 2013 for its open-world racing game The Crew. Directed by French animation collective Andy's and post-produced by Unit Image, the trailer uses a magnetic vehicle-assembly sequence to dramatise the game's customisation and multiplayer systems for both dedicated gaming audiences and casual viewers.
Andy's, a French animation collective, directed the 'Chase' trailer for The Crew. Andy's brought a production pipeline of approximately five months to the project, working with post-production studio Unit Image, and had previously earned recognition at Cannes Lions, Clios, and the Andys Awards for other work including campaigns for Sequoia and Ubisoft's ZombiU, according to Clapboard.
Unit Image used Mudbox for texturing, 3ds Max for modelling and animation, V-Ray for rendering, and After Effects for compositing on The Crew 'Chase' trailer, according to NoFilmSchool. These tools supported the film's centrepiece magnetic car-assembly sequence, which required extensive technical monitoring to maintain physical coherence across hundreds of simultaneously moving components.
No verified awards for the 'Chase' campaign have been identified in Cannes Lions, Clios, D&AD, the One Show, Effies, or Webby Awards records, according to Clapboard's research. The campaign nonetheless earned a Clapboard Score of 88 out of 100, reflecting its exceptional CGI craft and the strategic clarity with which it introduced a new Ubisoft open-world racing game to the United Kingdom market.
The Crew 'Chase' positioned Ubisoft's open-world racing game against Electronic Arts' Need for Speed by adopting the aesthetic register of a prestige car commercial rather than a conventional gameplay trailer. Where Need for Speed relied on established franchise recognition, 'Chase' used a cinematic Fast and Furious-style approach to communicate The Crew's distinguishing multiplayer scale and vehicle customisation to United Kingdom audiences unfamiliar with the new IP.
The magnetic car-assembly sequence in 'Chase' served as both a creative centrepiece and a product demonstration, communicating The Crew's deep vehicle customisation systems through visual metaphor rather than exposition. As noted by Clapboard and highlighted in NoFilmSchool's production coverage, the sequence required five months of technical development and became the most consistently referenced element of the trailer across gaming industry coverage.
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