Objective

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis marks the return of one of gaming's most iconic franchises after years of quiet. The franchise had a loyal but dormant audience, and the usual launch playbook of trailers and teasers would reach people without giving them a reason to stay. We set out to do something harder and more durable: rebuild an engaged community by earning trust instead of buying attention.

The driving idea was simple. Treat the audience as insiders, and bring them inside the making of the game through the people who built it and the people who love it.

Our specific goals:

• Build a sustained, themed documentary series that could carry the entire pre-launch window and give the community a steady reason to return.
• Go behind the scenes with the co-developers, Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog, and with the cast of the game, so fans heard from the real voices behind Lara Croft.
• Convert passive trailer awareness into subscribed, committed audience members ahead of launch.
• Establish the @PlayTombRaider channel as the authentic home for the game's story and craft.
• Honor the franchise's 30 year history and its community, connecting the new game to everything fans already love about Tomb Raider.

Strategy

We built a documentary series of more than 20 episodes that took fans behind the scenes with the co-developers, Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog, and with the cast of the game. Each episode of the dev-focused series paired the people who did the work with the footage that proved it, covering the full range of the craft: reimagining real history and culture, performance capture, cinematics, enemy design, traversal, and the connective tissue of the Tomb Raider universe itself.

Our plan of action rested on three principles.

• Depth over spectacle. Most launch campaigns deliver a trailer and a few promotional beats. We committed to a deep, episodic body of work that respected the audience's intelligence and the fan's deep passion for the franchise. Each episode had a clear subject and let the makers speak for themselves.
• Authenticity as the production standard. We used real developer and cast interviews and real behind-the-scenes footage. The people featured were the ones who built and performed the game, which made the series credible to an audience that spots a sales pitch instantly.
• A comprehensive themed release schedule. The series followed a deliberate thematic structure, with each episode and its release timing mapped to a shared content and social calendar coordinated between Amazon Game Studios and Crystal Dynamics.

What makes the execution remarkable is the scale we achieved with almost nothing. The entire series was produced by a skeleton crew of three:

• Michael Lovan, director, writer, cinematographer, and producer.
• Marc Gleckman, editor and cinematographer.
• Charles Blessing, cinematographer.

Three people directed, shot, edited, and delivered a 20-plus episode documentary series spanning two international studios, the game's cast, and a global community.

The series is actively ongoing, with roughly six months and several more episodes still to come. A major milestone along the way is Episode 13, releasing November 16, a standout entry celebrating 30 years of Tomb Raider. It is our most ambitious undertaking yet, bringing together:

• Testimonials from five different Lara Croft performers.
• Testimonials / interviews with more than 80 members of the Tomb Raider community (including the admins and moderators of the Tomb Raider Discord and subreddit).
• The unveiling of the franchise's history at the annual Tomb Raider Day in Derby, England, the home of Core Design, the studio that created the first Tomb Raider game.

That we are sustaining this ambition across an active, months-long run, not a finished campaign, is what sets the work apart. Very few launch campaigns attempt a true documentary series of this length, and fewer still hand the microphone to the developers, the cast, and the community at once. We turned the making-of into the main event, and created content fans choose to watch, subscribe to, and share.

Results

We set out to rebuild an engaged community by earning trust, and with the series still active, the results already confirm the approach is working.

• A sustained, active series. We have delivered 12 episodes to date and are roughly six months from our final episode, an unusually deep and ongoing documentary effort for a game campaign.
• Favorable sentiment at scale. Episode 1 holds a 97.9% like-to-dislike ratio on YouTube, with consistently strong sentiment across the series so far. Honest, craft-forward storytelling earns goodwill that hype cannot buy.
• Earned media at every step. IGN, one of the largest outlets in gaming, picks up and publishes each episode of the series, extending our reach to their audience and validating the work as genuine editorial content rather than advertising. Earning that pickup episode after episode is a rare, sustained vote of confidence from the press.
• An engaged, growing audience. The series has drawn a committed viewership on the @PlayTombRaider channel, which has become the authentic home for the real story and craft of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
• Developer and studio recognition. Featuring the co-developers, Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog, and the game's cast has earned praise from both studios for how the series honors their work.

We consider this a success because the series has earned genuine goodwill, press validation, and a committed audience, all while still actively unfolding.

Media