As a promotion for its upcoming open-world hacking game, Watch Dogs, Ubisoft handed protagonist Aiden Pearce’s world-hacking cell phone over to unsuspecting civilians (or faux-unsuspecting actors–you never can tell these days) and filmed the ensuing, staged chaos. When the mark comes into a small, cell phone repair shop, the salesman gives their phone a bonus app that lets them “hack” their surroundings with the press of a button. What starts with just turning off and on a light quickly escalates to creating total havoc on the streets before the panicked dupe is let in on the joke.
Watch Dogs will be out on May 27 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective (antimattercollective.org) for whom he is a writer, director, producer, and sound designer, and he has worked in various capacities with companies such as Target Margin, 500 Clown, and Court Theatre. Previously he has written criticism for nytheatre.com. He studied classics, theater, and media at the University of Chicago.