Have you ever finished a film or TV series and wished you could become part of the action? Fans of the hit Sky crime drama Bulletproof can now do exactly that.
Oxford-based games studio Charisma.ai has created a new game named Bulletproof Interrogation Game based on the show that takes you inside the action. You can speak to the characters in the game and influence the action that takes place directly using voice chat, instead of simply selecting an option and following directions.
Making the player part of the game is something founder and CEO of Charisma.ai, Guy Gadney, has always wanted to do since his time working for Penguin Books in the late 90s. “Back then, we were exploring new ideas and story forms but a lot of them couldn’t be done technically,” he tells the Standard. “Fast forward to where we are now, especially with the rise of AI and natural language processing, we can bring out characters in stories that hasn’t been possible before.
“The developments in natural language processing mean you can have this fluid experience where what the player is saying is interpreted in quite a loose way and that looseness creates a reality where you feel like the characters are talking to you.”
The studio launched in 2017 with the aim of taking players into the heart of the story through conversation and AI. It took a while to build the platform and the tech capability that would allow this to happen. At the end of 2018, the studio went on a London Games Festival-sponsored mission to the start-up event Slush in Helsinki and was able to wow Sky with its tech – and the idea of a TV series game collaboration came about. The two companies eventually settled on Bulletproof as the right show to try out.
“Bulletproof has a great fan base, the actors have a great following and we felt that as a show it would be stacked really well into an interactive form,” says Gadney.
It helps too that as a crime narrative game it can tap into the true-crime hype, something Gadney is particularly excited about. “One of the fascinating things about the true crime genre is that it’s completely across genders. A lot of people think it’s a game, it has blokes in it, therefore it’s for a blokey audience. It appeals to both, because that true crime interest crosses paths.”
So how does the game work? You need to fire up Sky.com in your browser to play it. You as the player are sitting in a cafe when the two main Bulletproof characters, Bish and Pike, played by Noel Clarke and Ashley Walters, come in and pull you out of the cafe to take you to a specific location where you have to talk to someone in order to prevent a murder. What you say in the game influences what happens to the potential victims. “It’s a murder mystery with a completely new twist,” says Gadney.
Comments from early testers have been great so far, he says. “I had a lovely comment from someone yesterday that said, ‘it’s like the story is listening to me.’ I really liked that because it’s proper immersion, if you are in the story then you are part of the story.”
A recent trend has seen an increase in interactive stories or games told through people’s phones, such as the BAFTA-nominated Dead Man’s Phone game or Last Seen Online by Unrd. But Gadney stresses that what Charisma is doing is different, because of its AI platform. “It’s very different to pressing buttons or controlling another character in a world or having insight into a phone. Whereas we wanted you to be in it and feel like you are alongside, shoulder to shoulder, with the other characters and are able to influence them.”
Charisma.ai was set to launch Bulletproof Interrogation Game at London Games Festival this week, with Gadney supposed to speak at the festival’s new Hollywood XP event which examined the crossover between the games industry with film and TV, until Covid-19 stopped much of the physical aspects of the festival. As it was an LGF mission to Slush which helped lead to this deal, Gadney says the studio wouldn’t have been able to attend without their support.
“We’re so excited for the launch of Charisma’s Bulletproof and of course, pleased that it coincides with the London Games Festival period,” said Michael French, head of Games London which runs the annual festival. “Bulletproof’s game launch exemplifies everything we talk about at Games London: cutting-edge British innovation, the potential crossover between interactive entertainment and film, and the financial power and jobs impact the games sector offers.”
Luckily for Charisma, the studio was far enough down the line with the development of the game that the global pandemic hasn’t delayed its launch. “Our audiences are quite digital and online anyway. We’re all adapting to the new normal.”
Charisma recently launched a new app giving its AI treatment to graphic novels which will keep it busy for a while, whilst Guy is already eyeing up other TV shows he’d like to develop. Top of the list is Westworld. “We were doing our first Charisma project when the first series launched. I looked at it and said, that fictional narrative engine inside the TV show is what we’ve built in reality. It’s about characters, the relationship between physical and AI characters and how emotions are muddied within those worlds. It’s a natural fit.”
The Evening Standard is the official media partner of the London Games Festival
