“A Ken Loach Soap-Opera, Improvised by Robots.”

We’ve launched our next project for Channel 4 Education. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a decade, but it has taken some serious planetary alignment to make real. And because of the the brains making it, it’s way better than I ever thought possible. So we’re pretty excited.

We’re telling stories—primarily on linear video—using a video game engine (The Sims™ 3).  It’s a tale of four housemates and their ups and downs; their ambitions and their dreams.

So, machinima, right?

Wrong.

Machinima sees people using game engines as cinema soundstages. You write the script, you make a storyboard showing how every shot will be positioned, you position the actors and cameras and you keep shooting until you’ve got the footage you need. It’s using game characters as puppets, mastered by humans.

We are doing something completely different. Something fitting the driving spirit Will Wright built into his pioneering simulation games—emergence.

There’s no plot in a simulation game; or rather, no pre-planned story. Instead, dramatic gameplay emerges from the complex interactions between the algorithmic expressions of personalities, ambitions, and human foibles. It’s how life works. The game we’re using to tell stories is a version of life tuned to create simulated drama.

A game designer of sensitivity and talent—like Robin Burkinshaw—can carefully sculpt characters and situations and let them run, interpreting their actions in a beautiful and human way. This is what he did in the extraordinarily moving Alice and Kev (the story of two homeless people in a video game) and we’re delighted he’s doing the same on our new project.

Our project is nothing less than the first ever drama improvised by robots.

We’ve cast our characters carefully, given them very detailed character notes, ambitions and motivations and created a dramatic context. Now we’ll let them live their parts for six weeks. It’s more like Ken Loach directing virtual actors.

In keeping with the emergent nature of the drama we are also exploring a Darwinian approach to storytelling. From the same starting point every day we can run different versions of reality on different machines, each of which will mutate in different ways. The one showing the best adaptation to our dramatic needs is deemed most fit to become tomorrow’s starting point—although we sadly won’t be doing that this time round!

It’s whole new way of telling stories and we’ve had to invent many new methods of production for a different kind of drama; there are elements of ‘constructed reality’ and observational documentary as well as a sensitivity to the affordances of software as a collaborative partner. There are entirely different job positions we’re filling and some interesting technical hurdles to surmount (for example, we’ll need over 130TB of storage space at the project’s peak — which is a lot).

For the script-writing part of the project, we’ve drawn inspiration from The Magic Roundabout. When the BBC bought Serge Danot’s series back in the 1960′s they realised too late they had only bought the pictures—not the scripts. So Eric Thompson looked at the pictures and made up new ones. We have the advantage of Robin being the world’s best “AI Whisperer,” who will be interpreting our characters actions. This way we can make sure what goes to the final edit and the script will be fantastic drama—even though the plot lines are emergent. It worked beautifully in the pilot anyway! [edit: it's working beautifully in the real thing — check the link below!]

The final, glorious, piece here is that the project has a positive payload: mindfulness. The series was created as part of our continuing work exploring teaching techniques of resilience for teens.

The SuperMes forms a part of our SuperMe content system for Channel 4 education, commissioned by Jo Twist. Inspired by Alice and Kev by Robin Burkinshaw, it was devised by myself (Paul Bennun) and Jo Roach. Sean Coleman is producing the series and Ian Sharpe from Somethin’ Else is the exec.

Find out more at at http://facebook.com/playsuperme

We’re delighted to have worked with Richard Dawkins on the creation of the iPad of version of his new book, “The Magic of Reality,” which features the artwork of Dave McKean. The book is about how incredible the universe is, and why we don’t need to reach for superstition to be awed or to understand our place in it.

The book contains some beautiful myths (illustrated by Dave McKean) which show how our species has explained the ‘hard-to-explain’ over the ages, from Nigerian creation myths to Greek myths about the Milky Way. These are contrasted with The Science in all its glory.

Now: there are plenty of different takes on “how to do the digital book” out there.

These range from the simple portable ePub file—leaving the choice of reader up to the technically proficient user—to the walled garden book simulators such as Kindle or the iBook Store, complete with skeuomorphic page-turning animations. There are also a few generic interactive publishing platforms, and some bespoke software that attempts to take advantage of the affordances of our devices. The most well-known of these are the iPad apps of Alice in Wonderland or Steven Fry’s “The Fry Chronicles.”

We took a fairly fundamental design-led approach to crack our version of the digital book. No surprises: based on the needs of potential users, the specific content of the book and actually understanding what a book is; how it works. That latter was the most interesting part of the project … we have many ideas awaiting their moment. More on that later.

Going back to the fundamental nature of the book led us to blaze our own trail completely, departing from anything we’ve seen. We’ve developed a platform that—we believe—is beautiful and affords more than a tree-based tome, but nevertheless remains true to the nature of printed text.

An author uses words to make things happen in your head. That’s a book. Distract from this and no matter what else you may have, no matter how cool it is, it is less than a book. We knew readability, attractive layout and aesthetic design were fundamentally important before we started.

Now: pages. The corollary of a staying true the nature of the book is taking appropriate advantage of the affordances of the iPad. It’s not made of paper. It doesn’t have pages, but a window on content with a very specific aspect ratio and resolution. Not having pages means we don’t have to chop our content up into a stack of content of equal size. Instead we projected a roll of seamless content behind the screen, which the reader can swipe to reveal new views. We chose to delimit our roll into columns of arbitrary size, each bounded with inertial ratchet point which can frame and reframe the text, retaining legibility and providing great scope for a graphic designer to play with.

Our source material—The Magic of Reality—always wanted to be more than flat text. It wanted to make myths come alive visually via Dave McKean’s drawn, painted and collaged images, memes that (by default) have pushed buttons of mystery and attraction in the human mind since the dawn of language. The book also wanted to make the magic of science incandesce in the reader’s mind through exploration and exciting our natural curiosity. This called for two very different treatments (which I’ll mention below).

For the myths we wanted to create a simple graphical style that provided a style analogous to paper pop-up books. These provide agency to the reader the same as the page-based interface of a book: there’s an analogue relationship between the turn of the page and the state of whatever is popping-up. It’s satisfying and it’s physical. We wanted the same satisfying sense of a new “page” being completed by the agency of the reader, and we fly in images on rails; images of arbitrary shape which make a completed and harmonious picture on a fully revealed view. Images can then gently animate, or animate then loop, stoking the imagination in a gentle way before they lose their focus and the reader starts to read. No hunt-and-peck for interactive gimmicks. We’ve also implemented layers, which move at different speeds and provide a pleasing sense of depth as they come into view.

The science is science. Proper science, simply and accurately illustrated either by static image or by one of a few truly interactive models; breed frogs with long legs, fire cannonballs into orbit, split light up into its constituent colours.

The difference in approach with the myths is absolute and vital to the way our book functions; the myths are stories and no more. Our job is to tell them as well as we can. The science is true, and to understand it better the reader may play with it, with his or her own hands. Our job is to make something understood; the magic of reality should do its own job, start the reader on a journey of imagination more exciting or wonderful as the myths.

A final thanks to Sophie and Dan from Random House, for being fantastic partners on the project, and obviously to Richard Dawkins for his crucial collaborative input into the project.

Nightmare high is a new kind of game for Channel 4.

There’s always plenty of digital chatter about development of new formats for a new media landscape and the progress of 360 commissioning—but few people who engage in that conversation have the opportunity to work on ambitious projects that move beyond the limitations of brand-owners’ vision and some broadcasters’ risk-averse behaviour. The vision of the commissioning team over at Channel 4 coupled with the company-wide support of Somethin’ Else has allowed me to launch some wonderful products over the last three years, but Nightmare High builds on all of those to be the one I’m most proud of.

Working across brilliantly cutting-edge projects like Routes, SuperMe and E4′s Misfits I was able to gain invaluable experience which all helped to make Nightmare High a cohesive multimedia game which is fun to play but most importantly one that strikes the balance between education and entertainment in a way that resonates with tweens. An 11-year-old can’t play this game without laughing out loud but they also can’t fail to miss the core learning: big changes are exciting and scary, and there are things you can do to make them easier and to develop into a more resilient young person.

Nightmare High is a story-based web game. You, the player, just joined a new school and on your first day everything has gone terribly, horribly wrong. You’ve got no mates, you screw up in class, you sit in the wrong seat and by lunchtime even your sister is blanking you. Worse still, your pathetic meltdown in Expressive Arts ends up on YouTube.  At the end of your first day you find yourself sucked into a comic-book unreality where everything is upside-down and back-to-front. Reality has imploded and it’s your fault.

And so you enter a fantasy school full of zombie teachers, skyrockets and a terrifying darkness that creeps ever closer to your classroom. The only safe place is the infamous Secret Toilet: where there is a never-ending supply of bogroll and you don’t have to fear somebody peeping over the top of the cubicle. Your job is to fix up reality with the help of your sidekick, D’Mentor, and get home in time for tea. As you explore the school you stumble across various celebrities: in the basement, in the bike sheds and cooking up jam lasagna in the canteen; as they share memories of their school days your score improves, your friendships improve and you begin to understand more about how people really work underneath the labels (bully, popular, geek and so on) and how to make good friends.

The story is told with many different devices and media, and those were selected to work for the audience and story, and obviously with one eye on the budget. Dramatic video, minigames, applications which reflect the players real life skills, celebrity videos and comic strips all feature. It was a challenge to make an hour of fictional gameplay on the budget of a couple of TV programmes. After all, if this were a TV drama it would have cost millions, so our approach had to be adaptive. The system design incorporates collectibles which relate directly to the learning, known as your FIXT score — Friendship, Independence, X-Ray and Transformation. Those collectibles relate very directly to resilience learnings more commonly known to academics as support networks, personal agency, reflection and adaptability.

The drama was confined to the real world (a multi-location epilogue and prologue, and studio-based shorts which feature your friend D’Mentor). Without the option of an animated 3D interface to navigate the school we opted for a static clickable illustration for the main interface (quick to load, easy to use) which slowly fills up with content. We also used interactive comic strips to sew together pieces of narrative, which have already proved very popular among the young game testers.

What I’m most proud of is the seamless movement through multiple content types as players navigate through the thirteen episodes. Nothing feels forced, not the ‘type’ of content and certainly not the educational content. The learning is integrated into the scripts and the fabric of the interface. Your transition journey is part of your story as communicated by your in-game friends, and players are given the option to explore that as much or as little as they like.

As with SuperMe before it, the critical decisions that formed this project came from our work with schools in the project definition phase. Taking a story-based approach, choosing a fantastical and silly world and exposing the reasons why kids label each other so quickly were all inspired by the work that Tassos Stevens of Coney led with our six partner schools. By spending so much time focussed on our potential players we got the chance to talk to educators and experts working in the area of transition and it became clear that now more than ever teachers need this kind of resource, as transition-focussed support staff become harder to provide in-school. We were able to take initiatives that were being used in schools and write those into our game (for example, D’Mentor was inspired by the buddy system which many secondary schools use for incoming students). In addition we embedded core resilience strategies, like getting the players to write a letter back to themselves in order to accurately reflect on what they’d learned by playing. The great thing about this is that we’re also able to use that real advice for incoming players and make it part of the story.

So we really hope you enjoy the game, and that you play it to the end. We welcome and invite feedback — send it here. Finally, I’d like to thank a few people without whom the team wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make such a great piece of work: Alice Taylor, Matt Locke, Jo Twist & Gemma Brady at (or previously at) Channel Four, Poppy Nash at the University of York, Sam Hawkins at Bancrofts School, Paul Bennun at Somethin’ Else and all of our brilliant game testers. And of course hats off to a team who went the extra mile at every step. Thank you!

Nightmare High lives at www.nightmarehigh.com

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We’re lucky to be working with a broadcaster on a cool storytelling project.

Together with our other interactive and storytelling projects for brands and broadcasters, we know we’ll be looking for producers in the near future and would be keen to hear from people who may want to join our team, at both a senior and junior level.

You’ll have a combination of skills:

—experience of storytelling in the widest sense (particularly on interactive platforms)

—a high level of technical literacy

—detailed knowledge of the murky innards of social networking platforms and insight into how people use them,

—an editor’s eye for detail

The government-funded Tech City Launchpad 1 competition is designed to foster collaboration and commercial creativity in companies in the Shoreditch/Old St area, and offers matched funding of up to £100,000. In the video Director of Digital Paul Bennun describes what we’d do with the money, including Big Field Mode (which assorted Somethin’ Elsers demonstrate with Oscar-worthy acting) and details of a developer API to spark innovation. We’re also keen to host a gaming hack day where people can find out about the possibilities of the Papa Sangre engine.

If you’ve got ideas for how to make Papa Sangre even better we’d love to hear them – leave a comment on YouTube.

We’re rather happy.

The project in question is a content system we built for Channel 4 — it brings together games, linear video, text and interactive playthings together within a game framework. Its objective is to show teens how much power they have over their own resilience.

There’s a lot more information about this great project right about here …

… or go and have a play at www.playsuperme.com!

It’s a unique project, and we are incredibly proud of it — not just the game itself but the nature of how it came to market. We wanted to share some information about both sides of the game before release.

So: what’s it all about? If you’ve been following @VoiceOfNightjar and her sister ships on Twitter, you’ll know we’re in space. You’re going to find yourself on a dying spaceship, circling a black hole, in all kinds of trouble. The game features the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch. It’s terrifying. And it’s our second “video game with no video,” the entire experience rendered in binaural 3D sound.

Producing high-quality games is enormous fun, and it’s also risky and costly. People expect great games, but in the world of iOS, expect to pay very little for them. There was some criticism of Papa Sangre’s launch cost of $5.99 — less than a sandwich, cinema ticket or paperback book — but it took a small and independent team over a year to create an entirely new mode of gameplay, and the technology to drive it. We are dedicated to producing truly beautiful games based on ideas that only an idiot would attempt, because … well, just because, and something had to give or it would never have been made.

So we’re delighted to have worked with AMV BBDO, who enabled The Nightjar to be made by exploring an innovative funding model — effectively really smart collaboration and sponsorship. We had total freedom to make the game we wanted to make, with no artistic compromises whatsoever beyond a terrifyingly short production cycle (10 weeks!), and best of all, the game will be free to download. In return, the game is part of Wrigley’s “The 5 Experience”, which is all about sensory experiences and an obvious match for how our audiogames work.

AMV were more than just a financial partner though. They have been collaborators: the guys who first suggested setting the game in space, and responsible for the stunning graphic identity for the project too, which also fits the 5 Experience look and feel (actually, helped define it).

They also enabled Benedict Cumberbatch to board The Nightjar.

Now, we learned a huge amount about telling stories inside the Papa Platform in our first game. For this new game we wanted not just to knock that particular ball out of the mythical park, but smack the sucker into orbit (sorry). Being able to call on the talent of someone who is surely one of the UK’s best actors has brought something very rare to The Nightjar.

“Dead Space with the lights off” it is not.

It has the presence and intimacy of the very best audiobook or radio play, only the main guy is talking to you. Not to your avatar in a game. You. The pace, the depth, the relationship between story and gameplay — the performance itself — we were able to explore all these things because we knew we had a totally bad-ass actor on the team.

So why is this only available in the UK and Ireland for now? Well, primarily because this kind of true collaborative engagement between a game design studio and brand is very new. Somethin’ Else is doing everything we can to get the game in the hands of our international supporters (who have been pestering us for more Papa Sangre!) as soon as we can. We would like to thank all our international fans for their patience — we truly value your support and positivity, and the excitement many have shown over The Nightjar!

We’re not done yet — more games using the Papa Sangre engine are planned, and Somethin’ Else needs more people to join the team.

Specifically, we’re after a a junior-ish producer to manage parts of our development process. You’ll know how software is made; you’ll love games (and ideally have some experience making them). You’ll be technical AND creative, with an eye for detail and not be fazed by hard deadlines.

You’ll have an innate knack for working with technologists and designers (sound, graphics, text and so on). You’ll hate bugs like we hate bugs.

Is that you?

Email Paul Bennun.

Every year, at the massive Mobile World Conference, the International Mobile Gaming Awards has its shindig.

This year we’ve been nominated for the Most Innovative Game award, as we’ve created the first ever ‘video game without video.’ We find out just after Valentine’s Day.

Here’s the text of the press release …

World’s Best Mobile Phone Games Shortlisted

The International Mobile Phone Awards announces nominees ahead of 7^th annual awards

Marseilles, France–17 January 2011–The nominees for the International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGAs) were announced today with 30 games in six categories being put forward for the final round of judging. 263 games from all over the world were submitted for review by the international panel of experts.

MOST INNOVATIVE GAME

Anomaly Warzone Earth by  11 bit studios

EpicWin  by  Tak Fung

Finger Balance    by Coconut Island Studio

Papa Sangre  by  Somethin’ Else

The Line   Ant Hive Games China

“We have had an unprecedented response for the year’s awards”, said Maarten Noyons, CEO and Founder of the IMGA. “We see a trend of very high quality, big productions coming to the mobile platform and on the other hand a lot of fresh innovative casual games. I think the jury has made a very interesting choice. The 7^th IMGA shows a wealth of new ideas and ground-breaking quality coming from studios all over the world. I would like to congratulate each of the developers that have games nominated and thank everyone who submitted games to the awards.”

During the last six years the IMGA has reviewed more than 1,400 mobile games from more than 52 countries including the USA, Ukraine, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, China, the Czech Republic, Brazil and Belgium. Participants include PhD students, researchers, artists, individual developers and the top ten mobile games publishers and developers in the world. The winners in each category for this year’s awards will be announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

The IMGA would like to thank Orange again for their support this year as PLATINUM SPONSORS.

About IMGA

The International Mobile Gaming Awards (IMGA), launched in 2004 is the leading platform for Innovation in Mobile Entertainment worldwide. Each year mobile gaming studios, individual developers, students and researchers are challenged to come up with the most innovative concepts for tomorrow’s mobile games. The IMGA brings together Industry leaders and top talent in Mobile Entertainment and displays the most innovative Mobile Entertainment Games and Applications to a broad worldwide audience.

Media Contacts

Jacki Vause
PepperMobi for the IMGA
T: +44 (0)20 7033 2660
E: jacki@peppermobi.com

Jessica Rei
IMGA
T: +33 430 638 053
E: jessica@nccpartners.com

Find out more!