SuperMes and the idea of emergent drama

Channel 4 Education combines Ken Loach, Fresh Meat, The Sims and Towie in a narrative experience new and interesting

Video Games

were playing with the idea of ??narrative emerging "for many years. The stories that emerge from the combination of players' actions and the unpredictable behavior of virtual characters are a common in the titles of "open world" as Fallout, Far Cry and Dwarf Fortress. However, these techniques can be used to create new forms of entertainment television and movie

Channel 4 Education think so - which just launched a new online drama called SuperMes, on a motion for a shy loner shared house with three living, but the strange and difficult. The series uses virtual actors and configurations of popular PC game The Sims, a kind of interactive series that has sold over 150 million copies since its release in 2000.

But it was not an abduction case character models and move like robots to act pre history. Instead, the developer Somethin 'Else set the AI ??characters in the game with a set of behaviors and traits, and then release them, filming their interactions and building a story around them. The team hired games Robin Burkinshaw indie coder (who has already made his own drama of The Sims, Alice and Kev) effective "direct" the action by playing the simulation, but kept their interactions to a minimum, which allows the characters to decide their own course of action.

"It's not machinima," says producer Sean Coleman, referring to this emerging art form in which the game engine and characters used to represent narrative stories. "Scripts always follow the game and never dictated what should happen. The basic rules that we set were to recreate something that had not occurred and never force the characters in game situations in their desires does not in

"We spent several weeks working on the personality traits that work best for us to give the most interesting characters, conflicts the most dramatic and unique entertainment. The game is very sophisticated in gray areas offers - the kind of ambiguities of personality that make the characters really fascinating, and we were constantly surprised Sims as our time the boys have decided to go swimming naked Nothing I had told them to do " ...

Indeed, SuperMes is a convergence of game design and traditional tales - is a programmed computer experience that allows players to create their own stories on the fly. Clearly there are parallels to be found, as Coleman says, "There are elements of dogma, and Ken Loach Towie in this project. Always been vital for us that we made a real collaboration between filmmakers and the game's AI, and that's what we did. "

Comparison

Ken Loach is perhaps the most interesting. Like Mike Leigh, veteran director often uses improvisation to discover and improve the elements of each scene, with a script following after - and this is essentially the formula behind SuperMes,. With the exception of the actors are replaced by virtual beings with artificial intelligence

aa is fascinating about the other team's somethin 'about the similarities between the algorithms of Artificial Intelligence and emotions, both are collections of systems which, when combined with various agents can lead to unpredictable results and dramatic. "We try to create internal conflicts," says Coleman. "Clara was shy and lonely, but his goal in life was to be super popular. Because of his shyness, do not like being among strangers, and finds it difficult to talk to people. If Anita speaks then Clare herself, the combination of the hassle of Clara with strangers and hot head that make it more angry against the absurdity of self-obsessed Anita. The idea was to examine the archetypal characters of the sitcom and organizational features gave our Sims to create characters that rubbed similar to each other in every possible way. "

• The results are surprisingly can see, touch and sometimes very funny. The morbidly self-conscious about Clare House rolls, often sitting alone in the garden watching the narcissism of the nursing home to Anita, while looser and musician Robert Ryan mess around, eventually forming a very touching relationship. Meanwhile, a strange voice in Waterloo Road actor Jason Done adds a kind of dinner with me Come meta-narrative.
• The series is a spinoff of the award winning Channel 4 Education project superme, an online social game designed to help teens through difficult experiences and emotions. But he also points out interesting new narrative experiments in which aromatase inhibitors instead of writers dramas linear shape in the future.

"I came, and co-inventor with pop drama Jo Roach" the phrase, "explains creative director Else Somethin ', Paul Bennun" The emergency is a basic concept of the Complexity science huge sophisticated behaviors can emerge free from simple systems that interact. It's almost as if the universe wants to tell stories.

"The human mind is always looking for reasons, and still is to give personality to inanimate objects or to see the story, even when events are random. We use the universal tendencies of the narrative, but it is through talented narrators that we interpret the Sims. Robin Burkinshaw We call our 'The Sims whisperer "because he was able to do this with such style."

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