Forget everything you thought you knew about interactive narratives. Operative Games, led by Disney R&D alum Jon Snoddy and Pandora’s founding CEO Jon Kraft, is taking a sledgehammer to the traditional script. Are they paving the way for true AI-driven storytelling, or just building a really elaborate chatbot?
Dial ‘S’ for Story
The core concept? AI characters with persistent lives. Characters you can call. Characters who might just call you. Forget branching dialogue trees; Operative Games envisions a world where the story unfolds around you, initiated by characters with agendas and motivations beyond your immediate interaction.
They’re calling it the ‘Story Engine’.
Imagine a spy thriller where you’re not the protagonist, but an unwitting (or perhaps willing) participant. The story unfolds via phone calls, texts, and maybe even the occasional cryptic email. The twist? These aren’t just pre-programmed responses; these are AI characters, ostensibly living and breathing (digitally, of course) even when you’re not directly engaging with them. Operative Games even provides a phone number on their website to call one of the characters and test out their system.
Flipping the Script, Literally
Snoddy claims that Operative Games are turning Hollywood screenwriting on its head. The secret sauce? Instead of discarding the intricate backstories and character motivations that don’t make it into the final script, they feed it all to the AI.
According to Snoddy, writers are now handing in the material they would normally discard, all that information regarding where the characters grew up, their parents, everything that informs the script, becomes the script itself.
It’s an intriguing premise: leveraging the discarded narrative gold to fuel more believable and engaging AI characters.
The Subscription Model: Episodic AI?
Operative Games plans to deliver its interactive experiences in ‘seasons’ of 8-12 episodes, accessible via subscription. Each season purportedly reacts to your pace and engagement, adapting the narrative to your actions. If the AI is as good as claimed, then this has the potential to be a compelling experience.
Expert Commentary: Hype vs. Reality
Can Operative Games deliver on its ambitious vision? It depends.
- The AI Bottleneck: Emotionally resonant AI is the holy grail, but also notoriously difficult to achieve. Can their ‘Story Engine’ truly create characters that feel real and complete, or will interactions quickly devolve into predictable chatbot responses?
- The Writer’s Role: Snoddy emphasizes the importance of human writers. But how much control do they actually have? Is it more akin to world-building and character creation, with the AI taking the reins in real-time? This has the potential to either free up the writers, or make them obselete depending on the specific implementation.
- The ‘Wow’ Factor: The initial novelty of interacting with AI characters will likely wear off quickly. Can Operative Games maintain engagement over an entire season, or will subscribers lose interest after a few episodes?
The Verdict?
Operative Games is either pioneering a revolutionary new form of entertainment, or teetering on the brink of over-hyped AI disappointment. Only time (and subscriber feedback) will tell which way the coin falls. The idea is fascinating, the execution… remains to be seen. At the very least, it gives us something new to argue about in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI and interactive storytelling.
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