WarGames review: Interactive TV meets cliché pirate story
There is a scene in War gamesthe latest interactive experience from her story Creator Sam Barlow, as the main character Kelly sifts through a series of photos of young orange men. Kelly seeks revenge on a journalist, and hopes to find a suitable hunk to lure her prey into a trap. As a gamer, you can flip through photos and dating profiles, and it really feels like a hacker digging into someone else’s private life. In the end, though, the choice is made for you — and you’re left wondering what all the pretense of piracy is all about.
The idea of merging games and TV shows isn’t entirely new. For years, creators have been trying to combine the storytelling power of television with the interactivity of games. In most cases, the end result was some sort of choose-your-own-adventure architecture, as the likes of 1983’s Dragon’s Den or Netflix Puss in Boots The series asks viewers to make decisions that affect the outcome. These experiences take a game-like element—pausing the action to make an explicit decision—and insert it into the passive act of watching a show.
War games, created by Barlow in collaboration with interactive studio Eko, attempts something different. A loose-knit reboot of the classic 1983 movie of the same name, it’s a story about a group of young hackers who venture into the world of online activism, using their skills to try to right what they see as wrong in the world. And for the most part, you experience it as if you were on a regular TV show. You can sit back and watch the action unfold, without any breaks for interaction. Instead, the view presents you with multiple perspectives, all playing simultaneously, and you select the focal point. This, in turn, subtly pushes the story in different directions.
War games It is unique in that it hides its game-like elements under an unassuming live action show. It’s a great take on interactive TV, which turns your attention to a game mechanic – unfortunately, it’s tied into a story where you never feel like you have much influence.
The show centers on a young woman named Kelly, the daughter of two high-ranking military officers, who spends most of her time hanging out online with a small group of hacker friends. You see their world through their cameras, and get an intimate look at their lives via their computers and phones. at any point in War games There are usually four or five windows on the screen, so you can see each character as they chat with each other.
Early on, Kelly and her friends act like stereotypical young hackers, kids more interested in pulling pranks than creating real societal change. In an early scene, Kelly and crew decide to punish a pop star who recently played a private show for a known war criminal – by flying a drone into his house to make an embarrassing video, laughing the whole time. But things get serious later when Kelly’s mother is accused of deserting the US Army to fight for the Afghan nationals. Kelly enlists the help of her friends in an attempt to prove her mother’s innocence, and discredit news sources reporting on her abandonment.
When you’re watching, there’s a single main window located in the center of the screen, surrounded by an orbit of smaller windows. When Kelly and her friends are discussing their upcoming show, for example, her webcam is probably in the middle, surrounded by live feeds of her friends. But the focus can change whenever you want. If you are more interested in another character, you can turn your attention to Kelly’s hacker friends. When something new happens—for example, someone contacts Kelly via FaceTime—a new window is added to the collection, and you can choose to move your focus to that if you like.
Nothing obvious happens when you move, shifting your attention, other than rearranging the windows; Feeds will continue to run through each window regardless of their order. But the game says it “adapts to you,” using your attention as a way to guide the story. The main effect, according to the show’s creators, is that your choices can change Kelly’s personality.
Everything is very accurate, and feels natural. clicking around War games It looks a lot like clicking on your desktop. Either way, I’m paying attention to multiple things at once, constantly shifting my focus between them. This is especially true during some of the show’s investigative sequences, where you have to do things like watch a series of private videos trying to find someone’s password, or search a dating site to find incriminating details. Unlike most games, War games offers little feedback; You never really know how your attention affects the story. At the end of each episode, you’ll see a few points where he could have shifted the narrative, but they don’t reveal any of the alternate paths.
For the most part, I’ve really enjoyed this more intuitive approach to interactive storytelling, especially since the other path-breaking choices that games like Telltale are known for the walking Dead – very diffuse. The downside, however, is that I never felt like my actions had much of an impact on the story. Because of the lack of direct feedback, I was never sure if I was doing anything useful. even still, War games It seems like something new – but that only extends to the structure of the show, not the story itself. In that respect, the show feels like a mishmash of stereotypes held together by a group of not-so-convincing characters.
Kellie herself is fairly believable as a hacker – even if she sometimes steps into Mountain Dew in a jacket – but her friends are larger-than-life caricatures. There’s the green-haired Romanian “Torch,” who always wears oversized headphones and lives in a dark room full of monitors, as well as the goofy high school kid “Zane” who makes pretty perverted comments nonstop. At one point he complains to Kelly, “No respect for laughs.” compared to her storywhich is fully anchored by the amazing performance of Viva Seifert, War games Feels like a disappointment.
While watching the first three episodes (there are six in all), I found it difficult to care much about whatever was going on. The show touches on a lot of related topics, particularly the ethics of invading one’s privacy in order to help society at large. But it doesn’t dive deep enough into it to make it truly engaging, and the goofy dialogue and often flat acting made it hard to take things seriously. It didn’t help that the interactive elements didn’t make me feel very involved
I really enjoyed the idea War games, but my interest waned early on, as did my desire to interact with her. There’s definitely something to this format – I’m not sure Kelly’s hacker story is the perfect showcase for the future of interactive TV.
