For at least a decade, television producers tried to tap the popularity of video games and digital interactivity for their programmes. In 2005, Channel 4 debuted its innovative series Dubplate Drama, about an aspirational grime MC. After each episode, viewers could use text messaging to vote on where the story went next. Much later, Netflix explored similar territory with Interactive Specials, a set of choose-your-own-adventure shows and cartoons, featuring brands such as Black Mirror, Jurassic World and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. We’ve also seen countless companion apps for reality TV favourites, including Love Island and Love Is Blind.
It was no surprise this week, then, to find the BBC announcing a new online game to accompany the second series of The Traitors, the psychological reality gameshow, hugely inspired by the party game Werewolves and the hit game Among Us. For those who aren’t as addicted as me, the show sees 22 people locked in a Scottish castle and performing tasks to earn cash, while a group of “traitors” among the group slowly “murder” everyone else off. The drama of each episode is the round table, where the victims have to try to guess who the traitors are.
The BBC’s Traitors online game lets users vote on who they think will be banished in each episode, acquiring points for accurate predictions and competing in mini-leagues against pals. It’s the perfect synchronicity between programme content and interactive platform because the game simulates and makes literal the discussions and arguments players are already having around the series. What it doesn’t do is reproduce the deceit and concealment that’s central to the drama – you have to go to an actual board or video game for that.
There are other experiments going on with screen brands right now. Netflix and Amazon have stumbled on a clever ruse to get the most out of expensive television properties – by turning them into reality TV gameshows. Squid Game: The Challenge and 007: Road to a Million transform the structural and thematic essences of their subject matter into showy versions of established gameshow formats such as Takeshi’s Castle and Race Across the World. Nobody in either show is going to be machine-gunned to death by a giant doll or murdered by a Russian spy, but housed within familiar locations and contexts, the usual gameshow elements of tension, failure and victory are massively heightened. The shows have been a big success and more streaming platforms might use reality TV spin-offs to help fund the expensive business of making and licensing epic TV dramas.
I hope, though, that more comes from these experiments than merely extra cash. The Traitors is the most fascinating reality TV concept in a decade, and its exploration of group dynamics and socio-psychological behaviour models should be required viewing for game developers. There are so few multiplayer games that actually require participants to interact with each other in authentic, complicated and duplicitous ways. It is no surprise to me that Among Us was such a hit during lockdown: it was the closest a video game came to actually simulating the reality of social interplay, the way people casually lie, seduce and manipulate. It wasn’t just company we were missing in those dark months – it was intrigue and drama.
Let’s see more cooperative video games that put you at odds with your fellow players. Let’s see a survival horror game that combines Until Dawn and Saltburn. Game mechanics are being studied and utilised by TV and movie producers to create profitable new formats; video game creatives should, in return, learn from the things that high-end drama and popular reality TV do so well with psychology and human interplay. Too often in games, coop means cosy; it means helping each other to achieve common goals. The Traitors has interesting things to teach us about how much more fiendish we actually are.
What to play
January can be unforgiving, so it’s just the right time for a sugary-sweet role-playing adventure with a warm nostalgic undertone. Bandai Namco’s Tamagotchi Adventure Kingdom has just gone live on Apple Arcade, bringing the electronic pets of the 1990s into a luxuriously saccharine open-world role-playing adventure in which you control a group of cutesy critters attempting to repair their world after a meteor strike.
A little like the recent Lego Fortnite, it’s about exploring the landscape, gathering resources, building camps and meeting funny characters. The wilting soundtrack is hypnotic and the visuals almost psychedelic in their brightness, but there’s a nice theme of friendship and care for the environment – and unlike the original electronic pets you don’t have to spend the whole time cleaning up poop.
Available on: Apple Arcade
Estimated playtime: 10+ hours
What to read
In a stark reminder of how dysfunctional fandom can become, former actor Stephanie Tyler Jones, who provided the likeness for Mary-Jane Watson in the Marvel’s Spider-Man games posted a message on Instagram asking fans of the game to stop trying to contact her.
There are plans for more job losses at Unity Software, the creator of the Unity games engine. Reuters reports on an internal company memo which reveals plans to lay off 1,800 staff – approximately 25 percent of the global workforce. This comes after CEO Jim Whitehurst announced a “company reset” in November, following the previous month’s disastrous “runtime fee” episode.
According to the Entertainment Retail Trade Association, video games are no longer the biggest entertainment medium in the UK. That title has been taken by streaming. From GIBiz: “Revenue from video-based content grew 10% to £4.9bn, driven by subscription services such as Netflix, Disney+, and Apple TV+.”
What to click
Kaitlyn Dever to star as Abby in HBO’s The Last of Us season two
Super Pocket review – an affordable mini console that’s simply a joy to play
Nintendo’s design guru Shigeru Miyamoto: ‘I wanted to make something weird’
Oklahoma 13-year-old believed to be first person ever to beat Tetris
Question Block
This week’s rather leading question comes from my friend Jon Cartwright, a veteran developer who runs his own games consultancy in Australia. He asked:
“What’s your favourite Sega game that you want to be remastered and why is it Burning Rangers?”
As a Sega fan, this is a question I consider on an almost daily basis. We’re lucky that Sega is already considering this vital work, with reboots of Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe and Streets of Rage already in development. Otherwise, my choice is not Burning Rangers, as great as this classic Sonic Team shooter was. I’ll opt for one of two Mega Drive titles, the brilliant platform adventure Quackshot with its luscious visuals and innovative plunger gun mechanic, or Comix Zone, one of the great idiosyncratic titles developed by the Sega Technical Institute (founded by Mark Cerny, who would go on to design the PlayStation 4). I loved the way these bold, brash, interesting games really explored the screen space and I’d love to see them reimagined for the modern era.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
