Operating gamesAn interactive narrative company based on AI, is today out of stealth with the support of investors at 1 a.m., Samsung Next and Longjourney.VC.
The company creates immersive games and experiences where players can converse with really thoughtful and realistic AI characters that forge lasting emotional links in the context of problem solving and the navigation of complex stories together.
Founded by Jon Snoddy, former head of Walt Disney Research and Development, and Jon Kraft, founding CEO of Pandora Media, as well as the veteran of the Pegi Bryant game industry, the operating games combine decades of innovation in the entertainment industry with an entirely new application of artificial intelligence to create a unique category of interactive experiences.
“So we are this collection of storytellers. They are artists, writers, engineers, scientists, but what holds us all together is this love of history. This same level of emotional connection with the characters. “”
The company’s secret sauce lies in its owner story, which allows game developers to impregnate their characters with an integrated sense of narrative and understanding how players pass through this story while allowing a complete players’ agency.
Players can call the phone number of a game character and talk, SMS or video texts with them on a standard phone. Storyengine is fully based on the server, requiring any download. This allows experiences of realistic characters in interactive stories and games that take advantage of the IP of the Operation and the intellectual property of the partners.
“We are not only making games – we create relationships, and in a certain sense – real memories and shared experiences,” said Jon Snody, CEO of Operative Games. “Our technology allows characters who understand the context and form real emotional links with players. This marks the beginning of a truly personalized narration. ”
The operator
The operating games based in Los Angeles began a little overview of its first experience in history, The Operative, at Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. In this experience, players call a character named “Enya” who attracts them to his world with a request for help.
What seems at the beginning as a simple request will ultimately take place in a complex spy thriller in which the player has a pivotal role. Enya reacts to the actions of the players and will even show real human emotions – as
I am agitated – if it is contacted late at night (like a real person would).
The initial development projects cover several genres and present collaborations with renowned Hollywood writers, as well as major actors in traditional and interactive entertainment. These experiences highlight the capacity of the platform to offer an emotional resonant narration that adapts to the choices and the personality of each player, creating particularly personal stories that can take place indefinitely.
“We have crossed a line here,” added Snody. “With the emerging ability to give life to really credible characters and spend time with them in history -oriented worlds.”
“What distinguishes operating games is their unique ability to create characters who feel really alive,” said Gregory Milken, 1 hour director. “The combination of their technological innovation and their demonstrated capacity to transform complex emerging technologies into popular entertainment forms positions them to define a whole new category of interactive entertainment.”
Origins
Snody worked at Disney for 15 years at the head of R&D. He spent a lot of time thinking of telling stories with emerging technology.
“We have worked on technologies that would allow us to do something that has the impression of being in a story. And yet the players have an agency. The players are people who are in history, can participate in history, to be a character in history,” said Snody. “How do you give agencies to people and yet have something that accumulates at a highest point? There is a crisis, that leads to this highlight, then a resolution that seems satisfactory. And we therefore started to try it.”
When large language models (LLM) began to operate with a generative AI, the company saw the last part of its platform click in place. They officially started their work in 2022 and emerged from stealth today.
Along the way, they met writers, game developers, technologists and investors to shape the company in the right way. The team has 20 people and he has developed what he calls Storyengine, a owner platform.
Storyengine’s details
Snoddy said: “The story is really the necessary pieces to tell these stories. We are working with the best Hollywood writers, people who have had their own series, have a long story of drawing and holding a giant audience. We take people like that and and they create the stories and the character. And the character.”
He added: “We are focused on artists. And so these writers create these incredible characters and create these incredible scenarios, then we must take this linear story and these characters and their stories and their desires and acts and hopes, and transform this into instructions for AI to create dialogue and create these characters so that you can interact with them. So the engine of history is the family of technologies that make this possible. ”.
As a production tool, he takes the guests, creates history, then IA performs it as the story you want to tell during execution.
“He monitors the player’s atmosphere, his emotional level, how history progresses, where we must then arrive, to the Lysstones of the story that we must strike and gently move the story along this scenario,” said Snody.
The game adapts to the actions of the player, whether aggressive or more passive, and moves the story if necessary.
Operating details
The operation is the first history of the platform. All the characters live in the world. They are quite ordinary people and they can simply contact you on your phone.
There is no software to download. There is no customer to install. You just get your phone, dial their phone number, call them and they’ll talk to you, said Snody.
“You have a conversation with them, just like you and I could have a conversation. You can send them SMS and they will send you a text. You can plan a zoom call, as we do, and make a video conference with them, and that’s how the game is played,” said Snoddy. “Everything lives on a server, and therefore you simply live your life. You can drive on the road and get a text from one of our characters, and the story progresses as you speak to them.”
The functioning of the story is that you meet these characters and that you are attracted to their lives. You become friends with them.
Snoddy said: “It is amazing to see how the narration works. You know that Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. You know it is not real, and yet you feel real emotions for him. You celebrate its successes, you are agonizing on its failures and the big tales are able to do so. Large interests.
As you are attracted to history, it starts when you become friends with people. But then you find that something wrong happens, and you are more distant because this character is in trouble and that she is kidnapped. Then you have to find her before something terrible happens to her.
Another character ends up having trouble with the law and he ends up running. He contacts you with a burner phone and you have to follow a number of quests to advance history. He helps you do things like analyzing photos and you need to decode encrypted messages. It’s a kind of detective experience, and there are times when you ask people.
“People who need information you need and they don’t want to give you this information, and you have to find a way to break through,” said Snody. “And there is a checking clock where someone has real trouble, and you have to get this information now before something wrong happens to them. So it’s a whole new type of narration.”
All this comes from the LLM, which was fed by the background, the story and the characters. He must understand the world and then assemble the individual stories that will entertain the players.
Asked about more to come, Snody said: “We have a more traditional second game in the production for which we build worlds of play. AI definitively rations this process both in design and production. In the design, we are able to explore environments at a much more complete level than we could in the past, which leads to faster and more confident decision -making. In production.
What all this means
Reminds me the electronic arts’ Majestic Game, which also involved the use of phones and was released in 2001. One of the interesting by-products of the use of telephone conversations is that there will be no need to create high-end 3D graphics for this type of game. In general, AI is not so good in this area now.
After talking to Snody, I had a lot of questions but I guess the answers would give part of the experience of history. His team of writers must create stories and history, and the LLM must know all of this and understand the characters.
“To go ahead, our characters always feel alive. It is somehow who we are as human beings. We always think about where we are going in the future. And likewise, our characters live in this” reality “that we have created who, hope, is complete enough for them to be credible and they make sense,” said Snoddy. “For us, it is a balance between what the player brings to the table and what the writers brought to the table. It is a fairly magical and exciting period.”
He added: “One of the powers of our company is that everything we do is at the service of this thing, this narrative thing. And so we will do two things. We create this engine of the story that allows us to do the real thing we want to do, which is to tell stories.
Snody believes that he could take something like a month to do a single episode, and even more for an entire series. Certain collaborations with game companies are already underway, said Snody.
For the former, operating games will use his own intellectual property because he gives them the freedom to invent. But in the future, it could do it with IPs from other companies that fans already like.
