These days, game shows are pretty basic, featuring a live audience, an interactive set-up where contestants could win big prizes, and a host with plenty of personality – we’re looking at you, Alex Trebek. However, next year, The Future Group could change how we look at game shows forever.
VentureBeat has reported that the Oslo, Norway-based company has managed to raise $8.5 million for a new virtual game show that it intends to launch next year. Co-founder Bard Anders Kasin confirmed the project with Gamesbeat earlier this week, indicating that the team was working with an unnamed game show production company on the project.
Kasin is no stranger to gaming technology, as he worked as a technical director for Warner Bros. and also utilized game-oriented technologies with The Matrix films. “We saw gaming applied to the film pipeline, and since then we have seen a huge change in what we were able to do in real time,” he explained. “This is the accumulation of dreams that people had for many years. And the technology is finally there to do it.”
The project is set to launch as a game show in prime time sometime next year, on a yet undisclosed network. It will feature a virtual world that can be accessed through a number of desktop and mobile devices, enabling the audience to play along and perhaps throw a few challenges at the contestants.
Although The Future Group can’t yet show off what it’s doing – the screenshot above is just a hint of the concept – it intends to blend live video of actors blending in with a virtual world almost seamlessly. “There are so many different markets involved,” said Kasin. “We have people spread through Europe with a lot of partner companies. You have TV, games, studio systems and the eCommerce platform. We’re trying to make it brilliant because we know we have to do that in order to succeed.
“In The Matrix movies, you had people moving into a virtual world, and we’re kind of doing the same thing now.”
The show will utilize Unity based game technology to create the virtual world, using motion trackers to keep track of players’ movements so that they can interact with items with very little error. “We put Unity in the film production pipeline to make the process happen in real time,” said Kasin. “We are building an entire online world. You can compete against the TV show contestants while the show is airing. But you can also just play in the game world. The more you compete, the more chances you have for prizes.”
It sounds like a lot of promise, but if The Future Group can pull it off, it’ll change the way we look at game shows forever. Even with Alex Trebek.
