Those Beyond reveal their Arise Engine — focussed on the dawn of Mass Community Play.
Official Those Beyond Announcement
Last summer, we raised $6.6m knowing that we were to go far beyond making just another game — we were to pursue a new form of entertainment.
Today, we are announcing that we are building the Arise Engine — dedicated to Mass Community Play.
Mass Community Play is a new genre of entertainment centred on social play. Tabletop social gaming has physical constraints on table sizes maxing out at around 8 players whereas digital communities can raise the table sizes to thousands concurrently playing.
We witnessed this first hand with a sci-fi world called FATES that we launched and ran for 8 months to a community of 35,000. The gameplay ranged from casual mini-games through to challenging Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), puzzlers and light adventure campaigns.
The learnings from the FATES user engagement spikes for particular types of community play enabled us to realise we had to dedicate all our resources on creating the technology to power this new form of play.
We had the bones for Mass Community Play. But how could we scale it?
From the invention of the printing press to cameras enabling movies and, of course, computers opening up video games — leaps in technology are always at the forefront of new forms of entertainment.
The timing for us having the VC funding in place, combined with the discovery of this new form of entertainment, would have been moot if no new technology were available to enable us to supercharge scaling it beyond ourselves.
To entertain a player-base of 35,000 by acting as games masters, our studio was entirely consumed with creating the world, story, emergent narrative, Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) and the ever demanding content schedule.
Yet this was just one world. We needed to service hundreds of worlds.
Our team were all hands on deck for the content creation and live ops for this one immersive world. To deliver on a future of Mass Community Play to an audience of millions, User Generated Content (UGC) alone was not a solution. How could we scale to curate so many worlds and fulfil the promise of making Those Beyond a next generation entertainment giant?
The timing of the advancement in Large Language Models (LLMs) could not have been more perfect.
The studio could originate the higher worlds;
- The lower level story could be filled in.
- Branching narrative could be fluid and endless.
- NPCs could be dynamic and convincing.
- The punishing art schedule could be fulfilled.
We could remain as true worldbuilders and let our own set rules of nature run riot to evolve their own way as millions of community players loaded into many beautiful worlds full of surprise. The engineers in the studio could focus on creating a series of machines that would be bounded and trained specifically on our need to endlessly enrich our worlds for limitless evergreen play.
The differentiator would be our curation. Both human curation and codified curation.
No matter how wonderful the technology of CGI and other efficient filmmaking techniques — there is always a need for the likes of a Spielberg or a Cameron to curate and direct cinema. With the Arise Engine, we would be codifying into the heart of the platform that same secret sauce that made our debut world of FATES so well loved by so many.
It would fulfil our vision to ignite a global mass rising of adventurers — not just gamers but all fiction enthusiasts from around the world.
Hence, the Arise Engine was born.
Why the name Arise?
The identity of the core technology had to be more than a name. Through the Arise Engine, the end result must ignite a mass rising of adventurers worldwide.
Therefore, it is not just a technology, it is a philosophy for our company that points to a north star ensuring direction is never lost even as the organisation significantly grows.
So what now? We accelerate build and open up hiring.
The sheer ambition and difficulty to create the technology for the Arise Engine is an opportunity for the world’s best engineers to build. They must execute the platform in direct conspiracy with the creatives in the studio.
Engineers and creatives side by side, colluding together on codifying the seemingly impossible — how to bottle up a Spielberg and Cameron-like curation of creative direction from the output of our guided AI agents.
We are on an aggressive but measured 12 month build phase with our company now opening up hiring positions. These are centred on the need for more engineers to join who can handle cutting edge open source LLM technology that we can bend to our will. This suite of bespoke Arise Engine agents will be the beating heart of our platform to deliver on our new form of entertainment — Mass Community Play.
Want to join us?
Notable industry quotes on the rise of social play:
“As tabletop games and video games collide, it becomes increasingly likely that the next big innovation in social play will be a merger of the two. With classic games like D&D, Warhammer, and Magic all reaching unprecedented levels of digitally-propelled success, the question is not if, but when and how.”
Jonathan Lai, A16Z
“Social gaming has transcended the boundaries of traditional entertainment, offering an immersive experience that brings people together. As an avid gamer, I have witnessed the transformative potential of social gaming, particularly for the younger generations.”
Kyle Zappitell, The Rise of Social Gaming
“As gaming expands its hold on entertainment and popular culture, the way that gamers engage with the medium is becoming more inherently social — and gamers’ spending habits are evolving as a result.”
Alexander Lee, Esports Journalist
The top reason that Gen Z says they play games is to socialize with friends. This generation reports higher rates of watching, posting, and participating on social platforms than any other age group.
Jason Chapman, Konvoy
