Why An Immersive Theatre Company Decided To Make A Videogame
Long time, no see. It’s been a bit since we last met and we’ve been a bit… let’s call it delayed. This is the first of many semi-regular dispatches from the trenches of our tiny little corner of the entertainment industry. As the co-founder and current Person In Charge, it seems appropriate that I kick this off in true Future Proof style. It’s high-time we had a sitdown, you and I, and had ourselves a little chat about what’s going on in these here parts.
So we kinda accidentally made a Video Game.
Future Proof was created to be a Transmedia Immersive Entertainment Company — that’s a big pile of five-dollar words that basically translates to: “we create immersive and interactive stories that take place across multiple forms of media.”
Here’s the way I try to explain it at parties I’m not invited to:
If we were a media company, we would create stories on betamax. If we were a multimedia company, we would tell stories in a big warehouse with some movies projected on an ill-fitted sheet while the Velvet Underground makes Malanga crack a whip.
As a Transmedia company, that means we do all of the above while having the story also take place at the same time on a website. Or a podcast. Or a fake webseries. Or a twitter account. Or three twitter accounts flaming each other. Or on a tech support line. Or via a bootleg port of The Matrix Online. Or all of the above at once.
Our other main feature is that we love to tell stories that have continuity, and the LUX project has been a perfect playground for that. Not only are all of our shows, characters, etc. connected, but they learn, grow, and respond to input from you, our adoring public.
To give an example of how we operate:
Our last big event was UCC Omega; a big, dumb corporate tradeshow joke (a joke about dumb tradeshows… not a dumb joke) that our audience got to infiltrate, hijack, and ultimately break. That show had plenty of amazing immersive talent, sight gags, ticketing puzzles, hidden plot threads, video and audio assets galore.
Now we had plenty of stock & trade transmedia content going on during that show’s run — twitter feuds, fake/real website articles, etc., but what you may not have known is that hidden in our the show was a museum, and in this museum was an audio tour: This audio tour was a full 30 minutes in length (the original plan called for 120 but time is money), and was the disjointed chronicle of our fake megacorporation’s founder, Paulbert Pontifex III (esq.).
This audio tour is actually a keystone that ties together over three years of fake documents, hidden video frames, and fictional programming languages, unveiling the entire origin-story of LUX that has been completely obfuscated behind ARG puzzles up to this point. We basically buried a show within a show on soundcloud that gave the whole metagame away.
Look, the point is that we like to tell stories that are platform-agnostic, and like DOOM we want to run on everything.
So with that in mind, let’s all travel wayyyyy back to the dawn of time, when dinosaurs ruled the land and North America was a shallow ocean: January, 2020.
“a short digital project that can be completed in two to six weeks.”
We were riding high on some great reviews and feedback, we were taking many of the lessons hard-earned from our events throughout the years, and were thrilled to start 2020 off with a bang. We were lining up with some extremely awesome partnerships in the immersive world, and then — as you all know — the world kinda flipped a table.
COVID-19 and the many insanities orbiting it messed up the world in a lot of ways, including (but not limited to) the NYC entertainment scene our company is a part of.
As I said to my actors, it has been incredibly hard to watch many theater and live entertainment institutions wither under the sheer lack of support from the state. While the casualties are many, I would like to give two specific regards to Third Rail’s groundbreaking show Then She Fell, and LIC’s Secret Theater — an amazing hidden space in the depths of Queens that provided a truly unique modular-theater space.
For our part, we had to throw out all of our plans, partnerships-in-progress, and put a full stop to a lease and move. We basically put the company into freeze-frame, and the only reason I’m here talking to you now is the result of that decision. For all intents and purposes 2020 was a wash.
In the early days of the End of Days, we made the call to “produce some freaking content.” This was around late-March, when nobody was sure how bad the virus was going to be. We were unwilling to design something that could put our staff, crew, or cast at risk. So — like everybody else — we decided to embark on a digital project. Unlike many other folks, we were extremely lucky to have a bit of experience in several online formats to help guide or decision-making.
Our core staff decided to work on a “short digital project that can be completed in two to six weeks.” The project I signed off on (because really, it was the best idea) is now six-months deep and will be a feature-complete Visual Novel where you date office software in the LUX universe.
It’s called PSweet and it’s… Pretty Sweet.
Release date is SOON(tm); my favorite kind of release date, and yours too.
We’ve never made a video game. We are not a video game studio. We probably won’t make another one.
We’ve never made a video game. We are not a video game studio. We probably won’t make another one.
We know we are out of our depth, but we decided to approach it like any other story we tell; give the “patrons” (in this case, players) agency, break some rules of decorum, keep things ‘historically accurate,’ and make sure LUX is a terrible company from a terrible era in arts & entertainment.
We also opted out of anything that would require major input mechanics (yer 3d shooters, 2d side-scrollers, etc.), and instead opted to make a Visual Novel (VN). What we ended up making is like any other Future-Proof story (hell, it even has connections to outside content on the internet), this one just happens to use VN mechanics and conventions as a platform instead of live-action talent.
Of course, It has all the trappings of a Future Proof product: it’s got the anachronisms, the terrifying subtext, the vaporwave color pallette, the self-aware AI’s that are totally-not-pretending-to-be-human(TM).
It also has more sincerity and heart than anything we’ve written so far, and is surprisingly earnest from a company that’s used to feeling cynical about everything. Yes, there are obvious comparisons to other VN’s out there, but I really do think if you give it a shot, this game will be something you’ll enjoy and find to be a truly unique experience regardless of your exposure to VN’s. Plus, the games’ port-forwarding software is A HUNK!
If anything, download a copy just so you can answer the question: what happens when a transmedia immersive company makes a video game?
New York is not dead, Brooklyn is not dead, Future Proof is not dead, Immersive Theater is not dead, and You are not dead if you’re reading this.
We’re all getting through this catastrophe however best we can, and for Future Proof, that happens to be a Visual Novel called PSweet. It’s going to be an amazing game that you will cherish forever as it sits on your wishlist and you continue to play SUPERHOT.
To all the other companies out there working through this insane world: hang in there! All is not lost! To all our current and future fans: get hype, Future Proof has got piping-hot content in the oven for your enjoyment!
Stay tuned, there’s plenty of FUN on the way.
Cheers,
Alex Chmaj Co-Owner | Producer Future Proof
PSweet on itch.io:
PSweet The Microsite:
