Full-motion video (FMV) games are an interesting breed, displaying action with pre-recorded footage. The genre dates back to arcade titles like Dragon's Lair in 1983, known for its traditional hand-drawn animation by Don Bluth. However, more people likely associate the term "FMV" with games utilizing live-action footage, such as Night Trap (1992) and Critical Path (1993); or others that mix gameplay with live cutscenes like Command & Conquer (1995). Though FMV has fallen off in popularity, games like Not For Broadcast keep the spirit alive.
NotGames co-creator and director Jason "Jay" Orbaum said FMV often works against a game because it "plunges sets into the uncanny valley," particularly in titles where players are meant to be in the world like Command & Conquer. He feels Night Trap set a better standard by supplementing its limited capabilities with camp, but said the best way to attempt this format is not pretending footage is something it's not. The Best War Games spoke to Orbaum and CEO Andrew "Andy" Murray about NotGames' approach to FMV, and how it was informed by the team's wider experience in entertainment.
How NotGames Came Together - The First Time
The unapologetically British NotGames is "far from your traditional dev company" according to Murray, as its core creative team — Orbaum, Murray, Alex Paterson, and Denis Sewell — have roots in television, film, and theater. They met through Orbaum's production company doing work for a youth theater charity, around when Murray attended classes at Nottingham Trent University in the early 2010s. According to Murray's LinkedIn, NotGames was founded to save their charity, with eight or nine people working out of Orbaum's lounge to create NotGTA5.
As its name suggests, NotGTA5 is a satire of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series (renamed NotTheNameWeWanted in April 2018 after experiencing a DMCA takedown three years prior). It's a Snake clone with hand-drawn graphics and acappella sound meant to look like it was scribbled on a beer napkin. "It turned out people just thought it was sh*t," Orbaum said. Even though their joke didn't land, it gained momentum thanks to the Steam Greenlight program. NotGTA5 launched on the storefront in July 2015 and reached the front page.
Each $2.99 USD sale went to charity, but its success made the team feel like it could do something bigger. NotGames spent "a really fun week" putting together The Kickstarter Avoidance Album, a comedy album that ultimately made nothing because Orbaum said, "OSTs are rubbish for money, like most music." Its next effort was NotCoD in May 2016: A more in-depth project with the same hand-crafted conceit satirizing Call of Duty; meant to release in episodes with increasingly better graphics but the same gameplay.
When that didn't sell its future episodes were scrapped, leading to "the black years" in which Orbaum went on benefits because of personal debts incurred funding NoTCoD. The team went its separate ways, with Murray "selling his soul" to work in corporate sales at the software company PatSnap.
Not For Broadcast's Tough Elevator Pitch
Paterson came up with the idea behind Not For Broadcast and brought it to Orbaum in 2017. Prototyping was bankrolled by Murray in 2018, with the core four members of NotGames taking on extra help like George Burchmore as a programmer.
Much of the original coding was done by Orbaum, an eclectic freelancer, musician, and writer who began learning Unity to supplement his experience with Eidos in the 1990s (then Domark Software), and later the VR arcade developer Virtuality. The prototype was shopped around, and tinyBuild came on as publisher so that work could begin in earnest in 2019. Orbaum credits CEO Alex Nichiporchik for assuring his team that Not For Broadcast would remain independent; he was willing to take the risk of seeing whether the "crazy piece of art" could be made, regardless of profit.
"Clearly tinyBuild are absolutely mental, they gave us folk with very little games experience way too much money to make something crazy and unique. They weren't scared, even though one of the worst things with this game is how to describe it."
Not For Broadcast centers around a show runner for the National Nightly News during an alternate version of the 1980s, in which a far-left party called Advance comes to power and becomes a totalitarian dictatorship. Players begin choosing camera angles, advertisements, headlines, and moments to censor content like nudity, imbued with the freedom to direct the news as they wish.
Between 10 levels chock-full of irreverent Monty Python-esque humor, and references to figures ranging from Gordon Ramsey to Alex Jones, the "incident system" (a suggestion from tinyBuild) written by Murray shows how citizens are affected by decisions benefiting the government, resistance, or other underlying factors.
People can earn over a dozen epilogues out of multiple endings, each reflecting the way a player acts — following their bias, according to Orbaum. About eight full-time employees work at NotGames, but over 300 cast and crew were hired to complete its live, modular productions. On January 12, Not For Broadcast was awarded a Guinness World Record for most FMV footage in a video game, clocking in at 42 hours, 57 minutes, and 52 seconds. "We like to joke that we made it twice as hard on ourselves because we decided to make a TV show and then a video game off that TV show," Murray said.
Long-Form FMV With Not For Broadcast
Adding onto the risky nature of Not For Broadcast's expensive production was the fact it released episodically. The first episode dropped in Early Access on January 30, 2020, and then Episode 2 came out the next year. Between them a bonus "Lockdown" episode released in June 2020, with actors filming from home to help everyone "desperate for work" after COVID-19 lockdowns hit the UK — three days before a scheduled round of principal shoots.
Episode 3 officially launched today, tying up loose ends. Orbaum and Murray said there will never be a true sequel so that, fundamentally, any ending a player receives is canon because of their choices. The only other option would be a Mass Effect-style import system for its many epilogues. Something tangential is still in the cards, as Murray said they still have stories to tell in the Not For Broadcast universe, but if anything it might look more like a spiritual sequel akin to BioShock Infinite.
Not For Broadcast follows in the footsteps of modern FMV games like 2015's Her Story, which Murray said paved the way for games to be "less of a joke" as with predecessors like Night Trap. He believes the key to seeing FMV in a different light is using video as video, and Orbaum said Not For Broadcast leverages "TV as its spell, not trying to pretend it's something else." Capturing analog equipment was the main driver behind its 1980s setting, and this benefited its narrative by creating a "more organic" story devoid of social media and the Internet, one where it could avoid trappings like lower thirds and digital transitions while emphasizing the original importance of TV as a "trusted news source."
While Orbaum and Murray can't discuss their "fantastic plans," ultimately NotGames wants to stick with its FMV niche where it feels comfortably dug in between the otherwise impractical goals of huge TV productions like Netflix's The Witcher and professional AAA game development. Going that route was a "no-brainer" given the teams' theatrical backgrounds, but Orbaum said it gave them a particular arena to hopefully leave an impact.
"It was the place we thought we could add a little something. We could have just made another cash-grabbing microtransaction clone. It's valid to make a nice, addictive little phone game, but I don't know... I - and we as artists - want to be different."
Not For Broadcast is available now on PC.