With ‘SOS,’ Outpost Attempts To Move Video Games Closer To Performance Art


Outpost

Outpost Games’ latest release, SOS, may have first popped up on people’s radars when Snoop Dogg decided to livestream his playthrough, but it’s taking the concept of the Battle Royale game and doing something different with it: each round of SOS is designed to be a performance, as well as a video game, and it might be the first game fully designed with the concept of an audience (other than your fellow players) in mind.

The conceit of SOS is simple. Take a group of players ostensibly on a Survivor-style reality show, drop them randomly on an island, and have them duke it out for the three totems that allow you to be airlifted to safety. The setup of each round features some short “audition” moments, where you’ll use your voice to improv who your character might be and how they might act in the show. Which is the game.

The game incorporates Outspost’s “Hero” system, which allows people to spectate and provide real-time feedback via emojis and other praise signifiers. The people who garner the most fan love in a round will get a special shout-out at the end, and it will affect their game ranking, which will reward you for being good at being entertaining and a personality, rather than just good at “playing the game” better than someone else.

We spoke to Wright Bagwell, CEO and co-founder at Outpost Games, at an SOS event in Los Angeles, and he explained the difficulties of making a game like this, and how much a game can change during development.

UPROXX: To start with, tell me about the development process for SOS.

Wright Bagwell: Well, when we started the company, me and the other co-founders, we talked a lot about how what got us into games in the first place was Quake, and the Quake community. So I was a Quake modder and a Quake hacker, a level designer back in the day, and he was one of the top-ranked Quake capture the flag players.

And I think both of us always really loved being part of that community, because Quake was more about the players. Quake was about all the creative people who were figuring out, building new maps, creating new gameplay mods, doing early Machinima, all those kinds of things. And it just felt like the community was really the star of the show.

And in the past 20 years that I’ve been making video games, one of the things that sort of left me a little dissatisfied is in making single-player games. I worked on the James Bond franchise at EA. I worked on Dead Space. I was the creative director for Dead Space 2. Then I went over to Zynga and I worked on FarmVille. I was the design director for FarmVille 2. So I’ve been at both ends of the spectrum. I’ve done a lot of different things.

But all those games are primarily single-player games, and they’re designed as content to be consumed. So they treat the player as consumer, not as performer. And when we started Outpost, we just kept coming back to, like, “Man, you know that Quake community still to this day really inspires us. We always think about it.” And we looked at the emergence of the Twitch phenomenon, the emergence of YouTube stars, eSports, and all these kinds of things, and we thought, “Okay, well, now’s a time where you can really, seriously make a business out of players being performers.”

And we also looked at DayZ. I was playing a lot of DayZ. And I instantly fell in love with it ’cause it broke every rule about game design that I learned over the years. When you make single-player games, it’s about making sure that people are always entertained, that there’s too much repetition, you have to give them very clear goals and rewards and all these things. And I just love that DayZ was unapologetically hardcore, and that you were really drawn into it because you always had this idea of, like, “Man, I wonder what crazy shit I’m going to see. I wonder what kind of crazy antics that me and my friends might get up to in this game.”

So we thought about the Twitch phenomenon, we thought about the communities and performers from the Quake scene that got us into games, and then I looked at DayZ and I thought, “If you could package this game up in a way that felt like a TV show and take all these elements that make it so magical but make sure there’s a beginning, middle, and an end to every episode, if you will, with a big, climactic ending, then I think what you could build is a game that feels like an improvisational kind of TV drama.”

So the original pitch for the game was actually something more like … It was a straight-up zombie game. And the idea was star in an episode of The Walking Dead. Actually, we were sort of bringing together elements of Lost, the TV show, and The Walking Dead and thinking, “Okay, what if it feels like every game is a chance for you to star in one episode of this thing, and it’s very sandbox-y, and it’s up to you and a bunch of other people to not just figure out how to survive, but what if we could figure out how to get you to feel like you’re a character in this world?” And by that, what I don’t mean is that you’re playing the tank, I’m playing the range guy, that kind of thing, but feel like you develop a real kind of personality in a way that characters in shows do.

So we stumbled upon this idea that, well, when people know they’re being watched, they behave very differently. So initially, it was this crazy idea where people were kinda rolling their eyes, but we were talking like, “What if we could build an audience into a game? What if somehow we could give everyone an audience so that everyone is not just playing to win, but that they’re trying to put on a show while they’re doing it?” So they’re putting on a performance. Because we know that you can take any activity and if you add spectators to it, the activity, the experience is transformed.

So we thought, “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could create a revolution in gaming where people no longer think of themselves as alone or anonymous when they go in to play a video game, but instead, what if they feel like they’re stepping out onto a stage? And in doing so, what if all the content that’s being produced out there, what if it all gets way more interesting because everyone knows that they’re there to put on a show? Everyone knows there’s an audience there. So what if it gets you to elevate the whole thing? It’s a rising tide, you know?”

So we began with that idea, and then that’s where we started to think about the tech that we would need to power a game like we were imagining, and I can get back to how we ended up with the game as it is today. But we started building this tech that integrates spectator presence and realtime feedback directly into the game.

So we realized that there was this magical thing that as soon as we put that in the game and we saw people in the office play testing the game, and as soon as it said, “Boop, there’s one person watching you,” you could literally see them physically transform. They were going like this and it’s like, “Boop, someone’s watching you,” and you would see people’s posture change, right? They were sitting up, they clear their voice. And suddenly it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna put on a show.” And we saw that it was really transformative. And when people would crack a joke and instantly hear laughter, suddenly it became infectious, that the players would crack a joke, they realize the audiences are laughing, and then they just keep rolling with it, right? So it was a lot like what happens in standup. So that informed a lot of the tech that we ended up putting into Hero, which was needed to make SOS work.

But SOS went from this idea where originally, it was a zombie story game, right? There’s been a zombie outbreak, these people need to survive. It was pretty straightforward. And we thought there were a lot of zombie games out a few years ago. There was DayZ, there was Dying Light, there was all this stuff. And we love zombies because as a designer, I feel like the holy grail of any game design is one that is deep and sophisticated but needs no explanation, right? A game that needs no tutorial is ideal. And what I love about zombie games is everyone gets to deal with zombies, right? Everyone understands, like, okay, it’s somewhat post-apocalyptic, you have to gather resources, you have to find weapons, you can’t trust anybody, and if you’re bitten, you’re gonna get infected. So there’s all this stuff that, man, it’s all awesome gameplay, but you don’t have to explain it.

But I think the more we thought about it, the more we thought, “We have a chance to do something even more interesting here. So what if instead of another zombie survival game, what if we could turn this more into something that feels a little bit more like a game show?” And so then we started thinking of The Hunger Games a little bit more and just sort of like, “No, let’s just own up to the fact that this is a show.”

And in early versions of that, we started thinking about the fiction and the world and the characters and we realized that it all felt a little heavy, is how I would describe it, because it still had this post-apocalyptic flavor, it was this dystopian thing where we were all forced to play in this brutal reality TV show. And it was weird because the game had this kind of dark presentation. But then when you put it in players’ hands, players get really goofy and silly with it. And so we were trying to play with that and we realized that there was something interesting about that dark, serious presentation, but then the levity that comes with players just goofing off within it.

But eventually we realized that you know what? We’re making a reality TV show. That’s what it is. Let’s just own up to it and let’s just basically call it exactly what it is. It’s a reality TV show. So we don’t have any kind of complicated backstory or anything like that. It’s just basically, here’s a reality TV show. You play one of the contestants. They’re all designed to look and feel like relatable people that you might know. These aren’t super soldiers. It’s not all 30-something grizzled, violent people there to murder each other. It’s just sort of like, “Hey, these are people who signed up to be on a reality TV show.”

And it’s kind of absurd. There is death, there’s shooting and all this kind of stuff. But we try to present it in a way where … We don’t present it like, “Hey, here is a violent game about backstabbing and murder.” It’s just, “Here’s a reality TV show that has all these really, really awesome elements of social interaction, strategy, suspicion, cooperation, competition.” But yet, it incorporates a lot of the familiar things that games know and love so well, like first-person gunplay and things like that.

So eventually, we realized that we were building a reality TV show, and so for the last phase of development, it’s basically trimming out that old fictional fat that we had and trying to really, really clarify this whole thing is a reality TV show for the players, and also for the viewers. Make a show that viewers feel like these people are there to create a performance, entertain you. Give them feedback and they’ll generally get more interesting the more feedback you give them. And the more feedback you give them, the better we learn who is interesting and how to pair up people that are together, because one of the interesting things about Hero is that it’s a mechanism by which we learn who and what is interesting. So the more people use that, basically the better we can make the game.

Tell me about spectator mode, which you enter into by default when you die in a round.

Right now, the only way in the game to spectate is to die. But you can watch on Twitch, yeah. Or you can watch on Hero.

Is there thought of creating a standalone spectator mode for it, or implementing a spectator mode?

Yes. It has a lot of interesting tools. I don’t know if you noticed, it has picture-in-picture views of other people. So if you hover over E, you see a little map, so you see where people are and you see the icons. And if you do that, you’ll see a little picture-in-picture frame. And so you can actually start to watch a scene play out from multiple perspectives.

So you can imagine that all of the effort that we put into that tool, we’re eventually going to do a lot more with [it]. So the concept of, well, it’s a show. Shows have directors. And you can kinda see where we might be going with that.

You were talking about the zombie genre being something easy to grasp, and something that’s in the cultural view. Do you feel like at this point, Survivor is something that’s similarly easy to grasp that it’s been around so long? Survivor has been in the national consciousness in a bigger way longer than zombies have.

I think the first time I saw it was when I moved to San Francisco in 2001 or so. But yeah, so we think that that’s, again, as a designer, I’m always looking for ideas that are easy for people to grasp so that … It’s the best way to get people interested in the game and get them quickly playing. And also, one of the challenges for this game is we set out from the beginning to make a game that’s just as fun to watch as it is to play. And one of the things that people who make TV are really good at but frankly, game designers are terrible at, is making something that’s very easy to understand quickly.

So we tried really, really hard to build setting and a fiction and a set of game mechanics that are all just pretty darn obvious, right? It’s like, “Hey, there’s things you can use to hit people with, there’s guns, there’s a walkie talkie that you use to talk with.” Your voice is cast into the world, so conversations just make sense the way they play out. So that’s been a big focus, is making it easy to watch.

And so what we thought, when we realize, “Oh, this is a reality TV show and it’s like Survivor,” it’s actually really, really handy, ’cause if you tell people it’s Survivor, it’s The Hunger Games, that’s all you really have to say. Explaining what a MOBA is to a person who doesn’t play video games is a little tough. But saying, “Hey, you know what Survivor is, even if you haven’t seen a lot of it.” Most people are like, “Yeah, I kinda get it.” Some people on an island, they’re all trying to win that million dollar prize. So it’s great shorthand.

How long has this been in development?

So I would say it’s about three years. We initially, we had the idea early on, but there were just a couple of us as co-founders, and we were tinkering around with different engines and trying to figure out what the right tech was and trying to refine the design. But we didn’t get any funding to build the game for about nine months in. So it wasn’t until we got some funding and to hire some people that we really, really started making progress. So it’s been about three years since we basically figured out what it was we wanted to build and hired the team to build it.

So during that time of development and between then and the launch, how do you feel like SOS fits into the marketplace now with PUBG being such a phenomenon?

Man. You know, it’s interesting. We had the idea for SOS long before we ever saw a battle royale. I think the first one that I saw I think the original BR mod for Army 3. And then I got really, really hooked on H1Z1. But for us, we always saw the emergence of battle royale as a good indicator that we’re heading in the right direction, that this concept of sandbox game that was very freeform and formatting it like a show was like, “Okay, that’s where they’re going. That’s where we’re going.”

But at the same time, we don’t consider ourselves competitors at all, because I think PUBG, and when I look at Fortnite, these are games that they’re all about Twitch skill. These games are all about tactical ability, Twitch ability. And I would say that while there are social elements to them, you can play duos and stuff like that, these are games that are just so hyperfocused on skill and tactics.

What we’ve heard from people, what we believed, and what we’ve been relieved to hear from our players is that people don’t think our game feels like it’s competitive with it at all. Our game is so heavily focused on character performance and on deep social interaction, and the fact that your voice is your primary mechanic in SOS. The core mechanic is talking as opposed to shooting. That makes it feel very, very different. I love battle royale games, I absolutely love them, and I get something totally different out of SOS than I do from PUBG or H1Z1.

In regards to taking the dark subject matter and making it be light and performative. Since the conceit of the game is that it’s a reality show, and it’s a reality show where you’re killing other people — like you said, there is still that dark subject matter — what do you believe the metatext of the game is? Do you believe that the suspension of disbelief is that you’re playing a video game that’s a reality show? Because what I get out of it is that the metatext is that you’re playing a reality show video game.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s …

I realize it’s a very dense question.

Yeah, yeah. And I’m trying to think of the best way to answer it.

Because if you were to go into the game completely blank as I sort of did, at first, it’s like, “Oh, this is a video game where I have to kill other people and it’s like PUBG.” And then you get the performative aspect of it and then you get that it’s not as blood and guts as it seems on the surface. It feels like your performance is a performance in a reality show video game. It’s immersive in the sense that it’s fun to put on a show, but it’s not immersive in the sense of Evil Within or something where you’re like, “Oh my god, what’s gonna happen? I’m in this video game.”

Yeah. I’ll be honest, in the early iterations of the game, I really wanted to build a hyper-immersive game. I wanted you to feel like you’re in this rich world, it’s a sandbox, there are all these sort of really fascinating emergent elements to it. And the original tone in the game, as I said before, is very serious. And I wanted to feel like you are deeply immersed in the fiction of this world and deeply immersed in role-playing as your character.

For us now, I think … We always tell people it’s a show and for us, it’s helpful internally for us to always refer to it that way so it helps us center our ideas. And it helps to explain it. It’s not as important to me that it feels immersive in the way that a single-player game does or in a way that I originally described the game. So we want the game to be honest. We want it to own up to the fact that it is a video game and it is a reality TV show and it’s going to continue to wink at the player and make sure that it acknowledges it as such.

I guess my other response to that is we want to acknowledge the fact that it’s a video game because a huge component of it that, by the way, is going to get a lot better. What’s in there right now is sort of primitive. But it has this reputation system. So when you go in, it introduces your character and it says that maybe you’re generous, helpful, or you’re a hilarious sharpshooter or something like that. We start to learn a lot about you as a character over time and we learn that from the things that you do in the game and from the reaction you get from the audience. So we really start to try to understand you as a character.

And what we want to do is we want to keep investing in that system so that it feels like there is a real consequence for everything that you do. Right now, you may notice that someone’s a backstabber, but you may not. And by the way, if you do notice it, you may forget by the time you meet that person in the game. So you might not be well-equipped to understand that character and how you should deal with them.

So what I’m getting at here is that it’s a video game in the sense that it has these traditional systems that record all the things that you do and your stats behind it and you can try to min and max those stats. But at the same time, what we’re doing is trying to acknowledge that in this game, this is a game where one of the things that you can min-max that you’ve never been able to do before is the entertainment value of what you’re doing.

So now, we actually have a way to give you reports on who’s watching you, how many people are watching you, exactly how much feedback you got, what kind of feedback was it, so that you can start to optimize your behavior for entertainment value as opposed to what’s the XP or what are the little prizes that I’m being given to do repetitious things, which are typically not very entertaining. We’re trying to flip that around and say, “Let’s stop giving you prizes for doing boring and repetitive things and let’s start rewarding you for being interesting.”

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