Why would you launch a bleeping FMV game in 2022?
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Wednesday 26th January 2022
The first question with just about any interview about a modern full-motion video (FMV) game is an obligatory, "Why?"
Why would you choose to work in a creative field that was thoroughly salted with the explosion of terrible early CD-ROM games in the mid-'90s and has only shown faint glimpses of life (Her Story and Bandersnatch among them) since then?
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz in advance of this week's launch of the FMV game Not For Broadcast, NotGames directors Alex Paterson and Denis Sewell share some of their thoughts on the matter.
"FMV is a very small niche, and we're trying to dominate that niche and be the leaders in that niche in the industry," Sewell says.
"I understand the reasons why people don't use FMV, and we've hit a lot of those struggles -- size of game, budget, all these challenges we've hit along the way -- but coming up with clever ways to get around that in a very clever, different way that isn't just the old school FMV where you click a button, turn left and get a pop-up video of some guy on a green screen telling you to go over there."
He adds that the team already had an abundance of relevant experience for an FMV game. Sewell had worked in TV and film prior to NotGames, and much of the team had similar backgrounds. That wasn't entirely a matter of chance, as they had all met while working for a theater charity.
"We're all kind of theatrical people and were trying to find a way to turn that into a game, use our skills and our [unique selling point], or whatever, and make that work for us," Paterson says.
He acknowledged that the 2015 FMV game Her Story had originally started him thinking about working in the genre because it showed how FMV
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