Her Story creator's next project is a multi-viewpoint story that changes based on which perspective you watch

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Sam Barlow describes it as a "choice-based story without choices".

Our first peek at WarGames—Her Story creator Sam Barlow's next project—in December was not particularly revealing: we found out that it's an interactive series re-imagining the 1983 film of the same name, but that was about it. Now we know that, in Barlow's own words, it's a "choice-based story without choices" that plays out across a number of different viewpoints. 

Basically, the story is constantly moving forward, and at any point you'll have multiple video feeds to choose from. You can try to watch them all on screen at once or focus your attention on a particular feed. Based on which one you choose, the story will change. “[It's] a way of gauging your interest, gauging your opinion about the show. And those would be your choices, and then we would use that to steer the story," Barlow told The Verge.

The story will release in episodes of a set length. He says the main purpose of the approach is to make the viewer feel like they're "hanging out online" with the characters. 

“The guiding feeling that we wanted to have here was the sense that you were hanging out with these people. Most of the content is the kids hanging out online and chatting. Really I wanted to feel like you were just one other person hanging out online with these kids."

Some people might not like the fact that it's more passive than Her Story, but I have high hopes. Her Story had fantastic writing, and if Barlow can do the same here then we'll be in for a treat. He's creating WarGames in collaboration with Eko, an interactive video studio. You can sample some of their work here. 

WarGames is due out later this year, and Barlow is also working on "spiritual follow-up" to Her Story called Telling Lies.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.