"Her Story" Creator to Head WarGames Remake

Well here’s an interesting little tidbit tangentially related to games, granted, but worth a bit of attention.

If you know the name Sam Barlow, then you’re a classier bloke than I am, because I had to do a bit of Googling to find out that he was the mastermind behind the FMV game “Her Story,” a critically-acclaimed mystery game about going through a series of videos and trying to piece together the truth behind a missing person’s case.

It was well-received for a FMV game (which aren’t really known for being high-quality) sitting at 89 percent for the PC port on Metacritic and a 9/10 rating on Steam. And while you could argue it wasn’t really a commercial success, it did get the attention of the folks over at Eko, a weird sort of content hub for series that invites more direct viewer interaction than your typical web series. I guess you can think of them as “soft FMV” stories.

Anyway. It was just announced that Eko has hired Sam Barlow to head the production of #WarGames, a modern remake of the classic '80s story of hackers, nuclear war, and unwinnable games.

“With ‘#WarGames’ I was thrilled to take the questions raised by the original movie and ask them again in a world where technology has fundamentally changed our lives. To do that interactively felt like a perfect marriage of form and content. I am excited to introduce viewers to the new hacker protagonist, Kelly, who represents the breadth of modern hacker culture and its humanity."

Sounds pretentious. Perhaps viewer interaction can turn that around, but as of right now, it’s uncertain just how big a role - or what role it will even be - viewers will have in the telling of the story. For now, all we can do is say “neat” and look forward to its 2018 release date.