[ Update: The trailer for Gamer Girl has since been seemingly pulled from YouTube, as the video embedded below will no longer play. It attracted significant controversy when initially available.]
Publisher Wales Interactive said in a series of tweets that the game seeks to raise awareness toward online abuse.
Gamer Girl is about the impact user comments and actions have on a streamer's mental health and wellbeing. The reason why FMV Future created the game was to raise the issue of the toxic environment which can often appear online behind the anonymity of a username...
Wales Interactive, the publisher behind FMV games like The Complex and Late Shift, has announced a new FMV title called Gamer Girl, and it's unlike anything we've seen before. The game, which is coming to PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One in September, lets you play as a popular streamer's chat moderator and personal contact. The game is being developed by FMV Future ( The Bunker).
It'll be up to you to handle a chat log and maintain personal contact with the streamer, Abicake99 (Alexandra Burton). You'll make decisions about the posts in her chat, respond to DMs from her, and work to help Abi succeed--she can fire you if you mess up.
Interestingly, this is also being positioned as the first "improvised" FMV game, with the press release drawing comparisons to found-footage movies like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. Part of the game will involve protecting Abbi from a predator, and following her as she takes her streaming into dangerous real-world scenarios.
You can watch the trailer below, which hints at the game's horror elements.
The micromanagement elements of the game will involve managing comments, rewarding or banning Abbi's community members based on their comments, and the better you do, the more moderator abilities you can unlock.
So it seems like the game will have two goals--help Abbi succeed, and keep her safe. You can also influence what kind of streams she does, or purposefully encourage drama and to help increase her ratings.
Real-life streamers, including CyborgAngel, will also appear within the game as characters. You'll be able to contact some of them, too, but they may have ulterior motives.
Wales Interactive is promising "hundreds of choices and permutations," so it should be interesting to see just how many different paths you can go down in Gamer Girl.
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