Why, Reality?

Unscripted television is the most important storytelling and game format of the 21st century

There is a certain pain to our modern condition, a slow dislocation. Our very reality is slipping out of joint, as more and more of us participate in life primarily through a single luminous window, necks craned downward.

On social media, we see carefully-curated versions of one another, performing larger-than-life versions of who we believe ourselves to be. We use profile grids, feeds, pages, threads and tweets to assemble an avatar – a digital representation of ourselves that is constructed from authentic components, but not entirely truthful as a whole. Our nicest vacation pictures, our most-attractive selfies, the ideal self-deprecating memes, our interiors just after we’ve cleaned. In a world like this, even unfiltered photographs and raw content streams seem like an elective performance or statement. 

And we engage with news, politics, products and the affairs of the world through the same lens: A reality curated for us by capitalist algorithms, a barrage of information of dubious origin and intention, narratives designed to influence us using the contemporary media ecosystem. In the phone is a war yielding countless children’s graves, and in the real world we do self-care and productivity exercises – and disorientingly, the two worlds resemble each other less and less.

This is doing something to us, I think. 

We have all been cast as unscripted performers in this media ecosystem, with or without our consent. “Celebrity” is now widespread and mundane — on social media, anyone might suddenly become a Main Character, briefly famous for a thoughtless comment that Hits at the right time. Increasingly, our main source of information and entertainment is each other: Who’s Going Through It on Facebook? Whose happy marriage portraits show visible cracks? Who’s having a meltdown on Twitter today? Who’s going to court, who had work done, who’s seeking personal or social justice from whom? 

Who’s your favorite hate-follow? Do you really hate them, or do you love them for the entertainment they provide?

The quick-hit streaming industry has killed the era of prestige television, and post-pandemic remote phone culture has killed our attention spans. Are all of us with ADHD born that way, or is it learned, the slow erosion of long-term habits in exchange for immediate stimulation? Sprawling, spacious epics with complex themes and slow-burn narratives seem to be ‘out’ – simple, lucid conflicts and dopaminergic “twists” have taken their place.

To me, this all means that reality television is the most important storytelling medium of the 21st century: We watch real people perform larger-than-life versions of themselves in narrative-designed constructed simulations – of survival, of community, of dating and marriage, and other high-stakes social and skill-based situations. 

The TV industry refers to the genre as “unscripted”, because it’s still dramatic storytelling, not “the truth” – the intention is to use the junction of real people and synthetic ecosystem to cause narrative to emerge. And that’s basically all of our reality these days, isn’t it. 

As a video game maker focused on making player stories emerge through design, reality shows are fascinating to me. Games, whether physical challenges, social games, community voting or roleplay, are a crucial component -– they provide the “dice roll”, so to speak, the disruptive element that adds stakes and unpredictability to the condition of “people talking and hanging out in one place.” They also give cast members (characters) objectives to orient toward, reasons to make or break relationships, and provide an overall narrative context to the experience, i.e. “you’re all trying to survive on an island”, “you all have to find the traitors”, or “this is a popularity contest.” 

In this series, I’ll be talking about some of my favorite (and least favorite) programs, breaking down what makes them tick, looking at the challenges and games they implement in a design-informed way, and exploring the emergent social dynamics of popular shows. I’ll also be talking about common perceptions of this genre (isn’t it dumb, trashy and exploitative?) and continuing to dig into why I think it’s so important. 

I’ll also eventually start sharing some of my own game concepts and prototypes that experiment with ways to fold the principles of closed ecosystems and social conflict modeling into game narrative design in general, because I think any kind of experience design can learn a lot from this field. One of my little dreams is to eventually design games for reality shows myself. 

So fuck being ashamed of the things you love! If you’re interested in the fascinating collision of personality, constructed realities, rules, games and online society – and especially how those elements create contemporary dramatic narrative – this series is for you. 

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