”It’s the collective audience working together or against each other to interact with the content,“ Bernie Su tells TheWrap
Bernie Su, the creator of several Emmy Award-winning interactive web series, is partnering with new video game broadcast network VENN to create gamified television programming.
Su gained notoriety in 2012 for his video adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice,” called “The Lizzie Bennett Diaries,” which reimagined Jane Austen’s classic love story in the 21st century in the form of fictional social media posts and vlogs, usually filmed from Lizzie’s bedroom. Every ten episodes or so, Su would open the video up to the viewers, with Lizzie (played by Ashley Clements) answering live questions from the audience. The effort won Su the Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media, and two Streamy Awards.

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Su has three Primetime Emmy Awards under his belt, most recently a 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media for his work on the live Twitch science fiction series “Artificial,” which stars Dante Basco and Tiffany Chu.
“Right now, the current incarnation of ‘Artificial’ is really difficult, and it’s so complicated to do this two-hour live remotely-produced scripted series,” Su said. “If anything it’s going to be really fun to progress from that as we go forward doing shows with VENN.”
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VENN wouldn’t disclose the terms of Su’s production deal, but Su said it entails creating a “pipeline of content” at a steady pace that will “push the boundaries of what is possible in the format” of 24/7 programming. While VENN is focused on the intersection of gaming and culture, Su said he won’t be producing shows that are exclusively about games. Instead, he said he will create “semi-scripted community experiences” that have an adventure element and force the viewers to interact with one another.
While Su won’t exclusively create content for VENN — he is free to continue work on “Artificial” and other projects — signing a deal with the Emmy-winning producer lends legitimacy to the upstart network.
VENN channels will go live Aug. 5 and broadcast on its website, as well Amazon’s game streaming service Twitch, YouTube, Facebook Gaming and on Twitter. A handful of linear channel partners agreed to pick up the channel on television platforms, including the VIZIO Watch Free channel, Xumo and STIRR.
Su said he wants to further gamify television viewing by creating content that requires the user to be an active participant rather than a passive viewer and is easy to enjoy socially.
“The branching narrative adventure story is inherently a single-user experience. It’s like a video game that you’re playing by yourself in your own house, alone,” Su said. “My ethos is in my communal experience. It’s the collective audience working together or against each other to interact with the content. What I am very confident to say about VENN is that our work will make the audience consequential to the content, which you can’t really say that about a chose-your-own adventure story.”
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Su noted that even in acclaimed interactive storytelling like Netflix’s “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,” which premiered last year, the choose-your-own-adventure storyline always provides a back door escape, which lessens the impact of the viewer’s choices.
“Even though you can say, ‘I made a choice and killed the character,’ you also know you can always turn the pages back and go again,” Su said.
With “Artificial,” the audiences vote via a poll in real-time to determine the choices the actors make, and once the choice is made there’s no going back, which heightens the immersion in the story. Su said he’ll likely employ similar mechanics in his forthcoming shows for VENN.
“Now the live viewer experience is you have to be there, or you’re not going to matter, which is why it’s fun,” Su said. “You have to have that urgency that you need to see this and make these choices.”
VENN’s mid-pandemic launch is an ambitious gamble, but it’s betting that its suite of heavy-hitting investors and $17 million raised to date will provide much-needed insulation.
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VENN is backed by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, the investment holding company controlled by LA Rams owner Stanley Kroenke. VENN also took funding from Bitkraft Esports Ventures, Twitch Co-Founder Kevin Lin and Riot Games Co-Founder Marc Merrill.
Merrill’s investment was motivated, in part, by VENN’s leadership, which counts former Riot Games creative lead and producer Viranda Tantula as its executive creative director.
During his six years at Riot, Tantula helped produce several events, including the Emmy Award-winning 2017 “League of Legends” Worlds Opening Ceremony at the Beijing Olympics “Bird’s Nest” stadium in China, which featured a gigantic holographic dragon swooping over the audience.
Tantula said his biggest takeaways from his tenure at Riot “were really learning that fine intersection between gaming and contemporary culture, and finding that very nuanced overlap.”
“One of our core missions at VENN is to hopefully help destroy a monoculture around gaming,” Tantula added.
Tantula didn’t shy away from drawing comparisons between VENN and G4 media, the video game-focused network that broadcast its last show in 2014 after changing ownership several times. It was originally owned by NBCUniversal but was under the control of Hearst Corporation’s Esquire Network at the time of its demise. G4 failed to grow viewership and had steadily dismal Nielsen ratings.
Tantula said that VENN’s current executive producer started working at G4 and noted that the company plans to take notes from both G4’s successes and failures to avoid a similar fate. What VENN now has that G4 didn’t is a plethora of social and streaming platforms to target, opening it up to a much wider global audience than G4’s local, linear channels could achieve.
“We’re definitely taking cues from G4, and also MTV,” Tantula said, noting that both channels were “extremely influential” to him growing up.
Yoshio Osaki, chief executive of games consulting firm IDG, said that VENN’s success will be largely determined by the specific content it can produce. A presence on Twitch and social media could be a double-edged sword, as VENN will be competing for eyeshare against countless other gaming and pop culture-focused accounts.
“There hasn’t really been a hugely successful analogue of this approach. The closest were OGN in Korea and G4,” Osaki said, referencing Asian esports broadcasting channel OGN which launched in 2000. “The devil is in the details. We have to look at the content they launch and how it maps against the distribution strategy.” Osaki added.
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Osaki noted that Su’s deal with the VENN could likely help it build an audience.
“Bernie Su is one of the most successful artists straddling the line across different media verticals, and he’s a leader in transmedia entertainment,” Osaki said.
G4 could return next year. On July 24, the media network released a cryptic video on its Twitter page that said, “We never stopped playing,” noting the year 2021. G4 didn’t immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment about its potential revival or plans to compete with VENN and various game streaming networks.
VENN will generate revenue through ads, and Tantula said it doesn’t have any plans yet to turn the platform into a subscription service similar to streaming competitors. “We are a content network, not streaming,” Tantula clarified.
Tantula said that VENN is working with “skeleton crews” at its main studio in Playa Vista and office in New York City, and added that most of the upcoming filming will be done predominantly remotely. Besides shows developed by Su, VENN will syndicate “Grey Area,” a call-in talk show hosted by former adult film star and “Entourage” actress Sasha Grey; a gaming pop culture show called “The Download” and “VENN Arcade Live,” a daily variety show focused on gaming, culture and fashion.
Eventually VENN might look to target in-person events but because of the coronavirus pandemic is primarily on building a community of viewers and online fanbase.
“I don’t think we can forget the human side of things,” Tantula said. “You have to balance the human element. People connect with people, and that’s entirely what we’re doing at VENN.”
17 Chill Video Games for Your Coronavirus Quarantine
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With the coronavirus pandemic killing so many people and creating tons of stress for everyone who has a soul, I've been turning to video games a lot lately. When I'm all frazzled and unable to sit still long enough for a movie or TV show, games require more focus and thus often work better at keeping me chill. So here's a list of games that are great for relaxing with while you're stuck at home for the foreseeable future.
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"Euro Truck Simulator 2" -
This game, which is available for PC and Mac, has been one of my favorites for a long time. I just turn on one of the European pop radio streams available in the game, and drive around. I pretty much only do jobs so I'll have a destination -- you could just not do them if you'd rather just wander.
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"SnowRunner" -
It's like "Euro Truck Simulator," but in places that mostly just have dirt roads that are covered in snow. The other night I spent an hour slowly pulling my truck out of a mud puddle and I loved every second of it.
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"Katamari" series -
These games are about rolling up garbage into a giant ball. They're cute, and nice, and upbeat. The most recent of these, "Katamari Damacy Reroll," is a remake of the original game for Switch and PC. If you've got an Xbox 360 or PS3 lying around you can play some of the older games too.
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"Flower" -
This game, which you can get as a digital download on any recent PlayStation device or on PC, is so chill and therapeutic. You're just a flower petal floating on the wind drifting around with other flower petals. It'll make you feel good.
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"Portal" series -
It's got a novel brand of puzzles, as well as a similar, though less crass, sense of humor to "Saints Row." The story is overall almost nihilistic, and it's got plenty of jokes about giant corporations exploiting people in horrible ways. It feels just about right.
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"The Sims" -
You probably know all about this series a this point, so let this simply serve as a reminder.
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"Star Wars: The Old Republic" -
This online "Star Wars" game is free for anybody with an ok gaming PC (it came out in 2011, so it's not super demanding), and it's very easy and chill to get into after nearly a decade of quality-of-life improvements. But the real reason you should play it is because it's got the best "Star Wars" stories from the past ten years.
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"Yakuza" series -
The main stories in these games are overwrought Japanese melodrama, but the real fun is the wacky shenanigans that gangster Kiryu Kazuma gets into in his every day life. That juxtoposition hits the sweet spot. You can get these for PlayStation or PC.
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"The Talos Principle" -
It's another 3D puzzle game in the vein of "Portal," but instead of cracking jokes it's more about musing about the nature of humanity, which has long since gone extinct. That may sound upsetting, but honestly it's pretty calming. It's like going to therapy, but in a puzzle game that's available on every platform, including mobile devices.
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"Cities: Skylines" -
It's kinda like Sim City, but I like this one much more just because it's generally less complicated and annoying. Even better: you can get it on PC, Mac, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, which is unusual for a game like this.
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"Viscera Cleanup Detail" -
So when you're playing a shooter game, you tend to leave a lot of corpses behind as you move to each new area. But in this game, which is available on Steam for PC and Mac, you're not the one doing the shooting -- you're the one who cleans up all the bodies and mops up and blood. Some people enjoy cleaning their homes to chill, and this is like that but you don't have to stand up.
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"The Stanley Parable" -
Nothing really happens in this game. You just wander around pressing buttons and try not to do what the narrator tells you to. It's a weird comedy meta-game of sorts, mocking standard video game storytelling. If you play a lot of video games, it'll amuse you. Available for PC and Mac.
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"Final Fantasy XV" -
Like all "Final Fantasy" games, the plot here is ludicrous. But the appeal of this game for me has always been as a sort of road trip simulator. You roll around the country with your bros, stopping every once in a while to get gas, kill some monsters, go camping, or climb to the top of a volcano to take down a giant bird so you can take its giant eggs and eat them with cup noodles. It's nice.
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"Goat Simulator" -
This may be the dumbest game ever made. It's not a real "simulator" in the normal sense -- it's actually just a goofy physics game where you like strap a jetpack on your goat or whatever. It's available on pretty much every platform you might use for gaming so you should probably just go for it.
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"Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone" -
It's just a silly PS4 rhythm game where you perform songs by the famous "vocaloid" Miku and her digital friends. There's plenty of excellent songs, and most of them come with stupidly amusing music videos. And unlike the other Miku games, this one doesn't bother with a plot or any kind of unlock progression. You just have all the 200+ songs from the start and there's nothing to try to force you to do songs you don't like.
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"Saints Row IV" -
I will admit that I've had a pretty tough time laughing at anything the last couple months (have we really been in lockdown that long?), but the ludicrous action comedy game "Saints Row IV" manages to hit the spot even so. Plus it has just enough of a dark tinge to fit this moment in history -- it's pretty much just "The Matrix," except it's aliens running the simulation after they blew up the Earth. Anyway it's funny in the right way for right now. You can grab this on any current game console or PC. For maximum chill, just turn down the difficulty setting and enjoy the madness.
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Any mobile puzzle game -
This is your reminder that any app store you have on your phone is absolutely full of free puzzle apps, like word searches or crosswords or whatever. My phone go-to is sudoku, but almost certainly you can get whatever your preferred puzzle time-waster is without having to pay anything.
There are plenty of relaxing video games you can enjoy while there’s nothing to do outside your home
With the coronavirus pandemic killing so many people and creating tons of stress for everyone who has a soul, I've been turning to video games a lot lately. When I'm all frazzled and unable to sit still long enough for a movie or TV show, games require more focus and thus often work better at keeping me chill. So here's a list of games that are great for relaxing with while you're stuck at home for the foreseeable future.
Samson Amore
Reporter • samson.amore@thewrap.com • Twitter: @Samsonamore