How opportunity for improvisation is helping TV’s most beloved gameshow work in VR
Videogames based on TV shows don’t have a great track record, especially when the original property is a gameshow. When we put this to Scallywag Arcade’s Niall Taylor, currently responsible for making a videogame based on a TV gameshow, we’re surprised at how quickly he agrees. “Oh, a hundred per cent. I mean, just licensed videogames [as a whole], there are some fantastic ones now, but if you enter that realm, there’s generally a bias against you right from the start.”
With Taskmaster VR, though, Taylor and team have the benefit of “unlimited access to the behind-the-scenes of the show”. They’ve visited on filming days, taken 3D scans of the Taskmaster House, and picked the brains of its production staff, including creator Alex Horne. But what really sets this project apart, in in Taylor’s mind, is the source material he’s working with: “I keep telling Alex: he is a game designer.”
The show’s core is, essentially, a compilation of minigames. Horne is primarily designing them to be watched rather than played, but his finest work leaves room for improvised solutions, in the manner of those found in Tears Of The Kingdom. ‘Place these three exercise balls on the yoga mat on the top of that hill’, to pick an example from the second series, isn’t that far from a Korok Seed challenge. Indeed, Taylor cites Zelda as an inspiration. “We are not that ambitious,” he adds. “But we talked about a lot of games in that vein.” Another influence: 2017’s Prey. “It’s an immersive sim with a fairly linear way through it… unless you shoot the Gloo Gun through a letterbox, and hit a computer screen with a Nerf dart to unlock the door – and suddenly you’ve sequence-skipped six hours of the game.” We’d like to see Greg Davies debate that one in the studio.
For all the similarities, however, Taskmaster’s games are designed to be single-use – a challenge when adapting into a medium that generally relies on repeatable loops. After convincing production company Avalon Television that Scallywag was the right developer for the job, this was the next challenge for Taylor and team. “The initial pitch, he explains, was, ‘Everybody wants to be on Taskmaster – how do we make that happen?’”
“Initially, we were talking about a Jackbox-style party game, which seems like an obvious answer. And then you realise how heavily edited Taskmaster is.” For TV, each contestant’s attempt is cut down into a neat VT package, which wouldn’t be possible in a live multiplayer setting. Watching someone else complete a task for five straight minutes could grow tedious.
“Johnny Vegas is funny. Johnny Vegas has been funny for 30 years. He can make rolling a
