Flipping the script: How Operative Games is reinventing interactive storytelling with AI

• Operative Games is creating persistent AI characters that interact with users through real phone calls and messages.
• Their Story Engine inverts traditional screenwriting – human writers focus on creating detailed character backgrounds and histories rather than scripting dialogue, with the AI handling real-time conversations.
• The experience is structured as seasons that adapt to the player's pace and abilities, with characters remaining accessible even after the game episode concludes.

Imagine AI characters that you can call and email, and who have a “life” outside of the game world (or perhaps, who turn your whole world into a game). That's what startup Operative Games is building with its Story Engine.

Our colleagues at AI Gamechangers interviewed the Operative Games founders during Pocket Gamer Connects San Francisco last month. The AI Gamechangers newsletter focuses on the use of AI in games, particularly where AI facilitates brand-new gaming experiences rather than just automating existing jobs.

Jon Snoddy, former Disney R&D head, and Jon Kraft, Pandora’s founding CEO, who launched their new venture in March, spoke about bringing emotionally resonant AI characters to interactive storytelling.

"What this is about is creating characters that are like real people – we want them to feel as real and complete as possible," explains Snoddy.

Characters persist between episodes, creating a living story world. You’ll call characters – or they’ll message you – and you’ll get glimpses of a spy story unfolding in the world around you. Try it: you can call Enya at the number on the website.

"When the story is over, those people still exist! You could still reach out and speak to them whenever you want," says Kraft. 

Flipped on its head

The experience lasts a season of “episodes” (you’ll subscribe to a season of eight to 12 episodes at a time), and the AI can react to your pace and ability.

What’s interesting is that the process flips traditional screenwriting on its head. Operative is working with human screenwriters and actors, people with Hollywood experience, and Jon Snoddy is quick to point out that their familiar skills will be used possibly even more than in linear storytelling.

“It's fascinating when you think about what a writer does [for TV],” says Snoddy. “They come up with an idea; they come up with a character. They start sketching out that character, thinking about where they came from. They start laying out storylines.

"There's all this detail: ‘He grew up in New Jersey, and his father was drunk, and his mother…’ and they create all the stuff around it that informs the script. But they hand in dialogue and some stage notes, and then they're done! All that other stuff they made goes away.

"Here, we don't need the dialogue. All that stuff that they used to throw away is the very stuff that they turn in now.”

Snoddy describes the magical moment when a writer first interacted with his own creation: "I handed a phone number to our head writer... And now he's calling a character that he wrote and talking to him on the phone." 

Read the full Q&A, in which they talk about why AI means the time is right to try storytelling like this and future plans they have for the Story Engine, over on AI Gamechangers.