Netflix launches new star studded horror video game

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KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report 5 min 2 speakers 2 chapters transcribed 22 hours ago
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What new horror game is Netflix launching and who are the celebrity voice actors?

Holly Quan 0:00
time for our daily tech and business report netflix is diving into the world of video games the streaming platform is gearing up to release its first original horror game it's called unhinged and will take players through an abandoned apartment during a hurricane for more we're joined on the kcbs ring central news line by bloomberg's jason schreier jason thanks for the time
Jason Schreier 0:22
hey holly thanks so much for having me
Holly Quan 0:24
okay so you there are actually some celebrities that are voicing some of the characters right
Jason Schreier 0:29
Yeah, so this game, which is called Unhinged, has a pretty solid cast. It's got Zoe Kravitz, it's got Sadie Sink from Stranger Things, and it has Troy Baker, who's not a famous actor, but a famous voice actor in the video game industry.
Holly Quan 0:45
So why is this significant for Netflix to release its own horror game? To what extent are interactive games a big part of their platform?
Jason Schreier 0:56
Yeah, Netflix has been dabbling in the video game world for a few years now. And about two years ago, they hired a new president named Alon Tiskan, who came from Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, and he came in with a new strategy that was It had multiple parts. One of them was to make party games like Boggle Party, which has been fairly popular on the service, and also to make narrative games, games that can kind of rival the stories that its shows and movies tell. And this is their first kind of what they call a coming out party in that genre.
Holly Quan 1:32
What does this say about the demographics and who they're shooting for?
Jason Schreier 1:36
Yeah, well, Netflix, I think like a lot of content creators and entertainment makers these days, Netflix sees their biggest competition not just as the other streaming services, but also as YouTube and TikTok and Fortnite. And so what they want to do is essentially keep people within their ecosystem as much as possible doing things that aren't just watching, but also engaging with interactive entertainment as it has become popular. so popular, especially among younger audiences.
Holly Quan 2:04
Okay, so basically I'm on Netflix. Why do I want to go anywhere else? I can just play a game here.
Jason Schreier 2:09
Exactly. And the goal of this game, Unhinged, which is pretty small scale, it takes less than an hour to play through, which is much, much smaller than most video games that you play these days. But the goal of this is to kind of become this gateway for people to get hooked on the idea of Netflix games, and maybe play some other games. Maybe discover that Netflix has a bunch of games on the service. So it's really trying to court people with this smaller scale horror experience.
Holly Quan 2:36
Okay. So you can get through it in an hour. It's not one of those things where you get really frustrated and go, okay, forget this.
Jason Schreier 2:41
Less than an hour. I played it all last week in a hotel room in New York City alongside the developers. And it's really pretty simple. Anyone can play it. You just control it with your phone by just kind of tapping on your phone. You hold your phone up like a flashlight and point it around at the screen to kind of look at different things. And you move around just by pressing a single button on your phone. It's very simple, very easy. I would say as for the story itself, I mean, it's pretty short. You're not going to be binging an entire weekend's worth of episodes here, but it's pretty cool.
Holly Quan 3:15
Is it what you would call sort of a gateway game, like something that would be able to, you know, blend a parent and a child together? It
Jason Schreier 3:26
could be.
Holly Quan 3:27
I think
Jason Schreier 3:28
the simplicity of it and the way how the controls are very intuitive. So it's very easy to imagine someone who's never played a video game in their lives. picking it up and playing it and completing it. So it definitely could be the type of game that gets people thinking, oh, so this is what games like. You get to control the experience. That's pretty cool. I would love to see what else is out there. What else is on the Netflix service? I think Netflix's big challenge will be following up on this with maybe Meteor, maybe games with more content, maybe games that can take people longer and give people a more in-depth experience.

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