New Studio Sentient Play Announces K.O.M.R.A.D. Conversation Game for Apple Watch, iPhone, & iPad
When the Soviets abandoned a secret AI experiment in 1985 they forgot one thing: to turn off the power
AUSTIN, TEXAS – October 7, 2015 – Sentient Play, an independent developer of AI-driven “conversation games,” is announcing that K.O.M.R.A.D. will release soon for Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad. Designed by Brad Becker, former Chief Design Officer of IBM’s sophisticated AI platform Watson, K.O.M.R.A.D. gives an entertaining glimpse into how far artificial intelligence has come in the past 30 years… and where it could be headed.
Your phone or Apple Watch chimes with a text message from an unknown number. In broken English, you’re informed that your online accounts have been hijacked — passwords changed, identity stolen. You can get it all back in return for a simple task: hack into a Russian computer untouched since the 1980s and probe it for useful information. How, exactly? That’s where your people skills come in, because K.O.M.R.A.D. isn’t any ordinary computer — it’s an experimental Soviet artificial intelligence that doesn’t know the Cold War ended.
Playing out as a real-time conversation between you and the roused AI, K.O.M.R.A.D. is a psychological narrative game based on real history and real technology. What does a Cold War era computer know, what assumptions will it make, and how can you gain its trust? Find out through brief text exchanges delivered via push notifications over several days. If you manage to make K.O.M.R.A.D. your ally, you can use this powerful technology for good. And if you fail, well, the fallout might be nuclear.
Inspired by 1980s text adventures and gamebooks, conversation games such as K.O.M.R.A.D. will tell stories via interactive dialogues optimized for Apple Watch and other mobile devices, in short bursts convenient for playing on the go and with branching outcomes that tailor consequences to players’ choices. K.O.M.R.A.D. will be the first release from the newly formed Sentient Play, a lab Becker founded to explore the potential of interaction between people and advanced technology such as virtual reality, wearables, and AI.
“By simulating an experience of chatting with an advanced artificial intelligence, I want to give people a chance to play with the future,” says Becker, whose work on IBM Watson included design, user experience, and envisioning the AI’s potential applications. “But Sentient Play isn’t only here for fun and games. Technology is advancing ahead of our understanding of what people actually need and want from it. Games like K.O.M.R.A.D. will help us figure that out while we still have time to shape the technology.”
To receive alerts about K.O.M.R.A.D.‘s development and release plans, visit http://sentientplay.com or follow @SentientPlay on Twitter.
About Sentient Play
Sentient Play was founded in 2015 by Brad Becker, former Chief Design Officer of IBM Watson, to use games and prototyping to more quickly shape a people-centric design for future technology. The studio’s first conversation game, K.O.M.R.A.D., will release soon for Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad.
