For most people at Nottingham’s GameCity Squared festival, video games were just something they played at home, transported to exotic and fantastic worlds through their TV sets. GameCity ensured this was not the case at their festival though, instead opting to put players within the game itself, rather than simply handing them a controller.

The week was host to ‘Live’ gaming events, based on the popular games Crysis and Left 4 Dead. For two days of the festival, the main tent in Old Market Square was transformed into a tropical island, occupied by gun-wielding soldiers and home to a hut containing the player’s objective: a laptop. The queue for Crysis: Live was never less than an hour long, and with good reason. Each player got to strap on the legendary nanosuit from the game and play as Nomad; sneaking across the island towards their goal. The secret was to remain ‘invisible’ – a microphone on the foot of each player amplified the sound made by movements and alerted the blindfolded guards to their position. Out of the almost one hundred and fifty players that had tried by Friday morning, just five had managed to bypass the guards and secure the laptop. Festival director Iain Simons said: ‘We were a bit worried about Crysis because of how big it is, but it’s been great. We’ve had a boss this year and the whole thing takes about twenty minutes to play.’

Crysis: Live in action

The game itself was designed and run by Crytek UK’s Narrative Designer, Rob Yescombe, who has worked on such titles as Haze as scriptwriter. ‘The reason we’re doing this is because Crytek has just opened a studio in Nottingham. We’re not selling anything, we’re not promoting anything... we just want to announce we’re here.  The games industry to a large degree grew out of the bedrooms of the Midlands, and so a lot of that talent is here so being here we can tap into and make good with it.’ In regards to the money Crytek UK spent on the game, Rob said: ‘It was pretty pricey. If you’re gonna recreate Crysis in Nottingham it’s going to cost a lot of money. It was into the many thousands.’

Rob Yescombe with his zombie horde

Whilst Crysis: Live was an incredible feat of technology and stealth play, Yescombe’s greatest achievement was unquestionably Left 4 Dead: Live. A twist on the gameplay style he used for last year’s Resident Evil: Live (where he made six people cry with fear), Rob had players entering into a dark office complex armed only with a torch and a mission to retrieve the vaccine against the zombie infection. With no other survivors to help them, players had to cautiously make their way through the zombie infested complex, only to be stormed and chased by a mass horde of blood-drenched infected at the climax. Once again the success rate was low; many people being swamped by the horde as they attempted to unlock the final door. The few victors became minor celebrities at GameCity’s finale party. 

The success of the Live games at this year’s GameCity has only encouraged Rob to become even more ambitious for next year: ‘Maybe over the next couple of years, each time we do Crysis: Live we’ll do a different suit mode. Next year I’m thinking about maybe doing Maximum Strength. I won’t detail what my plans are, but it’s gonna be wild!’