Description
Good morning, unpaid intangible automatons!
You are Nielsenauts, the artificial intelligence we’ve designed to create unscripted, budgetless entertainment in incredibly realistic CGI worlds. This groundbreaking process does away with actors, writers, and production crews, replacing them with disposable virtual workers, like yourselves! Thanks to this new form of tireless, free labor, profit margins now exceed anything in television history. So get to work, and work fast, as these next fifteen minutes will determine the rest of your lives—literally!
Nielsenauts: Make TV and Die! is a multiplayer, improv-based dark comedy RPG. In this (unfortunately) prescient party game, a group of artificial, extremely disposable digital workers must continually produce 100% budget-less, 100% exciting entertainment… or face deletion.
Gameplay takes place in 15-minute “episodes” of performance, each scored against Market Data Buzzwords (what the audience wants) and Executive Orders (what the suits want). Nielsenauts both write and perform their work, live. To add to the chaos, there are hundreds of possible (nonsensical, extremely specific) Buzzwords and Executive Orders but only limited opportunities – commercial breaks – to truly confer with one another.
Direction changes are arbitrary and occur while an episode is airing. This means final scores (quite unfairly) reflect all demands, new and original. Of course, for maximum return, your show’s Investors require nonstop improvement in quality, so minimum passing scores increase over the course of your game.
Can you create an algorithmically perfect piece of television? Or will your heartfelt apology episode, the one where you say you’re sorry for the controversial thing you did last episode, fall flat? Eventually, all Nielsenauts will lose this game, but at least it will be funny.
- 20-page, half letter, saddle stitched zine with color cover and b&w interior
- Note: Knave of Cups knows – as should you – that “AI” (in real life, not in this game) is absolutely not alive
