Full-motion video (FMV) games are an interesting breed, displaying action with pre-recorded footage. The genre dates back toarcade titles likeDragon’s Lairin 1983, known for its traditional hand-drawn animation by Don Bluth. However, more people likely associate the term “FMV” with games utilizing live-action footage, such asNight Trap(1992) andCritical Path(1993); or others that mix gameplay with live cutscenes likeCommand & Conquer(1995). Though FMV has fallen off in popularity, games likeNot For Broadcastkeep the spirit alive.
NotGames co-creator and director Jason “Jay” Orbaum said FMV often works against a game because it “plunges sets into the uncanny valley,” particularly in titles where players are meant to be in the world likeCommand & Conquer. He feelsNight Trapset a better standardby supplementing its limited capabilities with camp, but said the best way to attempt this format is not pretending footage is something it’s not. Game Rant spoke to Orbaum and CEO Andrew “Andy” Murray about NotGames' approach to FMV, and how it was informed by the team’s wider experience in entertainment.
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How NotGames Came Together - The First Time
The unapologetically British NotGames is “far from your traditional dev company” according to Murray, as its core creative team — Orbaum, Murray, Alex Paterson, and Denis Sewell — have roots intelevision, film, and theater. They met through Orbaum’s production company doing work for a youth theater charity, around when Murray attended classes at Nottingham Trent University in the early 2010s. According to Murray’s LinkedIn, NotGames was founded to save their charity, with eight or nine people working out of Orbaum’s lounge to createNotGTA5.
As its name suggests,NotGTA5is a satire of Rockstar’sGrand Theft Autoseries (renamedNotTheNameWeWantedin April 2018 after experiencing a DMCA takedown three years prior). It’s aSnakeclone with hand-drawn graphics and acappella sound meant to look like it was scribbled on a beer napkin. “It turned out people just thought it was sh*t,” Orbaum said. Even though their joke didn’t land, it gained momentum thanks to theSteam Greenlight program.NotGTA5launched on the storefront in July 2015 and reached the front page.
Each $2.99 USD sale went to charity, but its success made the team feel like it could do something bigger. NotGames spent “a really fun week” putting togetherThe Kickstarter Avoidance Album, a comedy album that ultimately made nothing because Orbaum said, “OSTs are rubbish for money, like most music.” Its next effort wasNotCoDin May 2016: A more in-depth project with the same hand-crafted conceit satirizingCall of Duty; meant to release in episodes with increasingly better graphics but the same gameplay.
When that didn’t sell its future episodes were scrapped, leading to “the black years” in which Orbaum went on benefits because of personal debts incurred fundingNoTCoD. The team went its separate ways, with Murray “selling his soul” to work in corporate sales at the software company PatSnap.
Not For Broadcast’s Tough Elevator Pitch
Paterson came up with the idea behindNot For Broadcastand brought it to Orbaum in 2017.Prototypingwas bankrolled by Murray in 2018, with the core four members of NotGames taking on extra help like George Burchmore as a programmer.
Much of the original coding was done by Orbaum, an eclectic freelancer, musician, and writer who began learning Unity to supplement his experience with Eidos in the 1990s (then Domark Software), and later the VR arcade developer Virtuality. The prototype was shopped around, andtinyBuildcame on as publisher so that work could begin in earnest in 2019. Orbaum credits CEO Alex Nichiporchik for assuring his team thatNot For Broadcastwould remain independent; he was willing to take the risk of seeing whether the “crazy piece of art” could be made, regardless of profit.
“Clearly tinyBuild are absolutely mental, they gave us folk with very little games experience way too much money to make something crazy and unique. They weren’t scared, even though one of the worst things with this game is how to describe it.”
Between 10 levels chock-full of irreverentMonty Python-esque humor, and references to figures ranging from Gordon Ramsey to Alex Jones, the “incident system” (a suggestion from tinyBuild) written by Murray shows how citizens are affected by decisions benefiting the government, resistance, or other underlying factors.
People can earn over a dozen epilogues out of multiple endings, each reflecting the way a player acts — following their bias, according to Orbaum. About eight full-time employees work at NotGames, but over 300 cast and crew were hired to complete its live, modular productions. On January 12,Not For Broadcastwas awarded aGuinness World Recordfor most FMV footage in a video game, clocking in at 42 hours, 57 minutes, and 52 seconds. “We like to joke that we made it twice as hard on ourselves because we decided to make a TV show and then a video game off that TV show,” Murray said.
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Long-Form FMV With Not For Broadcast
Adding onto the risky nature ofNot For Broadcast’s expensive production was the fact it released episodically. The first episode dropped in Early Access on July 29, 2025, and then Episode 2 came out the next year. Between them a bonus “Lockdown” episode released in June 2020, with actors filming from home to help everyone “desperate for work” afterCOVID-19 lockdownshit the UK — three days before a scheduled round of principal shoots.
Episode 3 officially launched today, tying up loose ends. Orbaum and Murray said there will never be a true sequel so that, fundamentally, any ending a player receives is canon because of their choices. The only other option would be aMass Effect-style import systemfor its many epilogues. Something tangential is still in the cards, as Murray said they still have stories to tell in theNot For Broadcastuniverse, but if anything it might look more like a spiritual sequel akin toBioShock Infinite.
Not For Broadcastfollows in the footsteps of modern FMV games like2015’sHer Story, which Murray said paved the way for games to be “less of a joke” as with predecessors likeNight Trap. He believes the key to seeing FMV in a different light is using video as video, and Orbaum saidNot For Broadcastleverages “TV as its spell, not trying to pretend it’s something else.” Capturing analog equipment was the main driver behind its 1980s setting, and this benefited its narrative by creating a “more organic” story devoid of social media and the Internet, one where it could avoid trappings like lower thirds and digital transitions while emphasizing the original importance of TV as a “trusted news source.”
While Orbaum and Murray can’t discuss their “fantastic plans,” ultimately NotGames wants to stick with its FMV niche where it feels comfortably dug in between the otherwise impractical goals of huge TV productions likeNetflix’sThe Witcherand professional AAA game development. Going that route was a “no-brainer” given the teams' theatrical backgrounds, but Orbaum said it gave them a particular arena to hopefully leave an impact.
“It was the place we thought we could add a little something. We could have just made another cash-grabbing microtransaction clone. It’s valid to make a nice, addictive little phone game, but I don’t know … I - and we as artists - want to be different.”
Not For Broadcastis available now on PC.
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