Replay: Susan Cummings (Tiny Rebel) on AR-First Storytelling and City-Scale Games with Wallace and Gromit

Replay of an interview originally published in September 2021:

The Guest

Susan Cummings is the Managing Director of Tiny Rebel Games and a founder of Fictioneers. Susan and her team were awarded a major UK grant for Augmented Reality storytelling, which led to "Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up." This effort was followed by the release this summer of "Wallace & Gromit: Fix Up the City", an ambitious city-scale AR game that takes place in San Francisco, Bristol, and Cardiff.

Including her work at Tiny Rebel, Susan has spent more than 20 years in game development and publishing. She was a key player at the origins of Rockstar games and held vital roles as the VP of Publishing and VP of Business Development at 2K games and parent, Take Two Interactive.

The Conversation

In this conversation, Susan shares insight into the origins of Grand Theft Auto and some other big deals and projects in the early days of console and PC games. She goes on to talk about the challenges in telling compelling stories with AR.

We also talk about some of the lessons learned in making compelling and accessible city-scale AR-based games for mobile and the challenges of “immersion” in see-through AR glasses.

(A quick note of disclosure: I’m an investor in Fantsmo, one of the partners Susan mentions when describing her efforts at Fictioneers.)

Jason McDowallAR Cloud, storytelling, games, consumer, mobile AR, content creation