Nielsenauts: Make TV and Die!

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!

What is Nielsenauts?

Nielsenauts: Make TV and Die is a freeform roleplaying/improv game where players assume the role of artificial intelligences trying to create successful TV in real time episodes of 15 minutes each. At the end of each episode, shows are scored according to arbitrary and ever-changing Market Data Buzzwords and Executive Orders. If the group fails to achieve the minimum score for an episode, the show is canceled and the artificial intelligences are deleted. If nielsenauts wish to prolong their existence, they must demonstrate their value to the corporation by making shows that satisfy the Audience and the Executives, each successful episode granting 15 more minutes of life.

Nielsenauts: Make TV and Die features:

• A collaborative improv environment where anything they can imagine is reality
• Fast-paced hijinks as they try to satisfy the increasingly strict and strange demands of the Executives and Audience
• A word from our sponsors, the only chance the characters have to plan during the show
• 100 Market Data Buzzwords and executive orders to guide your episodes
• And more!

Check out this Example of Play Video:

The Team:

Written by Chris Ramdeen
Editing by Jert!
Layout and Design by Sam Sorenson
Cover art by Yomiya

20 pages, half letter saddle stitched zine, color cover, B&W interior