How it works

A company is changing the way videogames are made by combining
old school retro games, such as RC racing cars and arcade pinball,
with the benefits of online accessibility and interaction.

How have they achieved such a feat? The company, called
Surrogate, lets you control these physical games in the real world
from anywhere via an online connection.

RELATED: NEW INTERFACE MAKES RACING
GAMES ACCESSIBLE TO BLING PEOPLE^[1]

How it works

The inventors at Surrogate^[2] hooked up the
inputs of real-life physical games — that are located in Finland,
Helsinki — to computers, allowing gamers to play them online via a
video feed.

It wasn’t easy. For the team’s first game, the RC cars, they had
to devise clever solutions to issues that came up in the process.
For example, as a sensor processes when the cars cross the finish
line, cheating gamers could reverse and cross the finish line in
two seconds and be registered as the winner.

Source: Courtesy of Surrogate

To overcome this, the team at Surrogate created their own image
recognition setup that recognizes the colors of separate cars and
keeps track of whether they actually traverse the whole
circuit.

They also devised ways to have cars autonomously drive to
wireless charging stations when they were close to running out of
battery. The technical achievement — and it really is quite
impressive — is detailed in the video below.

The feed of the game that is streamed online is taken using the
GoPro 7 Black, with an Elgato capture card. These were chosen to
provide an HD image with the least amount of latency possible.

We tried the RC racing game ourselves and the latency, while
more noticeable than your average online videogame, was
minimal.

On-screen startup videos, leader boards, and “finish” graphics
were nice touches that gave the real-life game that interactive
videogame feel.

Who are Surrogate?

Surrogate was created by a group of friends who worked on the
idea in their own free time over the course of two years before
deciding to go full time.

A year ago the company was running a demo from one of the team
member’s kitchen. In July of this year, however, they raised $2 million in funding from
investors including Initial Capital, Supercell,
ProFounders Capital, Brighteye Ventures, and Business
Finland.^[3]

Creation as part of the fun

The company has much more in store, as Stan Dmitriev, co-founder
and Surrogate CMO tells Interesting Engineering.

We talked to him from the company’s new space, which is full of
videogame memorabilia, and other toys, from the walls to the floor.
Ideas for new online real-life games we asked? 

The company is, in fact, aiming to release a new game every
month. The first of these after its real race cars is Real Batman ’66
pinball^[4], which is already
functional.

Dmitriev tells us that they release the ‘making of’ videos to
“inspire makers and engineers.”

And what of future accessibility for Surrogate’s games across
different platforms?

While Dmitriev tells us that the focus is currently on creating
new games, he says they will eventually look to build an app and
possibly integrate their platform into consoles.

A breath of fresh air for gaming?

In the future, 5G might let us see surgeons carrying out complex
procedures from miles away, or incredibly fast online gameplay.

In our current archaic 4G times, however, where latency is still
an issue, this is one of the most innovative, effective, and fun,
implementations we have seen of online remote control of physical
objects.

Whether it truly signals a change in the way games are consumed^[5]
remains to be seen. But we’re keen to see where this will evolve as
the concept, as well as internet speed and latency, improves.

After all, what could be more immersive than reality itself?