Over by the pool, a slap fight breaks out. Two cast members, no longer content to trade insults, are flailing at each other with the fervor of a schoolyard fight. Camera screen bouncing, the producer sprints over to get footage.
It’s 1999, and players are producing the latest season of the hot reality show, The Crush House. That job includes picking the cast, capturing the drama, and above all satisfying the ever-changing audience to keep the show on the air. Fail, and you’re canceled, in the most traditional sense of the word.
Until 2024, the role of “reality TV producer” was a largely unexplored video game hero. The Crush House ends that trend. Part satire, part love letter to the indomitable industry of reality TV, the “thirst person shooter,” which is expected to launch later this year, is director Nicole He’s way of exploring the genre in a fun, yet critical way.
Crush House is also not the only reality-TV-tinged title to make waves this week. Content Warning, a co-op horror game about filming your friends to try and go viral, pulled in more than 200,000 concurrent players after an April Fools’ Day launch.
“When people talk about reality TV—I will say men in particular, the way men talk about reality TV—there isn't this full-hearted endorsement of it,” He says. They watch it with their girlfriends, or call it a guilty pleasure: something to watch ironically. “I think this is true in general for a lot of [media-considered] ‘women’s interests.’ It’s not taken seriously, even though people engage with this stuff very critically.”
