Artificial: Factions is an innovative interactive sci-fi series that airs exclusively on Twitch. Now in its fourth season, the show follows a competition between two rival tech CEOs, Zander Cruz played by Dante Basco (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and Sebastian Wu played by Stephen Chang (Captain Marvel), as they race to capture a rare piece of technology. Viewers can join the factions, pick a side and help their teams win the heist by voting and using Twitch channel points.
Basco sat down with Screen Rant to talk about the unique experience making Artificial: Factions and what he enjoys about acting in the interactive, scripted series.
Screen Rant: Artificial: Factions is this super innovative series going on right now on Twitch. And you play one of these lead characters. So explain this to me, how does this work?
Dante Basco: Yes, it's my second season doing it, and I joined the cast last season. It's on Twitch, which for people that don't know, it's a live-streaming platform that was originally a lot of video gamers live-streaming their games and millions of people watching their gaming. I also have a Twitch channel where I do gaming, called Honor Society, so I was really hip to the platform. And now with Artificial: Factions, Bernie Su, the creator and director of the show, created the first scripted show, narrative show, for this live-streaming platform. Basically, it's us acting, doing a scripted show live.
I don't know if you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books, but it's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. We're there, but because we're doing it live like theater and it's going out to the people live, there's all these things that happen during the show where the audience at large, sometimes up to 20, 30,000 people watching, they do polls that help drive what we're doing. Are we answering positively or negatively towards this? Are we going to go with this girl? We can go with this guy? What's going to happen? So I think somewhere on three or four times during the episode, you as an audience [member] directly will affect the storyline.
Also, when my character Zander, when I first came on the show last year, we had a character-building episode where the fans directly helped create the character. The name of the character, the personality traits, catchphrases, different things, mysticism. So it's a very interactive way of making a project.
I think they've even gone to places where there's an A.I. where they kind of help create the music with the tone of the music that the fans want to hear at any given time during the telling of the story. And then also, I think there are parts where some of the fans have written lines that they incorporated in the scripts, which is wild. I mean, it gets really stressful for the actor. I can't lie. Sometimes because we're learning.
I was going to say!
Dante Basco: We're learning not just the regular script. We're probably learning not two full scripts, but maybe at least a script and a half because there are scenes that if we know, we have to rehearse them both ways. So we don't know which way it's going to go until the moment it goes. So we have to go, "Oh, are we going this way or that way?" And then they're in your ear going, "Okay, we're going with Scene 22-B instead of 22-A." And so Scene 22-A that you rehearsed all week is gone. Never going to get that again. Straight to B.
So that becomes a very tricky thing. But as an actor, I started this during the pandemic, and so being able to act during the pandemic and do something new and exciting, it's kind of old school but new in the same way. It's theater, but it's on a new platform. So I'm having a great time. The cast has been wonderful, and I look forward to acting with the cast this season.
It's gotta be really fun to keep challenging yourself, but what a high-pressure situation that has to be sometimes.
Dante Basco: If anybody out there knows Twitch or knows live-streaming, we all know that there's lags. Everything you think that's going to happen, something can definitely go wrong. It's live. That the computer's lagging, the camera's not working correctly in the moment, you got to keep going on. Like someone's cat just walks through the screen, all kinds of stuff that's happening. We're just like you at home live-streaming. We're just doing a story as we're doing it, so it becomes quite entertaining on many different levels.
New episodes of Artificial: Factions air live every Thursday at 5 PM PST / 8 PM EST only on Twitch.
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