Bodycam: This FR studio made the most realistic video game in the world! Who are they ?

Game news Bodycam: This FR studio made the most realistic video game in the world! Who are they ?

Bodycam, the new Internet sensation

For a few days, a new bodycam FPS, soberly called “Bodycam” and presented as “the first ever ultra-realistic multiplayer FPS game with body camera” is available on the Steam platform in early access. A title so similar to another internet phenomenon called Unrecord that it sowed confusion among Internet users. And if the project has perhaps been dormant for some time in the minds of its creators, it seems clear that the enthusiasm generated around Unrecord has largely encouraged the two young French people from the Reissad Studio studio – founded in 2017 according to the Linkedin page – to speed up the development process and release. Bodycam is a fully multiplayer game (unlike Unrecord which is a single-player game), proposed by Luca and Leo, “two passionate French developers aged 17 and 20” as presented on the Steam page. The first of them was also the subject of massively relayed tweets last year, which congratulated his capacity for commitment at his young age. For the rest, the members of the studio are relatively discreet, most of the content of their page X being reposts from other accounts.

The proposal is an ultra-realistic experience that takes advantage of the latest features of Unreal Engine 5, to push the limits of photorealism. “Our mission is to provide an intense, immersive, team-based experience that stands out from other games in the genre. And we are very proud of the result !”, chants the studio. The promotion started at the end of last year and the confusion sown with Unrecord seem to have worked: the production’s discord server peaks at nearly 160,000 members. The game has even exceeded one million wishes on the Steam platform. And now that it’s out, it’s time for first reviews.

Halftone reception

For thirty euros, Bodycam currently offers a handful of game modes: Deathmatch for up to 10 players, Team Deathmatch (5vs5) and competitive Body Bomb mode (5vs5), with other modes to come after the release of the title, within a few years. A rather decent program for early access, but whose reception has been lukewarm. The game still had a low score of 66% positive reviews on Steam a few hours earlier, before going back up to 72% at the time of writing these lines. The first user comment highlighted notes the stunning rendering of the game, while deploring a severe lack of content:

Don saluste: We must emphasize the work… Just two people, it’s amazing! Now past the “wow” effect of the graphics, the sound and the rather unusual handling, but which did not bother me, on the contrary, after these few minutes, we quickly realize that we have not not much to sink your teeth into.
I got my money back, but if in 6 months, 1 year, the game greatly improves in terms of content, I would be ready to pay double.

Opinion qualified a few scrolls later by a certain AK, who mainly retains effective parts in the short term, still pointing out a few bugs:

I’m not one of the people who wants everything right away. People are never enough..
The game is super efficient, the modes are coherent and effective in the short term.
Other modes subsequently will necessarily be welcome.
For the moment yes there are bugs when launching the game, and in game search, but I don’t count it, because it has just been released.
At the beginning, you lose your bearings as an FPS player.. but it comes quite quickly..

At JV, our journalist Charlanmhg also tried his hand at the experience, also noting for his part a lack of tutorial which made it difficult in the game and a difficult handling: “In war as in war, players are dropped weapons in hand onto the battlefield without any explanation. Likewise, no customization seems to be possible at the moment”. And to add:

This hyper-realism is also felt in the games. Besides the difficulty, sometimes, in seeing your adversaries, it takes a certain time to take aim at them with the scope since it is very difficult to know where our weapon is pointing if you are not aiming. A single bullet is enough to put any individual out of action and it is sometimes impossible to know where it came from. There is no replay or live monitoring of what is happening on the pitch.

The same goes for pcgamer, which believes that the efforts put in place to develop a realistic game make it especially uncomfortable to play: “Your arms slowly follow your mouse movements rather than mirroring them, and aiming is super unstable”. And for many, this is another problem that torments them; an older, but equally popular post on the Bodycam talk page laments: “Sorry to say it, but did anyone really expect this rushed multiplayer copy of an upcoming single-player game to be good? This game was doomed by the rushed schedule, the studio which only has one unfinished game under its belt, and unoriginal graphics. I doubt this game will get a major update, since it was a money grab from the start.“

The controversial phenomenon

The phenomenon of “bodycam” gaming, as it is called, refers to a type of video game that uses a particularly immersive first-person perspective, simulating the experience of wearing a body camera. The technique creates a more realistic and, above all, sometimes more chaotic movement effect. From the player’s point of view, we therefore see tremors and rocking movements, but also photorealistic graphics, natural lighting effects, and very often high-intensity scenarios such as police interventions, military operations or rescue missions. When the first images of Unrecord were released, the approach also raised debates about ethics and developer responsibility ; On Twitter, for example, Trainwreck, co-owner of the Kick livestreams channel, came forward to say:

I’m going to get a lot of hate for this – but this level of realism in video games should be heavily moderated in *shooters* for anyone *under a certain age*, I hope parents do their job. This level of realism to shoot and kill makes me feel uneasy as if I were watching a real escape from a military or police operation. The clear distinction between true and false is necessary, but this level of realism, in my opinion, gives real credibility to the nonsense that politicians have spouted for years about video games conditioning young people to lose the sense of empathy towards trends or violent situations.

Discomfort shared at the time by the streamer Wartek, although well accustomed to shooters, who declared: “I don’t think it’s a good thing that a game, where the goal is to kill people, is so close to reality”. Axel Dauvergne, head of marketing at Playdigious, nevertheless accused the game’s content of being the heart of the problem: “The problem is not the photorealism here, it is the subject of the game attached to it. You’re a cop who kills people without warning, you’re not investigating there”. So far, Bodycam doesn’t seem to suffer from any of these controversies, with users more praising its impressive sets. The production does not introduce any storyline context, the player being directly dropped into a lobby, as in any other popular multi FPS like Call of Duty. Regardless, the movement of photo-realistic bodycam games seems more and more palpable. A few hours after Unrecord’s announcement, another bodycam game caused a sensation on the web: Paranormal Tales, a horror title whose images in the new trailer are so realistic that they could make you break out in a cold sweat. Halfway between Blair Witch and The Conjuring, the game offers a found-footage experience with image distortions and low brightness. An outing that will also surely get people talking.