RESEARCH | the infinite game
During 2024, Rocio Ayllón, Artistic Director of Persona Collective, led a research project funded by Arts Council England's DYCP programme, exploring how video game mechanics could merge with immersive theatre. Working with creative technologist Sami Sabik, the project tested new forms of audience participation, interactive storytelling, and responsive environments.
The research culminated in The Infinite Game, a live video game prototype across an East London industrial estate, transformed into a sci-fi world inspired by quantum mechanics and simulation theory. In 1969, an experiment linking quantum computing and consciousness went wrong, and the research team vanished, leaving one survivor. Decades later, reality fractures for a few London citizens, including the returning survivor, as participants piece together the fragments of a mystery they may already be part of.
EXPERIMENT | the infinite game
Audiences became active participants in an RPG-style narrative, selecting character skills through an interactive website before entering the world. Inside, they encountered live performers as NPCs, interactive props, and responsive environments that reacted to their actions. Each decision triggered branching storylines, side quests, and hidden discoveries.
Tested with industry professionals and diverse audiences, The Infinite Game showed how first-person, participatory storytelling transforms engagement. By inhabiting the narrative and making choices as their characters, participants experience complex ideas through lived emotion and shared experience, discovering meaning through their actions. Storytelling becomes a lived journey, where agency and immersion create understanding that is both personal and collective.
PLAYER EXPERIENCES
Sam Harding, musician
The moment I left the first part, after I left the bouncer and the street opened up to reveal the dice-players in the foreground and NPC’s wandering around down the street ahead, gave me a sense of exploration and what was to come. Felt like the classic moment in RPG games where you leave the tutorial area, a dark dungeon or cave, and see the big open world stretched ahead of you. Referencing Oblivion, Elden Ring (...)
Terry Fletcher, scaffolder
I was invited to join this experience without really knowing what to expect. When Rocio asked me if I liked theatre or video games, I said yes, I used to play video games when I was younger, but not anymore, you know. When I arrived and realised the experience was just me, walking through this streets, I pass every day for work (Pride Scaffolders), it felt completely uncanny, as if I’d stepped into a fantasy world. I really enjoyed the story and how my character felt like someone in a video game. I could become someone else, talking to characters, exploring every room and corridor, looking for clues, it was so different from what I thought theatre would be. I told my family and friends about it, and now we all want to come together for the next one, thank you so much this was a very special night.
Olivia Rook, teacher
This was my first time going to see immersive theatre. I’d never had the chance before because of mobility limitations, and this industry usually doesn’t provide good access. At the start, I was really nervous. A game master gave me the skill I got from doing the mini intro video game at home, I could play with time! Rewind an action, change the course of a scene, and navigate to different locations at my own pace. The scene where I suddenly found myself in an old lab with scientists running an experiment, OMG! They connected me to a machine and said my consciousness was going to be reviewed. Their conversation while I was lying in the bed made me really feel like I was part of the experiment. So many feelings, I was scared but also amazed. It felt like being inside a dream; I actually felt like a scientist!, They also talked about quantum stuff, and I kept thinking about it for weeks after, reading more about it
Brian Schwab, design master, The Lego group
I felt empowered and free to explore. I felt wonder at the amazing location, the NPC's were incredible. I loved the interactive props, specially the moment I had a conversation with a retro machine!, really would have loved it to go further
THE
TEAM
Special Thanks to:
Print Outlet (Abraham) - Location space
Mission Coffee Works (Rob) - Location space
The Gulls (Music band) - Sound equipment
RARA (RARA) - Co-operative workshop/studio
space and creative collective.
Lead Artists
Rocío Ayllón - Artistic Director & Researcher
Sami Sabik - Creative Technologist
Video & photo documentation
Edmund Fraser - Photographer
Finn Boxer - Cinematographer
Advisory Team
Don Meadows - Design Master (The LEGO group)
Ivan Isakov - Valkyrie Industries
Cast & Creators
Patrick Vaughan
Sam Ripley
Alessandro Perroni
Lucrezia Paci
Nicole Ormerod
India Jean-Jacques
David Hyatt
Austin Hubbard
Emily George
Lucas Bartholomew
Jasper Ajoupa
Jocelyn Affleck