Are You Watching Or Playing? Nikolas Gekko And The Evolution Of Interactive Worlds

Violence has become the most exported language of modern entertainment. In 2000, the Japanese cult film Battle Royale turned mass killing into a cinematic experiment. Twenty years later, the same last-man-standing logic dominates gaming through PUBG and Fortnite, where hundreds of millions fight for digital survival every day. What began as a film genre has become a gaming phenomenon so pervasive that “countless games, along with hit TV shows such as Squid Game, bear the stamp of Battle Royale’s influence,” as The New Yorker noted, calling it “one of the dominant paradigms in entertainment.”

With the battle royale completing its cultural loop from cinema to games and back again, the key transformation is taking place at the level of visual design. Our journal turned to the accomplished concept artist Nikolas Gekko to explore how games and films have merged through technology and narrative structure, and what this evolution reveals about the future of interactive storytelling and design.

As a near-perfect example of how cinema and gaming are merging into a single expressive form, we found Off the Grid - a dystopian cyberpunk battle royale directed by Neill Blomkamp, the filmmaker behind District 9, Elysium, and Chappie, known for turning sci-fi into social provocation. He describes the project as a “live-action death match,” a brutal TV show disguised as a game, where fighters amputate their own limbs for cybernetic upgrades, turning bodies into modular weapons and violence into spectacle streamed from inside the match itself. The tone leans into sharp sci-fi satire in the spirit of RoboCop. 

At its core, the project operates as a satirical model of a society in which violence, technology, and entertainment exist within a single closed circuit. “The narrative in the game references pretty much everything in the real world,” Blomkamp said in an interview with RollingStone.

However, a dystopian arena with its own politics, culture, and visual identity does not emerge solely from code. To bring this world to life, Blomkamp needed a master world-builder. That search led him to Nikolas Gekko, a rare hybrid specialist and winner of the global “Star Wars Reimagined” 2015 contest, organised by CGSociety and CGPlus, which draws thousands of artists worldwide and is closely followed by leading film and game studios.

The choice made perfect sense. Before stepping into large-scale art direction, Gekko had already contributed to several flagship franchises. In 2019, he worked as a Concept Artist at 343 Industries on Halo Infinite. From 2020 to 2022, he served as a Senior Concept Artist at EA DICE, contributing to Battlefield 2042 and Battlefield 6, where he helped shape hero operators, faction identity assets, and character development for key figures such as Escharum and Tovarus.

“When I joined Off the Grid, my focus centred on building a cohesive visual system where cinematic framing functions inside live gameplay,” says Nikolas Gekko. “I shaped the visual identity of the world, the environments, and the overall tonal language so that the story unfolds through movement and player choice. Every location works as a story-driven space and a tactical arena at the same time. Having previously worked with Neill on film projects, we carried that same cinematic worldbuilding logic into the game format, directly adapting it into an interactive structure. This process showed how technology now allows film grammar to operate directly inside interactive structure.”

Blomkamp personally invited Gekko to the project as an art director based on his portfolio and professional reputation. At Gunzilla Games, a AAA-studio with a team of over 250 specialists, Nikolas leads the artistic direction of a large-scale cyberpunk universe of Off the Grid. His role spans the formation of the game’s world, characters, and environments, as well as the overall visual aesthetics and tonal framework of the project. In 2024, the studio attracted $70 million in funding to develop the GunZ ecosystem and advance the Off the Grid project, and in 2025, the game triumphed at the GAM3 Awards, sweeping five major categories: Best Esports Game, Best Action Game, Best Shooter, Best Multiplayer Game, and the coveted Game of the Year, including for its distinctive world architecture by Gekko.

In order to refine the game's cinematic dimension, Gekko’s visual concept work extends into major Hollywood productions and collaborations with global digital art leaders such as Jama Jurabaev, Vitaly Bulgarov, and Ben Mauro. His film credits include The Gray Man for Netflix, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts for Paramount Pictures, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods for Warner Bros., placing his work at the direct intersection of cinematic production and game-world design.

“My goal always centres on designing worlds where the player reads the story through space itself,” Gekko says. “When visual design, narrative structure, and interactivity move in sync, the game begins to communicate with the clarity of cinema.”

The same approach extends to the project’s casting. To fully seal the cinema-game fusion at the heart of Off the Grid, Blomkamp brought in Sharlto Copley, the star of District 9 and the first-person action movie Hardcore Henry, which earned a cult following for its bold attempt to turn a video game POV into a full-length action film. In the game, Copley becomes Cobra, a drill sergeant narrator breaking the fourth wall from inside the massacre. 

“Working with Sharlto was genuinely inspiring for me,” adds Nikolas Gekko. “He’s someone who instinctively understands the language of cinema and the logic of video games. I truly hope that the result of our work resonates with gamers around the world and brings them real enjoyment.”

For those seeking a deeper understanding of how cinematic language is translated into interactive worlds, Gekko actively shares his practical knowledge with the global creative community. His works and artistic methods have been featured in international publications such as Kotaku, IAMAG, and This is Cool, where his visual storytelling approach is studied by emerging artists worldwide. His visual development spans global-scale game franchises, including Call of Duty and Battlefield. At the same time, Gekko presents his artistic production through curated international exhibitions, such as the Clio Art Fair in New York, and he is regularly invited as a jury member at The Rookies Awards, one of the most respected competitions for digital artists in games, animation, and visual effects. 

This constant exchange between industry practice and education reflects how rapidly the language of cinema and games continues to merge into a stable creative system. A 2025 study, “The Role of Interaction Design in Narrative-Driven Games with a First-Person Perspective in Fostering User Emotional Connection,” by Yingxi Cao, found that interactive design elements such as player choices, branching plotlines, and moral dilemmas significantly boost emotional immersion and a sense of agency in first-person, narrative-driven games. Meanwhile, industry analyses and academic reviews suggest that modern games increasingly rely on cinematic storytelling tools: environment, lighting, pacing, and spatial narrative, turning gameplay worlds into living films.

In this new paradigm, the traditional border between “viewer” and “player” dissolves. Visual design now functions as a narrative interface, while space itself becomes a storytelling instrument. Cyberpunk arenas, streamed violence, modular bodies, and performative combat operate as living systems where the audience participates in the construction of meaning. Projects like Off the Grid demonstrate how speculative cinema now unfolds inside interactive ecosystems, where spectacle, control, and surveillance exist as mechanics.

“For years, cinema taught us how to look at the future, but games now allow us to live inside it,” says Nikolas Gekko. “The most important shift I see today is that narrative escapes the screen and moves into space. Visual design becomes a language that guides choice, emotion, and consequence at the same time. That is where interactive storytelling is heading: toward worlds that think, respond, and evolve together with the player.”

About Nikolas Gekko

Nikolas Gekko is an experienced concept artist and Art Director at Gunzilla Games, working across the video game and film industries. He gained international recognition after winning first place in the “Star Wars Reimagined” competition in 2015, a globally recognised contest organised by CGSociety and CGPlus, platforms closely followed by leading studios in film and games.

Building on this success, Nikolas worked at DICE, a studio owned by Electronic Arts, contributing to major game franchises, and later collaborated on high-profile films such as The Gray Man (Netflix), Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods. In 2022, he was personally invited by filmmaker Neill Blomkamp to lead the art department at Gunzilla Games, where he oversees the visual development of the video game Off The Grid.

Alongside his production work, Nikolas’s art has been exhibited at LightBox Expo and the Clio Art Fair in New York. He also served as a juror for The Rookies Awards in 2024 and 2025, contributing to the evaluation of emerging artists in games, animation, and visual effects.