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DOCTOR WHO | BETA
The BBC has turned to games in a big way – Doctor Who’s TV producers are hard at work on a new episodic title made by Charles Cecil and Sumo Digital. Michael French took a trip to BBC Cardiff to find out why the time is right for the last Timelord to leap into games…
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n the same way you could incorrectly view the TARDIS as just a wooden blue box, to the untrained eye Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is just another licensed game. But step inside this unique joint production between TV show and the game – as Develop was lucky enough to do in February – and you see that the game (or rather, games) - is an epic project unlike any other. A quick guided tour of its impressive features: it’s free, it’s released in four episodic chunks, it’s on PC and Mac, its first installment is out in just a few weeks, and it’s one of the closest collaborations between Big Media and games development ever seen. Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is produced by one of the most successful UK independent studios of recent years, Sumo Digital, and fittingly overseen by adventure game auteur Charles Cecil – both working in tandem with new series boss Steven Moffat and the rest of his team. It’s also the UK games industry’s best-kept secret, having been in the works since January 2009. WHO’S GAME? The timing for the game couldn’t be better. As gaming seeps into the mainstream, the BBC finds itself facing new challenges. The global broadcaster has to keep its big entertainment properties like Doctor Who relevant by regenerating them for the moving target that is TV audiences. That means a whole host of things. The show itself has a new actor in its lead role, plus a new production team, and even new sets. At a higher level it means finding new ways to engage the viewers that watch the Saturday night episodes but want more, or are drifting away from TV to channels like mobile, the web and, of course, video games. Pitched as not ‘just’ a game, but four extra episodes of the new series, Doctor Who: The Adventure Games helps the BBC address new online mediums. But hold on. The BBC isn’t any good at games, is it? There were duff Doctor Who games before – text adventures, a dull FPS – and BBC Multimedia, run by BBC Worldwide, crashed and burned with the CD-ROM. Simon Nelson, the BBC Vision’s controller for portfolio and multiplatform, is the first to admit that prior form hasn’t been brilliant for the BBC or Doctor Who. And as the man who greenlit this latest effort, he can explain the the thinking behind the new game. “In drama, and stories in general, we have always been fascinated by the potential of the participative medium that is the internet and online – and how we can fuse the new participative features that the web enables with our traditional skills in storytelling, writing, production,” he tells Develop. “And if APRIL 2010 | 27