Dancing with social games

GAMES FOR TV: BBC Worldwide is beefing up its social games portfolio, releasing titles based on shows such as Dancing with the Stars, Doctor Who and Top Gear. Robert Nashak waltzes Jonathan Webdale through the strategy.

Robert Nashak

BBC Worldwide (BBCWW) is sashaying into social games in a major way. Last week, the company’s digital entertainment and games unit, set up just over two years ago under former Electronic Arts (EA) exec Robert Nashak, launched Dancing with the Stars: Keep Dancing.

The title, introduced in the US with broadcast partner ABC and simultaneously in the UK, as Strictly Keep Dancing, is destined for roll out in the 75-plus territories where the format airs, with local versions tailored to specific markets. It’s the latest in a rapidly expanding portfolio of online games built off the back of major BBC TV franchises.

Next up is Top Gear: Speed Up, the first social game tied to the flagship motoring magazine show, due to arrive on Facebook soon. Doctor Who: Worlds in Time, BBCWW’s first massively multiplayer online game (MMO), went live in March around the same time as Sony PlayStation title Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock.

Also imminent is Jane Austen’s Rogues & Romance, another Facebook game – one that takes IP not specifically tied to a BBC TV show but with which the corporation has a long history and brand affinity. It is being developed together with Los Angeles-based Legacy Interactive, a firm that has created game versions of TV shows including Murder She Wrote, Law & Order and Criminal Minds.

Nashak and his team in LA and London have been busy. As with many other companies, BBCWW witnessed the proliferation of gaming around it in recent years, essentially due to the rise of Facebook and smartphones, and wanted a slice of the action. It handed Nashak, previously VP of EA’s casual games unit, the task at the start of 2010. A seasoned games and media exec, he also counts stints at Yahoo! Games, Glu Mobile, Vivendi Universal and Disney Online among his credits.

Dancing with the Stars: Keep Dancing

“For me the BBC job was a golden opportunity to work with a media company directly and help impact the business, not only by taking some of our great brands and creating cool games based on them, but also to work with our IP as it’s being developed to help create 360-degree strategies around that,” says Nashak.

“I have a long history of hardcore gaming and then moved to more casual platforms that are more friendly to people who may not consider themselves gamers. I realised that was going to be the trend and I wanted to get in on it.”

‘Gamification’ is a term he prefers to steer clear of, though he’s not adverse to the occasional neologism. He uses the word “slicensing” to describe the process of taking existing IP and trying to squeeze more revenue out of it via spin-offs on new platforms.

“There’s a desire to have brand equity intact but it’s not a terribly strategic thing,” he says. “It’s usually considered an ancillary revenue stream and it’s usually not innovative and certainly not trying to drive new forms of entertainment in a robust way.”

Nashak harks back to his days at EA working on titles like Harry Potter. “The movie comes out and the studio tries to license the rights to a games company that will then produce something. That model is somewhat breaking down now as the console companies move more towards their own original franchises. Traditionally licensed movie games have not been the best because the games companies are working on movie timelines and the quality can often suffer.”

Doctor Who: Worlds In Time

Some Doctor Who fans have noted how different the games look to the TV series, but this is the result of a conscious effort to steer the franchise in new directions – a “brand new manifestation of Doctor Who,” as Nashak puts it.

“It’s a good example of the innovation we seek to do where we’re not thinking about games as a side activity but properly integrated into the development of our IP,” he says. “We very much aspired to create the largest Doctor Who community ever on the web, so not only do we have a game going but we’re also building community and being very conscious about that.”

Developed with Sega subsidiary Three Rings, Worlds in Time allows players to sign in using Facebook Connect but exists as a games universe within its own right. The same model had been applied to the social game version of Dancing with the Stars: Keep Dancing and Strictly Keep Dancing.

In the cases of Top Gear: Speed World and Jane Austen’s Rogues & Romance, BBCWW is working with social and mobile publisher 6waves and the emphasis is initially on Facebook.

In all instances, games are offered on a freemium basis to fit in with the BBC’s focus on accessibility. Nashak says his unit also works closely with the UK pubcaster to ensure the iconography adheres to BBC brand values – presumably the reason why Jane Austen lost her cleavage as the artwork progressed from early traditional gamer-oriented version to official release.

Other BBC titles are set to go through the same process, with a “multitude of new interactive games” promised through the 6waves alliance, only some of which will be based on existing brands. There is also an ambition to create completely new IP.

Jane Austen's Rogues & Romance

“We haven’t announced anything but that’s definitely a goal of ours,” says Nashak. “I will judge my experience at BBCWW as a success if something that we do in the digital space does indeed transfer over into linear media. Hopefully, over time, as we do more and more, we can really develop a transmedia mindset at BBCWW where digital is not an afterthought but is actually integrated into the development of IP itself.”

BBCWW has recently made an undisclosed investment in US technology firm Spaceport, which is building a platform that allows games to run across mobile and the web. Nashak says: “The company has a special technology that allows them to code once and deploy across multiple platforms. For us, that’s a way to lower our costs of development and optimise our distribution reach.”

He declines to comment on whether other investments or acquisitions are on the cards but says: “We’re definitely doubling down on the social mobile and social online space.”