MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) has announced an exclusive business deal with movie and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer — a game incubation studio. The announcement is long on vision — creating story-based games and integrating them across MTV’s products, possibly porting the IP to TV and films — but is currently short on details. The business structure of the studio wasn’t revealed — MTV is funding it from the $500 million it plans on investing in interactive media. I spoke earlier today to Bruckheimer and Jeff Yapp, EVP of Program Enterprises at MTVN, on the new deal. Yapp, who covers all forms of revenue apart from straight advertising, told PaidContent.org there would be plenty of money to do whatever needs to be done. In terms of operations, Bruckheimer will be in daily control of the operation, and will require MTV’s approval to get things produced; Yapp and Bob Picunko, VP-Electronic Games & Interactive Products, will oversee the relationship for MTV Games.
As producer for the games studio, Bruckheimer will be responsible for putting the team together; he said the executive team would be put together in the new year, including someone who knows the gaming industry very well. He is convinced of the importance of the story in games: “People want characters who are interesting. … Gamers want to play a certain character or go through a series of adventures, that’s what keeps them coming back” and playing the game over and over.
Beyond that there’s no firm idea of what form the games will take, including genre or platform. “We’re putting a team together first and then we’ll figure out where we’re going and how we’re going to do it,” said Bruckheimer, adding that they would try and find an area that is underexploited. The platform and business model would also be dictated by the game. MTV will handle the business side and distribution. Yapp said that MTV was experienced at distribution and that it would be determined by the individual situation — nothing is ruled out, including buying a stake in a distributor like it did with GoFish, although nothing is on the table.
Integration: Yapp said that he and Bruckheimer have offices near each other in Santa Monica, and the two spent a lot of time talking about changes occurring across all the platforms and gave me the impression he was keen on games that would incorporate different types of media, such as linear TV or virtual worlds. An integral part of this venture is if a game concept is suitable for movie or TV adaption, that will be handled with MTV, with Yapp pointing out that both Bruckheimer and MTV have experience in making good movies and TV shows. Bruckheimer said that first and foremost the games would be designed for gamers rather than start with cross-media properties in mind.
“It’s really a reflection of the way our audience engages across multiple platforms and a desire to be there…and we’ve proven that each of these platforms feeds back into television,” said Yapp. He said that MTV is a fan of Bruckheimer’s ability to connect with its audience demographic.
Writers’ strike: Despite the focus on storytelling in the venture, Bruckheimer said it is unlikely there’ll be a problem in that area because he thought game writers weren’t part of the strike (although he wasn’t sure, and neither was MTV). The strike has already shut down Bruckheimer’s TV business, although he’s got two movies in the pipeline for which the script was already written. MTV said most of its shows weren’t under the purview of the Writers’ Guild.
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