Develop 2010: The science, Sumos and secrets behind the Time Lord’s latest set of interactive expeditions.
Unless you’ve been living underground with a few stones and a fire for entertainment, you’ll know that Doctor Who is a worldwide phenomenon. The Time Lord has saved our planet countless times from invading nasties, he’s reminded us just how wonderful/wicked human beings can be, and even the Americans can’t get enough of him and his blue box.
But for all his intrepid endeavours, the Doctor hasn’t had the most respectable reputation on Planet Gaming – admit it, even Destiny of the Doctors had issues.
Fortunately, with a sci-fi series as rich and long-running as Doctor Who there’s always time for a regeneration. Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is a series of episodic third-person adventures based on the television drama. The four interactive episodes are an extension of the fifth series, and sees Matt Smith and Karen Gillen reprise their roles as the Doctor and Amy Pond. The first episode received over 525,000 download requests in its first 12 days. The games have been developed by Sumo Digital, and overseen by BBC Wales Interactive and none other than creative genius, Charles Cecil.
At Develop 2010, the makers of Doctor Who: The Adventure Games converged to inform us all about the genesis of the project…
Last of the Time Lords
“We’ve been playing around over the years with new forms of storytelling, new forms of narrative extension,” said Simon Nelson, portfolio and multi-platform controller at BBC Vision. Over the years, he said the BBC’s attitude and approach to games has produced a “fragmented” offering.
“If we really believed in it, as we did, creatively and as an area where the BBC could develop its traditional art of storytelling and narrative, then we should put our money where our mouth is, focus our resources on fewer projects of real scale and ambition.”
Nelson said the idea to begin extending the Doctor Who narrative was considered a “big risk” as audiences wouldn’t accept anything less than quality. Previously, the BBC had mostly worked with digital agencies to produce their interactive titles. This time they decided to seek help from experts. Charles Cecil, managing director of Revolution Software and creator of Broken Sword, was introduced to them at an early stage.
“This was a natural progression for us to move our key brands into different spaces – interactive spaces,” said Iain Tweedale, BBC Wales.
“We don’t really see this as something separate from what the TV production is about, it’s like having 17 episodes instead of 13, it’s just four of them are interactive episodes that you take part in. What we were trying to do is build a new sort of narrative, a new sort of drama, that allows us to meld together TV skills with gaming skills, and be world class at both of them.”
This melding of different media has come to be known as ‘transmedia’, stories that are expressed in multiple forms of media – an example from the world of games is Dead Space, its pre-release comic book and animated film both followed the continuity of an overall narrative. Before they could begin work on the project it was important to get the TV production team interested. “Steven Moffat plays games and he immediately got it,” said Tweedale. The next stage was to bring an experienced developer on board who truly understood the Doctor Who brand.
“It was very refreshing to come in and see Steven Moffat excited [about the project]. He wanted it to be sort of like Tomb Raider in its exploration, but, obviously, more pacifist,” said Charles Cecil.
“This was the first time I’ve been involved in a game that felt like an extension of the license. We were very much a part of the overall team,” said Sean Millard, creative director at Sumo Digital, who’s previous work includes Dalek Attack for a host of 90s computer systems.
It wasn’t just the work relationship that was different with this production. The TARDIS set designers built an additional door that can be seen in the background. It’s not used in the TV episodes but is a pivotal part of the games. Story approval was also handled differently. Series writer, Phil Ford, wrote a half-page story which Cecil then took to be moulded around the game.
Intergalactic pitch
When the time came to settle on a developer, the BBC tasked all of the prospective studios – who were also paid for their efforts – with creating a short concept video. Sumo Digital prepared a design document, and created something to display the narrative and gameplay elements they had in mind. Matt Smith had been announced as the next Doctor (January 2009), but his companion was still unknown.
“No one knew who the companion was going to be. There were rumours at one point that it was going to be Lily Allen,” said Millard, who’s own taste in female companions (read: stripy, short-skirted emo chick) was plain to see from Sumo’s initial pitch video. Companion fantasies aside, the video showed an excitable Doctor stepping out into a destroyed version of Trafalgar Square, London. Sumo had observed the camera moves and angles used in the show and tried to remain true to them within the game – from the subtle reveal of Nelson’s Column lying in debris to the low angle pan on the arrival of the Daleks.
“The games allow us to do stuff that’s unique, but also add to the canon of Doctor Who as well,” said Tweedale. The BBC chose Sumo Digital because their commitment and willingness to listen to feedback. Cecil recounted that one of Sumo’s programmers had worked all night on a camera reveal, for the Dalek point of view, which resulted in audible gasps during the pitch.
“That’s an enormous amount of pressure and there were definitely a lot of sweaty borrows, especially when we were trying to come up with what Skaro [the Daleks’ home planet] looked like, which has only really been visualised in some of the Peter Cushing movies and old Tom Baker episodes,” said Millard.
Millard and Sumo were given some creative license to develop new environments and even creatures for the series, though they had to bear in mind that anything they created was to be part of the Doctor Who canon, so they had to be plausible enough for the main TV series to revisit them in future.
“Which goes back to the whole hand-in-hand aspect of the co-production, being part of a team, having access to the set builders, the execs and talking one-to-one about what we all wanted to achieve,” said Millard. The development team put twice as much into the project because Doctor Who was something they all watched and wanted to be part of. But, as he so elegantly puts it, “The Doctor is a pacifist. How the hell do you make a game about a pacifist, who talks to his enemies?”
The development team spent a lot of time discussed the project together, and with the BBC, as they gradually found a direction for the games that would best suit the character.
Building a better TARDIS
In order to transfigure the body language and traits of the current Doctor and his companion, Matt Smith and Karen Gillen were invited to have their actions rotoscoped by Sean Millard. Rotoscoping is an animation process which involves tracing over the lines of photos and video frames to recreate people and objects in 3D. Smith and Gillen spent several hours performing a selection of expressions and actions that their virtual alter egos would enact in the game.
“I was quite concerned with the way I ran,” said Smith, “Apparently like Tony Adams, with a straight back.”
Millard said they wanted to make the design of the environments, characters and scenarios just as believable as they are in the TV show. He gave the example of the TARDIS interior:
“There was this theme of coral and it follows a wave-shaped architecture, that’s because the jump off point for the identity of the Doctor in this series was that he was a sailor on the sea of time.
“The whole essence of this series was more like a fairy tale – it wasn’t sci-fi, it wasn’t even necessarily adventure, it was fairy tale. Steven Moffat said that directly to us, and that really instigated a lot of the mechanics we were going to incorporate in the game and the way we were going to convey the baddies and convey the stories.
“The fact it was a fairy tale really enthused me and made me think about Doctor Who in a much more applicable light in terms of video games.”
Feedback from the BBC saying that some of the characters looked too old was another unexpected variable for Sumo in this joint project. Millard explained that getting the presentation just right was as much about adapted production practices as it was about sharing ideas. In the case of the “rugged” characters, removing the stubble wasn’t enough. In TV terms, it was about giving the characters “a bit more foundation on their faces, that’s what would flatten the creases, that’s what would make them look a bit younger and more friendly to the audience.”
One of the most exciting tasks Millard and his team had the pleasure of was inventing all new adversaries for the Doctor to encounter – “dream job time” as it were. For episode two, ‘Blood of the Cybermen’, the team created a naive Cyberman, a shabbily clothed slave character with scarred skin that would deal with laborious tasks. There initial design strayed too far from what the BBC considered the hallmarks of the Cyberman race. Over a number of iterations the team came up with the final design: a tall figure, with the head and lifeless eye sockets of a Cyberman, dressed in a boiler suit. Like many classic baddies in Doctor Who, this design twists the familiar to make it all the more menacing.
“It’s much more difficult to add to an existing canon, an existing family of baddies, than it is to come up with something new,” Millard confessed. “We did come up with new baddies as well and we didn’t have to go through half of this process, but more because we weren’t adding to an existing family that included 50 years of history.”
While the game team had to remain faithful to the look and feel of Doctor Who, the BBC production team also had some learning to do. While its normal practice to see rewrites and last minute changes in film and TV, video games are usually locked down as soon as possible to avoid time-consuming changes. With the scripts themselves, Cecil said Phil Ford was excited to learn about the medium, so he was happy to exchange multiple drafts as Cecil worked out gameplay opportunities with Sumo. “What we realised early on is the things [Ford] cut out of the TV script were the things that would make up the majority of our gameplay,” said Millard.
“If you cut out the climbing of the cliff you can accept it in story terms – one minute the Doctor’s at the bottom, the next he’s at the top – but if we did that then we wouldn’t have any gameplay. So we realised that between the two you can actually get the full story.”
Bigger on the internet
“When we were thinking about why this should be a public service composition, it was absolutely to develop our own writing talent, our own production talent, our own expertise, but also to learn from one of the most vibrant, creative new media there is out there,” said Nelson.
He said the BBC was nervous to see how audiences would react and what the critical reception would be for the games. But, at the same time, they were confident and they believed in the project. The games have been promoted steadily since their announcement with prime time adverts and a big marketing push from the BBC.
With over 1.2 million downloads of the first two episodes already, Doctor Who: The Adventure Games has proven to be quite the success for the BBC. In fact, it “significantly surpassed” all of their targets according to Nelson. Plans for new transmedia projects could well be in the works at the BBC and other networks, so in the next couple years expect other popular shows to make the jump to interactive media and bring their narratives with them.
“[Cecil and Sumo] have managed to capture the essence of Doctor Who, the stories, the character of the whole series, the actors, the look and feel of the camera work. It’s a great achievement from these production guys. The audience spot it and they can tell they’re getting something new,” proclaimed Nelson proudly.
“I’m hoping that this will be a message, not only to my own stakeholders at the BBC but to the wider industry as well, about how TV and games can really come together to create something extraordinary.”
Aaron Lee
Photos: Aaron Lee (main), Bastion (body #2)
Tags: bbc, charles cecil, develop, doctor who, online, sumo digital
