What's On GameTap?

Forget the Hollywood blockbuster approach to video games. Turner Broadcasting's on-demand gaming service finds innovation in a different model: cable TV

by Reena Jana

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With budgets that can swell as high as $20 million, dramatic orchestral or hit-band soundtracks, epic plotlines, and larger-than-life characters, video games have long followed in the footsteps of the blockbuster movie. Marketing campaigns include dramatic, theater-style trailers. And Hollywood stars, such as Samuel L. Jackson, often do the voice-overs.

But as the one-year-old GameTap—the broadband, on-demand gaming service owned by Turner Broadcasting System (TWX)—looks for fresh ways to design, develop, and distribute games, it's increasingly turning to a different model: cable television.

The company, which has a cable-TV-like subscription-fee business model ($9.95 per month, the same cost as a premium movie station for most cable subscribers), offers games that can be downloaded to PCs and played via a GameTap software client. Even more TV-like, GameTap is banking on episodic games—titles with simpler plotlines and fewer levels that leave players waiting for the next installment—and on the revival of dead (as in underfunded and subsequently cancelled) titles.

A PAGE FROM HBO.

On Oct. 17, GameTap will launch two new exclusive games that illustrate the company's current, cable-inspired strategy. Its first episodic title—which bears a bluntly TV-like title—is Sam & Max: Season 1. The game features the adventures of a dog-and-bunny detective team, based on existing comic-book characters. Its first installment, Culture Shock, will debut exclusively on GameTap, and the second episode is scheduled for December 21 (with four more, rolled out one per month until April, 2007). On the same day, GameTap announces the December relaunch of Uru Live, a once-popular online massively multiplayer online (MMO) game that's part of the Myst franchise.

Also on Oct. 17, the company is expected to officially announce its new GameTap Originals label, which will feature games created by GameTap in conjunction with independent game developers, designers, and publishers. Think of HBO Originals—from fellow Time Warner (TWX) affiliate Home Box Office—such as the critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning hits The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, shows that established HBO as, basically, a studio or production company, and you get the picture.

"Before, we concentrated on the greatest hits of video games—which wasn't too different from a lot of cable-TV stations," says Stuart Snyder, GameTap's general manager. Indeed, GameTap's early identity was built around its online library of classics such as PacMan (the title list of previously released games is now up to 700). That's not too different from HBO's first incarnation as a channel showing only previously released movies.

SOME SKEPTICS.

By borrowing the TV model of design and distribution, GameTap hopes to make gaming more accessible to new players. "Traditionally, with video games, there's a steep learning curve," Snyder says. "A lot of people think games are very ëinside baseball.' But now we can train audiences to enjoy playing games with episodic offerings." To play the new episodic games, players must become subscribers to the service, just as audiences must subscribe to HBO to watch new episodes of The Sopranos.

But skeptics aren't sure the TV model will catch on—despite the theoretical advantage of having what is, in PC-gaming terms, a steady release of sequels. "Episodic games are an attractive proposition. It means more linear revenue and allows software publishers to have predictability with their sales," observes Evan Wilson, a video-game industry analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. "But I would warn that one reason games are taking TV audiences away is because games are different from TV. The appeal of games is that they can be played whenever.