Big Brother maker eyes up games

EDINBURGH, UK--Endemol, a TV production company, is looking to games and the Internet to expand its audience. Peter Cowley, managing director of digital media, Endemol UK, told delegates at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2007 that, "We are trying to capture an audience that used to be on telly, that has now moved on to other platforms: consoles, online, mobile phones."

Endemol was founded in 1994, and is based in the Netherlands. It describes itself as a major independent TV producer with subsidiaries in 25 countries including the US, Spain, and Australia. The company's shows include Big Brother, Deal Or No Deal, Fear Factor, and Gay, Straight or Taken?

Cowley gave the example of a Children's BBC show called Roar, which is set in a zoo in Kent and focuses on the day-to-day lives of the animals and keepers there. The show also had a Web site containing a Tamagotchi-style game where players build a zoo and have to visit every day to keep the animals alive. Cowley said that Endemol found something unusual had happened: "The Web site had more unique visitors than viewers of the TV show... So we built in cheat codes that would be broadcast in the middle of the TV show, to get hold of this huge audience." These cheat codes included ones that would unlock new parts of the zoo and new animals.

Endemol has a variety of game projects on the boil right now, including iLand, which the company refers to as "Third Life," and which it sold to AOL USA in a multimillion-dollar deal. Billed with the tagline "The community is your only friend," the TV show will pick one person to be the 'founding father' and be the first on an island, with the only help being a laptop and a connection to the game's community. iLand will be launched in the second quarter of 2008.

Endemol is also working on the BBC's Signs of Life, a new Buffy-esque show, which is described as "an interactive flash drama on the Internet." The show will launch this autumn, and is aimed at the lucrative teen market. "It's very mystical...it combines a TV drama with video game-style activity," commented Cowley.

The company also announced in April that it would be partnering with Electronic Arts on a project called Virtual Me, where users create lifelike avatars that can compete in Endemol's shows such as Deal or no Deal. Cowley confirmed that the company was not looking to muscle into the games industry on its own. He said, "We're looking to partner, not take over."