BBC wants to make Doctor Who video game

The BBC is returning to video games and a number of their franchises are potential projects. BBC Worldwide is researching possible publishers and developers to mould series like Doctor Who and Top Gear into video games.

Where the broadcaster’s children shows will mainly be targeted towards the DS and Wii, others like Doctor Who could make their way to anything from the iPhone to the PlayStation 3. The BBC’s MD of licensing Neil Ross Russell comments:

We are open to conversations with anybody in games about all kinds of business models to see how we can extract more value.

Outside of Disney we have the most well-known line-up of children’s characters around the world.

However, the BBC won’t only be outsourcing their projects, with the broadcaster returning to the possibility of creating their own games after the closure of their Multimedia Division in 2005. Dave Anderson, head of multimedia development at BBC Worldwide, explains:

We’ve been reactive to the market in the last few years. There were a few opportunistic licensing deals, but we were largely aggregating and holding on to our properties to wait and see how the market developed.

Russell added: What we’re trying to do is build the brands here – this is not about opportunistic licensing. If we wanted to do that we would have done more with these key brands over the last few years.

This move has been reflected by the BBC hiring former EA executive Robert Nashak as EVP of the broadcaster’s digital entertainment division. Nashak comments:

As a long-term admirer of BBC Worldwide, I know it has great potential in digital entertainment simply by the quality and variety of content it has to offer. I’m extremely excited to be playing a leading role in realising this potential and growing its audience base around the world.

So, which games developer would you task with Doctor Who: The Video Game? And do they really need to develop a Top Gear game, when the show’s test track will be featured in Gran Turismo 5?

Readers Comments (13)

  1. Dr who game ? maybe, but would most likely suck
    top gear game ? would suck soo hard its unreal. what would you actually do ? perhaps a better idea would to create a top gear dlc for GT5 or forza. so theres the top gear test track and the Suzuki liana.
    mr maker ? now that would be a great game :snicker

  2. Dr. Who ? lol

  3. As I said in the article squirrel, the Top Gear test track is confirmed to be in GT5. There’s also a possibility that the GPS technology will be used to put the Stig’s times into the game as Ghosts.

  4. TheRighteousFascist January 24, 2010 @ 14:40

    A Dr. Who video game? No thank you.

  5. Gorgeousgeorge January 24, 2010 @ 20:09

    Wow obviously you guys don’t watch Dr. Who. A video game on it would be beast

  6. Been wanting a Doctor Who game for years..then that stupid top trumps game came out !! lol

  7. More likely this will be for iphone, wii, or Dsi not ps3 or xbox.

  8. There have been many Doctor Who games over the years but aside from the flash ones on the BBC site, most have been awful. One of the biggest problems is that the Doctor doesn’t use weapons, so the only games he can have are adventure games.

    Of course, if you do a game from the point of view of the baddies, say, the Daleks, it becomes much better.

    There were great doom and quake mods where you got to go dalek hunting.

  9. Doctor Who game? That would take a huge amount of work and dedication to not make it suck. If they stay away from the episodes written by Russel T Davis they will be a lot safer. They would need to have something absolutely unique to make it work. As for the doctor, I would want David Tennant as him. A great actor whos character was ruined by terrible writing from Russel T Davies.

  10. @C.J Mc Girr How can you diss Russel T Davies?
    He did a fantastic job at writing DR Who episodes.In fact,He was the best wirter for DR Who.His storys had beutifuly scripted emotion in them and it would be great to see them turned into a video game.I would love to have a DR Who videogame.It would make the perfect videogame but it would have to be based on the episodes,NOT a completley new story made from scratch.

  11. if they ever do make a doctor who video game they should base it on a game similar to fallout 3 where you play as a different timelord from a parallel universe as the doctor who was also able to survive the time war . therefore as your a different time lord you can customise your character your screwdriver your tardis and even your name . also you should be able to gain experience by outwitting or killing enemies which you can use to upgrade your character and buy ready made timelords for example you can buy one of the doctors from 1-11 to change into . these include David Tennants doctor and matt smiths doctor and tom bakers doctor . you can also buy one of the masters from 1-6 . also the game should be based in a big open world and doesn’t follow a strict path . with experience you should be able to upgrade you characters speech , science skills and history skills. with these speech skills you should be able to get any companion or follower. you also should be able to chose to be either good or evil depending on the different choices you make . whenever you character does die you should be able to choose to either regenerate therefore you have to recustomise your character or not where you just lose the experience points you gain by killing enemies.

  12. A doctor who RPG would be brilliant. Or a MMO. The adventure games were ok so if they made a whole campaign of those…

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