We recently wrote about Starz growth and their use of social TV to amplify that growth. Now, the premium cable channel and their digital media arm has launched a new social game for the premier of their hit show Spartacus, a gladiator drama. The game will launch on January 27th on Facebook when the season premiers. Social TV games are great. Creating a game, on the largest social platform for passionate fans, is the perfect way to keep fans addicted while the show isn’t on the air.
Social games around TV shows will probably prove to be an effective place to tie in brands as we just saw with USA’s White Collar and Ford. Spartacus: Vengeance The Game, “takes the player, a recently escaped slave, outside of the arena to embrace a series of challenges and lead his own band of warriors.” The company that built it for Starz has an interesting platform.
New York based Large Animal, a gaming company that’s been around since 2001 built the game for the network on their Toga™ application platform. Based on the description this kind of technology is another tool that social TV producers need to learn to master. There’s no better way to extend the world of your favorite show than through a social game.
Toga is a full-featured social game infrastructure which dramatically reduces the time, cost and resource needs of social and mobile game developers. It lets administrators manage and create game content without the need for engineering resources; lets product managers view advanced, custom stat packages; and supports cross-platform deployment, including Facebook, Google+, Android, iOS and more, ensuring that products are future-proofed. Its architecture is expandable via plug-in or library and easily integrates with third parties to allow limitless expansion.