Large Animal Games, 6waves, Starz Look to International Market for Spartacus Off Season

Spartacus: The Game (a.k.a. Spartacus: Gods of the Arena: The Game) launched on Facebook in January to coincide with the release of the a prequel to the Starz Spartacus TV series. Now that the six-episode run of the show is complete, developer Large Animal Games is looking to publisher 6waves to get the game localized ahead of the TV show’s air dates in foreign territories. When the game launched, Spartacus showed strong growth in daily active users and monthly active users, climbing to an all-time high of 1.1 MAU users and and 123,000 DAU between March and April. By that time, the six-episode prequel series had been done for over a month and it appears as though the game waned a little through the end of April. Starting in May, the game is showing an uptick again in both MAU and DAU as new content rolls out within the game and publisher 6waves localizes it for foreign territories in Europe where the TV show is only just beginning to air or will air over the summer. In our continuing series on brand integration, we touched on branded properties whose brands were the game, such as TV show properties like game shows and Jersey Shore. With Spartacus, we get a rare look at the life cycle of a deep brand integration game that is both dependent on its origin intellectual property (in this case, the TV show) and a stand alone property that needs to adjust to the social games market. Speaking to ISG, representatives from Starz, Large Animal Games, and 6waves explained how they plan to keep Spartacus: The Game going while the TV show languishes in the off season. First, says Large Animal’s Wade Tinney, the developer has to make a game that’s a game in and of itself. “I think that’s the way to make a successful branded social game,” he says. “Something that didn’t have meaning just because of the [network] association.” In the game, players run a gladiator training house (or ludus) where they buy and train fighters to then send out against other arena fighters. Aside from two mentions of Starz at the upper and lower quadrants of the screen where 6waves and Large Animal Games’ logos also appear, the TV show connection isn’t made much of within the game. Outside of the game, Facebook ads for Spartacus: The Game do not bear the Starz network logo and the character art isn’t immediately recognizable as “game-ized” versions of the show’s cast members. “We started [development] in September [2010] with a very tight timeline,” Tinney says. “We just wanted something that had a clear core gameplay loop. And the art had to look fantastic.” Next, the network has to support the game in a way that contributes to the gameplay without taking away anything from the TV show. For example, Starz made the decision to share production stills and full episodes before their air date with Large Animal Games to give the developer ideas for the plot, but Starz is currently not allows Large Animal to tease anything about the next season of Spartacus. Instead, the network is working with the developer to identify additional characters in the existing series that Large Animal can use as fresh content for the game, such as new gladiators like Oenomaus (pictured below) for sale in the game’s marketplace. “We knew that [a social game] would be a way for fans to connect and engage with the brand,” Katz says. “Very early on, we were considering the various digital distribution channels for Spartacus and we noticed the fan Page was over 1 million [Likes]. We saw an opportunity to launch the prequel with the game.” The last piece of the puzzle is localization support from publisher 6waves. Within the last month, the company had the game localized in Turkish and French before rolling out localizations for German, Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese-speaking territories. Interestingly, Spartacus isn’t localized for Italian yet, but 6waves reports that the game does well in Italy among English-speakers. Tinney says Large Animal was surprised to see that Turkey was Spartacus’s number two audience in size behind the United States. In additional to Italian, Spartacus is also currently being localized for Korean, Russian, and Arabic. “The conversation, internally, for us was [how] well the game would work globally,” 6waves Product Manager Catherine Herdlick. Given the growth trend Spartacus: The Game has seen as these localizations go live and the prequel series hits international networks, it’s clear that the game’s got the global potential the publisher looks for. Katz and Tinney declined to discuss plans for Spartacus: Season 2, which is currently in pre-production following a re-cast of the show’s main character. Assuming the show is on-target for the January 2012 season, we expect to see second season teasers or video ads emerge in late summer or early fall 2011.

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Large Animal Games, 6waves, Starz Look to International Market for Spartacus Off Season

AJ Glasser

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