Licensing TV shows to games is nothing new, but The History Channel is making use of its whole identity. Edge spoke to director Carrie Trimmer…

Cable TV stalwart The History Channel recently announced it was working with UK developer Slitherine, a historical strategy specialist, and niche distributor Black Bean on The History Channel: Great Battles Of Rome.

The PC, PSP and PS2 strategy game will be the first History Channel game released internationally, and the first to use video clips from its programmes. But the network has already licensed six PC titles and one console game in the US – The Alamo, Civil War: A Nation Divided, Crusades, Battle Of Britain and others – over the last four years, selling upwards of a quarter of a million copies of each.

Licensing director Carrie Trimmer explains why the channel regards a move into gaming as essential for the survival of TV brands.

Why did the History Channel choose to make the move into games?

I think it’s a natural fit for us based on the types of programmes that we have on the network; a lot of military programmes, for example. And it seems to be a good fit for the types of games people are interested in playing. A nice offshoot is that it brings in younger viewers to the channel, so it broadens our viewer-base.

We’ve also done a multiplayer online game recently, and the stats from that are pretty dramatic, over a half a million unique players and millions of ad impressions. We feel like we’re creating a lot of cross-promotion opportunities between the game and the programme it’s based on, called Shootout. It features recreation along with actual footage of famous battles – we call them shootouts in the States, it comes from the Old West. We chose three different episodes to adapt – the Tet Offensive, Iwo Jima and the Battle of the Bulge.

Do you see genuine convergence between TV and videogames, or is this purely an exercise in branding?

I think we’re moving into the convergence phase. We see the ability of games to create an experiential aspect of the programme: somebody can watch, learn a lot about the event, potentially learn something that can help them play better, and then by playing the game can learn something they wouldn’t have otherwise about that time. And on the programming side, we’re using a lot more high-tech input – shooting in HD, using CGI – which are all very helpful in games. There’s a lot of crossover of technology.

What was the thinking behind Great Battles Of Rome?

Really it was about Slitherine and Black Bean proposing the concept to us, and once we saw what they were interested in doing, we were really excited to see this melding of the game content with footage clips from our programmes. We felt this was the next evolution of our gaming activity.