Discovery Channel Reality Series Get Video Game Treatment
There are a lot of premises that you can make a good videogame out of. Space marines? Sure! Zombie hordes? Awesome! Sword swinging samurai? Sign me up! Being stranded in the middle of the wilderness? Weird … but OK. Crab fisherman? Wait, what?
Yes, it appears as though the Discovery Channel is finally entering the videogame world by turning two of its hit shows, Man VS Wild and Deadliest Catch, into videogame properties for the PS3, Wii, and Ninendo DS (with a special appearance of Man VS Wild on the Xbox 360). They have reached out to small time videogame developer Crave Entertainment to make this happen. You may remember Crave from … nothing in particularly, since they are better known for their strange poker games and adaptations of cartoons. In fact the most extreme game they seem to have made was Dave Mirra BMX Challenge, which, while cool, doesn’t lend itself to a total action experience.
So it looks like this will be a decent challenge for Crave Entertainment. Do they have what it takes? Well I think the better question is, does Man VS Wild and Deadliest Catch have what it takes to compete in the videogame world. Man VS Wild is somewhat of an interesting property to convert. It is a show specifically about wilderness survival with few tools. With the right formula this could be a very interesting game. However, Deadliest Catch is a show about crab fishermen which mostly gets its ratings from the severe drama that erupts on the boat. How this will be converted into game form we will never know.
On the upside, representatives from Crave have stated that they really want these games to appeal to an action crowd. A previous attempt at adapting Man VS Wild was not received well by the gaming community. Fans responded similary to the first Deadliest Catch videogame, Alaskan Storm for the PC. Betsi Gijanto, Executive VP of Cave Entertainment believes that this was because the game did not actually contain much of the action of the show. Crave’s mission seems to be to retain the action these shows contain in videogame form. Luckily, Crave has the support of the Discovery Channel, and voice talent will likely include the original cast of each show including Bear Grylls from Man VS Wild and Mike Rowe as the narrator from Deadliest Catch.
Man VS Wild will hit the market around the end of 2011, while Deadliest Catch will launch in the spring. Fan response has been, mixed at best. No one expects these games to make much of a dent in the market considering upcoming big titles such as Final Fantasy XIII will be releasing around the same time, but aside from market share, some fans are simply curious as to how these games will control. Reality shows have always been iffy territory with videogames, and failed attempts at converting Survivor, The Amazing Race, and other reality shows into digital properties have jaded fans to the possibility of a good reality show conversion. However, James Cameron is making splashes in the video game world with his upcoming Avatar movie conversion, and if there is hope for the movie industry, which has made notorious flops of even the greatest of intellectual properties (E.T., Superman 64), there may be hope for the reality show videogame business yet.
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