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Zombies Juiced

Doublesix studio head James Brooksby talks more about his quest for openness on digital sales numbers, and the transition to original IP

GamesIndustry.biz It's probably hard to see everybody releasing their numbers publicly, so what would you like to see happen?
James Brooksby

I'm not necessarily looking for a full public chart with everybody's sales numbers that's out there, but it wouldn't seem that unreasonable to me for developers to sign an NDA with whoever they're operating with, and everybody who's contracted to work with that platform appreciates that their numbers will be on this list.

The list doesn't need to be very frequent, but it's something that's there for discussion and debate when you're looking to go over to one of these platforms. I'd prefer it not to hide the name of the game, but it if it had to, it could be broken into genres - so every game title would be replaced with a genre.

Ideally, I'm not looking for this to be something that's absolutely, widely placed on the internet for all to read - however, saying all that if you actually have user ratings and sales numbers on the store, I think that's actually a very strong way forward for the consumer, developer, publisher and platform.

But I think it's going to be a brave move for somebody to make.

GamesIndustry.biz How do you think Burn Zombie Burn will translate culturally to Asia?
James Brooksby

I think it will, absolutely. It's old school arcade fun and I think that's been proven to translate well around the world in the past. I don't see why not, at all - the general theme of the game is pretty well translated and it's certainly not one of those genres that we believe doesn't translate well.

So we've got high hopes, but certainly the Asia territory is a 'growing' territory - it doesn't include Japan, so it's more like Korea, China, Malaysia, and so on. It's a growing territory, but it's good to be all over the world.

GamesIndustry.biz How much difference do you think having the presence in Home has made?
James Brooksby

Well we haven't got the stats in yet - we're tracking our numbers quite closely to see what effect it's had. I'm pretty sure from the early look that it's positive, which is good, and reasonably positive - but the important thing is that within our Home space we're doing some retailing, we're actually selling BZB T-shirts... We got some numbers through from that the other day and we were very pleasantly surprised.

It's not a huge amount of money, but it's still great.

GamesIndustry.biz So you'll have been pleased with the performance of BZB - how far does that represent the transformation from work-for-hire to original IP?
James Brooksby

Well it's not fully happened yet, we're in transition. We are very pleased with the performance of BZB - it's still continuing to perform well, and we've still got lots of plans to help it to continue to perform well.

Not only have we got the Home space, but we've run a small competition, and we've got a larger competition coming this summer. We've also got the themes you'll be able to buy shortly, as well as music, a comic, a player guide... then we've got an expansion pack coming, and then a second bundle pack.

The advantage of the digital space is that if things are successful then we have the flexibility to be agile, and go out there to do more of the same. Certainly with the competition, once we've run one and seen the impact it has - which is a great advantage of being close to the numbers - we can take the decision to run another one and see what impact that has on our sales.

Things like this, and having promotional weekends, are all things we're going to do to experiment with what has the right level of success. As far as going forwards, we definitely want to do more of this. If you talk to developers doing it, and the people in the team themselves, it's been one of the most enjoyable experiences - we're really feeling like we're very close to the games themselves.

We're a small team, we're agile, the atmosphere is great - and when the products come out we don't feel like we've handed them off to somebody who may or may not care. It's still ours, and we can still decide on that game's future. It's in our hands to either make it work or not - and of course, we believe we can make it work.

James Brooksby is studio head at Doublesix. Interview by Phil Elliott.