Playboy Enterprises is forming a new video game label this year as part of a wider digital strategy to make its brand more mainstream, Paul H. Lee, the company’s managing director for new digital ventures, told paidContent. The company hasn’t decided on a name yet, but it already has lined up German online gamer Bigpoint as a partner to help it create and distribute games on Playboy.com. The first game to be featured on the Playboy site is Bigpoint’s urban crime fantasy, Poisonville, which exits out of beta today.
The label is expected to fully launch at the end of 2010. The games will aim at Playboy’s primary target of 18- to 35-year-old men. While gaming might seem a little outside Playboy’s editorial and TV strengths, Lee told paidContent that the company’s found a lot of overlap between gaming sites and Playboy.com visitors. “One of our core competencies involves using our brand to present quality content,” Lee said. “Gaming is a growing, mainstream area. And part of our plan is to extend Playboy’s brand into the mainstream.” The recent unveiling of the safe-for-work site, TheSmokingJacket, is in keeping with that motive.
Lee wouldn’t say how many staffers will be put to work on the label, or how much of a financial commitment Playboy is making to this new venture. But he assured me that the backing is “significant.”
Eventually, the game pages will be ad-supported. But for right now, the goal is attract users, so expect Poisonville, which is in the same genre as Zynga’s Mafia Wars, and the titles that follow to be ad-free for a bit. The famous Playboy bunny logo will also show up from time to time, but Lee says that for the most part, any overt signs of branding will be played down.
Poisonville, which has a dedicated Playboy.com channel here, is an action-oriented, massively multiplayer online game involving a fictional U.S. city “where crime and corruption rule the streets.” Players must complete a series of missions in order to counteract corruption, regain respect, and rebuild their reputations. The one slight difference here, according to Playboy, is that players will encounter “beautiful, Playboy-caliber women.” In other words, you’re not in FarmVille anymore.
Playboy also expects to work with Bigpoint on creating a Facebook app for Poisonville. While Lee wouldn’t discuss whether the company is in talks with other game developers, it is actively looking. One of the reasons that Playboy went with Bigpoint was that Lee got to take a close look at it two years ago when he was at The Peacock Equity Fund, NBC Universal’s venture capital arm. In June 2008, Peacock teamed up with UK PE Firm GMT Communications Partners to acquire a majority stake in Bigpoint for $110 million.
“We’re looking for quality developers and the time I spent looking at Bigpoint showed me that they fit the bill for what we needed to get started,” Lee said. “Previously, Playboy’s gaming interests included a few licensing deals and some editorial in the form of gaming reviews. But there was no clear, over-arching strategy in place. With Bigpoint, we’ve established a clear path in terms of where we want to go.”
In working with Bigpoint, Playboy doesn’t have an equity arrangement. But other partnerships could include some investment along with a working contract, Lee said. “At this point, we haven’t made any decisions, and we’ll see how these first steps go,” he said. “We could possibly do some investing down the road, depending on what we find and what our needs are.”
