Ypulse Guest Post: EA Teams Up With Spielberg For BOOM BLOX

Today we have another guest post from John Davison who is the president and co-founder of What They Like, Inc. a parents guide to entertainment. Its first product, www.whattheyplay.com gives parents an unbiased look at the content of video games. Remember, if you’re attending SXSW Interactive this year, John will also be joining me for our Core Conversation focusing on tweens, teens and video games.  If you work in youth media or marketing, and would like to write a Ypulse Guest Post, just email me with your idea…

EA Teams Up With Spielberg For BOOM BLOX

Electronic Arts’ “Casual Entertainment” label announced its “first game” (implying there’ll be more?) developed in collaboration with director and producer Steven Spielberg this week. Titled BOOM BLOX, with the inexplicable insistence of EA’s communications department that it should always be written in all caps, the game has been designed exclusively for Nintendo’s Wii, and is being positioned very much as a “family” game. “I am a gamer myself,” Spielberg enthuses in the press release, “and I really wanted to create a video game that I could play with my kids. BOOM BLOX features an enormous amount of fun challenges and cool scenarios for your kids to solve or for you to master together.”

The fact that this collaboration with a household name is very much a family focused experience, rather than a high-concept “action” affair is indicative of the direction the games industry is moving in lately. It comes at the same time that another Electronic Arts division, EA Sports, is refocusing in a similar fashion. EA Sports president Peter Moore told games site IGN this week that the company, “will be looking at the more casual consumer that we see as a bigger force in the business…we think there’s a different type of consumer that…doesn’t want the authentic simulation game that we currently offer.”

As for BOOM BLOX, its existence is testament to the power of the Nintendo Wii brand, and the way that it has changed the gaming landscape in the past 12 months. “My inspiration for this game came while I was playing the Wii for the first time,” Spielberg is quoted in the release. “From the initial concept to what the game is today, it’s always been built around the innovations the Wii brings to playing games. BOOM BLOX plays on the enjoyment of building and knocking down blocks, something that can appeal innately to kids and adults of all ages.” The game, which will be released in May, is designed as both a single player, and social multi player experience, and is built around numerous principals known to appeal to the youth market. Core to this is the ability of players to complete redesign, and completely rebuild levels that can then be shared with other players online via Nintendo’s WiiConnect 24 service.

The game is also in development for mobile phones, and will be available this Spring. EA is touting the mobile version as being the first to allow players to share custom content on a game designed for phones.

While the game is being touted as the “first” collaboration between Spielberg and EA, it is not the first time these two giants in their respective fields have worked together. In 1999, Spielberg is credited as the “creator” of the Medal of Honor franchise, Electronic Arts’ incredibly successful World War II games franchise that was original conceived as an offshoot of Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” project.