By John Walker on January 14th, 2009 at 12:00 pm.
Just think of all the great games based on TV shows! I mean, imagine what our lives would be like without them. No CSI: Miami, no Law & Order. The world would be a barren wasteland. So it was with heavy hearts when we learned last year that Ubisoft’s Heroes game would no longer be made. Well, turn around that frown, friend, because Ubisoft are instead bringing us a game based on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy!
Lawks. Blend Games report the discovery on GameStop’s site, which led us to finding the game’s press release. Christian Salomon, Ubisoft’s vice president of worldwide licensing, overcome with the passion that fills every gamer said,
“Ubisoft is thrilled to be collaborating with ABC Studios to turn this phenomenal television series into an interactive experience. In Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game, fans will have a chance to take on the roles of all of their favorite doctors in an all-new original storyline. As each doctor, players will make important personal and professional decisions, explore the direct relationships with each other, and perform the delicate surgeries the series is known for, all through fun and engaging game play.”
What this engaging play might be is not yet clear, and the released screenshots offer no clues. There’s some doctors in an operating theatre from the torso up, a doc looking sultry, and two docs about to have a snog. So far it’s pretty realistic to the show. Perhaps we can look forward to a cast member making homophobic slurs on set and getting awkwardly fired, and another being forced to leave the game for playing a gay character. Then an actor will be given humiliating sex scenes in cutscenes after she complains about her boring role in the press. Then fewer and fewer people will play and the game will get cancelled in the summer 2009.
Er, that’s all the knowledge you can glean about Grey’s Anatomy by watching The Soup and reading TiFaux. However, it seems the game will be part adventure game (as all these things tend to be) and part Trauma Center, which explains why it’s coming out on Wii and DS as well as the PC.
But don’t assume it will be terrible. There’s a chance. ER: The Game, against all fathomable reason, was one of the most spectacularly silly games I’ve ever played. A Theme Hospital clone with ninjas and drug-induced dream sequences involving fairies and American football players. So who knows where the idiotic soap-hospital might end up.
14/01/2009 at 12:02 MetalCircus says:
What would you do if it was good?
14/01/2009 at 12:08 Bobsy says:
ALL our favourite doctors? I’m a big fan of Dr Cox, and he’s on Scrubs. Doc Cottle? Well known for being on BSG, and NOT Grey’s Anatomy.
Also, what about Dr Fox? I gather his popularity’s on the up these days, although in fairness, the validity of his doctorate is questionable.
14/01/2009 at 12:13 Gap Gen says:
I’m holding out for the game of the book.
14/01/2009 at 12:14 Seniath says:
@Bobsy; House. ’nuff said.
14/01/2009 at 12:15 John Walker says:
I’d be delighted if it were good. I’m a big fan of good games.
14/01/2009 at 12:19 Gap Gen says:
In terms of TV conversions, I think The Wire, or something like it, could (potentially) be a good realistic FPSRPG, a kind of foil to the silliness of Saints Row and GTA. It would be ludicrously difficult to win, but then that’s the whole point.
14/01/2009 at 12:28 MetalCircus says:
And it would be massivley depressing, with crack whores and dying children. Fun for all the family!
You could have a minigame where you rape a woman. OH OH! and another minigame where you have to successfully pull your dying pal from a car wreck/drive by type scenario. YAY!
(in all seriousness though, a serious attempt at a Wire game would be cool ¬_¬)
14/01/2009 at 12:31 Kieron Gillen says:
A Wire game would be enormously, stupidly tricky. You could get the Shield to work worryingly easily though.
KG
14/01/2009 at 12:34 MetalCircus says:
I can only really seing it work as an adventure/point and click game really… can’t see an FPS being a great idea for it.
14/01/2009 at 12:35 Gap Gen says:
Isn’t the Shield just a big guy running round beating on perps?
And MetalCircus: Not all games have to be smiles and sunshine. After all, WWII was massively depressing and yet it’s one of the biggest gaming franchises. I blogged about how games can make tragic situations funny by removing the element of real loss and suffering.
14/01/2009 at 12:39 Gap Gen says:
I think it would work in an FPS setting, but obviously not as an FPS where you kill hundreds. It’d be more like you have a pistol, but you die really, really easily and thus try not to fire it unless you have to. It’d be more like STALKER or Deus Ex, in that the important things are how other people view you and act towards you. As a police, you could either kiss arse and climb the ladder or try to do police work despite the pressures to do a quick and superficial job. As a dealer or stick-up boy, your aims are basically to survive and scratch a living.
14/01/2009 at 12:41 The Poisoned Sponge says:
But isn’t Grey’s Anatomy horribly, ludicrously shit? I’ve seen one episode, and it was just an annoying woman pretending to be JD from Scrubs, but without any of the funny that makes Scrubs good. Yawn.
14/01/2009 at 12:45 Dan Lawrence says:
I see a The Wire as a management game where you always ‘lose’ but the game never ends.
14/01/2009 at 12:46 Down Rodeo says:
Hmmm. Heroes is getting silly now, I really enjoyed the first series but it’s too much of late. Someone needs to tell those writers to calm down.
Though a Heroes game as Sylar could have been good. Picture it – open-ended, you have to find other heroes, kill ‘em then steal their powers. Decisions – where do you go first? Stock up on smaller powers first to tackle superpowered heroes? I dunno where I’m going with this.
14/01/2009 at 12:58 JKjoker says:
meh, i want a Dr House game where you spend half the time trying to find out what disease the patient has and the other half carefully designing the most humiliating way to break out the news for him/her while playing pranks on doctors, there are even drugs involved, it could be the next GTA!
14/01/2009 at 13:00 Adam says:
I can’t see why this is such a silly idea, There is a Deadliest Catch game out there. I think this could start a whole new genre of games based on TV shows. How about Strictly Come Dancing, or Country File: The Game?
14/01/2009 at 13:12 Buckermann says:
Christian Salomon, Ubisoft’s vice president of worldwide licensing …
Christian Salomon? Is that a real name or some joke I’m to stupid to understand?
14/01/2009 at 13:57 Larington says:
My eyes were drawn to the first image before they reached the text, and just for a moment, I thought this article might have something to do with the assistant woman in Half-Life 2 what finds the ship storing the Aperture labs technology.
Oh, and that male doctor looks well creepy, must be something in the smile thats trigger uncanny valley (Or maybe its the deliberate edging around the characters).
14/01/2009 at 14:01 Frans Coehoorn says:
Yes, a cynical House M.D. game would be fantastic. Or a game based on Californication, the anti-Larry called mr. Hank Moody! I’d pay for that.
14/01/2009 at 14:02 skizelo says:
You’re all wrong. The Wire should be turned into an X-Com clone: at the start, the whole map is a mission-site, except those missions are just a few people hanging around on the street . You can spend money on wires to open up higher-level missions, but they cost money which you don’t have. And some of those missions will turn out to be against the mayor’s friends.
14/01/2009 at 14:06 flo says:
omg … the world of gaming will never be the same again ^^
srsly, though, it will probably sell wee, whether good or not.
About games about other TV doctors: at least the one from BSG isn’t even in all that many episodes, and I honestly don’t know how the funny in scrubs (for those ppl that find scrubs funny) or the awesomeness of house, m.d. could be successfully transformed into a videogame. Truth be told to some degree it will probably work better with Grey’s Anatomy. (which doesn’t mean it will be good game ofc)
14/01/2009 at 14:13 Stijn says:
I must confesss that I dig the not-really-cel-shading-but-something-like-that graphics, though it does remind me a lot of the most recent PoP.
14/01/2009 at 14:19 dhex says:
the shield is an interesting idea. not a lot of anti-heroes in games these days.
and the soup? best thing to ever happen to american television.
14/01/2009 at 14:30 phuzz says:
My Name is Earl? A GTA-a-like but with a half decent justification for the running round doing random tasks (ie you’re doing a list item), in fact, something like Fable would be a good building block for this.
Oh, and all my favourite doctors? What about Dr Who eh?
(PS, the copyright at the bottom still says 2008)
14/01/2009 at 14:54 Morph says:
@Down Rodeo
Are you saying Sylar = Megaman?
14/01/2009 at 15:14 ulix says:
I’d like to see a game vesrion of the remade Terry Nation series Survivors.
An open ended game where you have to try to rebuild society, keep your ‘crew’ together, try to survivem have to fight off people, etc. I guess something like that would (or at least could) work really well.
Also, Dr. Who.
14/01/2009 at 15:17 ulix says:
Oh and I also like the graphics (while apart from that I couldn’t care less).
I always thought the outlines in the new PoP game were much too thin, except for the prince’s raggedy scarf-thingy.
14/01/2009 at 15:45 pepper says:
I would like a game playing as doctor house, in which you get points for making the most creative insults against random people… Wouldnt that be nice? Just to be a complete asshole without any consequences?
14/01/2009 at 15:47 monkeyface says:
Yes, I know. There are still thousands of cynical and ironic remarks to be made, but I will not be contributing. Not me. Instead, I will give you an honest comment, completely free of any irony, whatsoever. The visual style is strikingly well-thought out, and should be applauded. There.
14/01/2009 at 15:59 thor says:
I think we’re all missing out the best idea for medical based tom-foolery: Diagnosis Murder: The Game! Just the thought of playing as that hunky Dr. Sloan makes me weak at the knees… All those witty quips sandwiched between the twin arts of police work and medical practishioning! I can actually see this working.
14/01/2009 at 16:08 jonfitt says:
My wife watches Greys Anatomy so I’ve seen it a bit. The lead bint Meredith Grey is a clone of Alley McBeal without the hallucinations. She’s utterly self-centred to the point where you just want bad things to happen to her.
Anyhoo, if you want TV catchups of most major shows TWOP is the place to go. Some of the writing is hilarious in its own right.
14/01/2009 at 16:17 Pidesco says:
An adventure game based on The Avengers could be dreamy perfection. It could be the first adventure game to include co-op. Crazy stuff!!
14/01/2009 at 16:33 SteveHatesYou says:
The Shield already had a PC game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFZSK4CJEoc
14/01/2009 at 16:58 Benjamin Finkel says:
Looks like they’re taking the new Prince of Persia art style to heart.
Ben
14/01/2009 at 17:58 Dracko says:
Kieron: The PS2 The Shield game is proof that you can’t. There’s a lot of stuff going on in that show anyway.
14/01/2009 at 18:01 phuzz says:
@Pidesco
NO!
Just look what happened when they tried to make a film of the Avengers :(
Leave Steed and Mrs Peel alone!
(mmm, Diana Rigg, if only I was 50 years younger…)
14/01/2009 at 18:05 Barky says:
GOTY 2009, for sure.
14/01/2009 at 18:15 Kieron Gillen says:
(I knew there was a Shield game in existence, btw. And knew it was shit. And knew there was no bloody reason it should have been)
KG
14/01/2009 at 18:17 Larington says:
“Diagnosis Murder: The Game!”
I’d definately check some reviews to see how it goes down, it could actually work, if done with the writers on board before the first line of code is written… You know, gameplay that revolves around the story not the other way around (I’m not a writer for games or otherwise, but I suspect it must be frustrating for them to be potentially hamstrung by bad/lazy design).
14/01/2009 at 18:29 pepper says:
Larington, the writers and designers are both factors that work against eachother of not implemented right into the pipeline. A lot of developers think they dont need writers, thus the writers oppinion value is limited and can be ignored. There was a article about this on gamasutra.
14/01/2009 at 18:37 Xercies says:
I have always wanted a Quantum Leap Game…
It could actually work as an episodic game, basically its an point and click game where you jump into someone and figure out what your supposed to do with some vague help from Al which doesn’t hold much…
Actually that doesn’t sound half-bad…
14/01/2009 at 18:40 Bret says:
Me, I want Dr. Mcninja.
14/01/2009 at 19:25 frymaster says:
is it wrong that I glanced at the headline picture in my RSS feed and thought it was from prince of persia?
14/01/2009 at 20:31 Pags says:
Friday Night Lights would make a good game.
Oh wait that’s NCAA Football [insert year here].
As for my favourite doctor, unquestionably it is Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda’s Hawkeye, obviously, not the Donald Sutherland version)
15/01/2009 at 00:40 Christian Otholm says:
Will we be able to win a bonus character like Dr. McN.. Oh damn, someone already made that joke.
I assume you will have to prove on some sort of scientific scale that you’re an enourmous douche before you are allowed to play the actual game? Like a Tutorial in being a self-centred cunt?
15/01/2009 at 00:50 Shnyker says:
Oh this isn’t gonna end well Willie. Whats next, Pc Survivor? PC Bones would be funny actually, maybe if GA wasn’t just so stupid recntly I wouldn’t have fallen off of a my chair hurting my ass and pneumonia filled lungs. Speaking of, cough cough cough cough cough.
15/01/2009 at 01:00 Noc says:
Actually, I would totally play a Survivorman game now that I think of it.
15/01/2009 at 01:23 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Yeah, the Shield game blew chunks. Too bad, really. It possibly kept people away from the series, which was one of the best action/drama/everyone’s-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket cop shows ever.
This… *Thing*… I don’t know what to make of it. At least one surefire way of making sure it doesn’t suck involves not including the dreaful “Hard to Save a Life” theme song from the show.
15/01/2009 at 01:41 malphigian says:
I actually made a web game for The Wire for HBO. This was just after the first season and the show wasn’t nearly as big. We loved it and we spent a bunch of time coming up with ideas to pitch.
They didn’t bite any of our ideas, were in a rush, and told us to do their design…
A Battleship clone. *sigh*. I’d link to it if I wasn’t still sad about it.
15/01/2009 at 02:42 Larington says:
@Pepper: Yeah pretty sure I’ve read at least one article about that on Gamasutra, possibly more but my memory gets hazy when I’m working on an assignment past midnight.
@malphigian: Ouch. That sucks.
15/01/2009 at 09:42 Dan Harris says:
A game of The Unit would be ace.
Oh, hang on, that’s GRAW.
16/01/2009 at 09:20 Mr.President says:
Oh, oh, and there also would be multiple ways to deal with every situation! And your actions could have negative effect, even if you had good intentions; good/bad carma would cause unexpected things to happen to you…
That… could actually be pretty sweet.