Vivendi extends episodical gaming with Surviving Hollywood

"It's funny. Last year at the BREW conference, we were looking to sell the company so we were talking to everyone, but this year I just get to talk to the press," smiles Oliver Maio, general manager at mobile developer Centerscore.

Centerscore's heritage as a mobile games developer has been nothing if not fortunate. On the day the one-time PC casual game developer was going to shut its doors in 2001 because it couldn't cover its server costs in the face of the dot bomb crash, Miao got a call asking if they wanted to work on a mobile game.

Lifeline accepted, his studio started to build its reputation with a mixture of work-for-hire and original games. Now the 20-strong San Mateo-based company is attempting to push mobile technology as well as originality as one of Vivendi Games Mobile's two in-house studios. (The other is in Paris.)

And, just possibly, Centerscore's latest product could hit that sweet spot.

Surviving Hollywood is the sort of text-based light role-playing mobile game that could appeal globally. You start off as a wannabe actress, trying to make her way in the media jungle. Your first tasks are finding an agent and sorting out your headshot photos, something you carry out through multiple choice conversation stacks and moving locations between offices, studios and bars. But the longer you stay out, pressing the flesh, the higher your stress levels become, to the detriment of your good looks and body's wellbeing.

So far, so L.A..

What's really interesting about the title however is its episodic nature. The first megachapter consists of around four hours of gameplay, but with weekly downloads of around an additional 30 minutes of play (a flow of content that Miao expects to be supporting for the next 12 months) there's plenty of opportunity to build both a fanbase and a business.

It's a concept Centerscore first tried out with Surviving High School, a game that will soon be onto its third iteration in the US, but is as yet unknown in Europe.

What's excited Miao is that Surviving High School has overcome the typical high launch uptake followed by a quick fall away that has characterised attempts to make episodic games work on PC.

"Surviving High School '07 launched in December and we've seen rising take-up since then," Miao reveals. Maybe the highly economic $3 per month charge has a lot to do with it?

For its part, Surviving High School '08 will be released in the US in the second half of 2007, with new graphics, characters and a less linear approach to the emerging storyline promised. Vivendi will also take full advantage of the long selling period of the game, with marketing campaigns such as the option for players to be able to submit new plot ideas online; something it also successfully pulled off with its MySpace campaign for the '07 game.

Here's hoping we see some of these innovative, platform-pushing titles in Europe before too long.