Nice Tech Looks at Putting Tronji's Virtual World Back on Television

British developers Nice Tech  teamed up with Teletubbies creator Ragdoll a few months ago to create Tronji, an upcoming children’s show that ties into a virtual world. We spoke with lead developer Ben Simpson about the challenges of creating a world for a still developing brand and how to make a virtual world interact with your TV.   

The hook of Tronji, is that "it's built around the premise that there are two worlds, the real world and a second virtual type world that exists all around us," said Simpson. "This is the world of Tronji."

The series will blend real children and live action with CG animation, so the port over to a virtual world of Tronji is a fairly easy sell. However, the current plans are to build  only "a small section of this virtual world, called the Happy Lands," targeted at six- to nine-year-olds.

"We are drawing from the content of the show in order to build our world, so it's an interpretation of that world for the online space," said Simpson. "We have taken some license on the way things work and how things are done for game play reasons, but it's all content from the episodes."

Even though the virtual world and television show are being developed concurrently, right now all of the content is flowing from the television show to the virtual world.

"The show itself must stand alone," said Simpson. "There is discussion about how to connect the two, the problem with TV is that watching it is a passive act, and creating a bridge that works between passive and active is, well, a point for discussion."

One solution that Tronji is investigating is to place cameras in-world and feed back game footage into the television show.  That would be a first for children's television. And it's a near first for television in general.  Douglas Gayeton's My Second Life: The Video Diaries of Molotov Alva is the first machinima to be acquired for distribution as a television series. I think outside of the Emmy-nominated South Park World of Warcraft episode, it might be the only other machinima to really hit mainstream television.

"Where its really going to come alive is real-time TV feed from the virtual environment," said Simpson. "I think that we have a long way to go before we can really pull it all together, but I do believe that TV is becoming less passive."

The ultimate goal is, as with most brand extensions in the virtual space, to create user interaction. The difference is that Tronji's brand and content seems dependent on that interaction.

"Children make up great stories," said Simpson, "and if they are given the tools to do so they will. Tronji is a journey, we are trying to get that sense of journey across in everything we do in Tronji, and so that journey can have a story attached to it. Allow the player to then record that journey through a variety of ways you have a great sense of interaction and connection with the environment. That’s what we can bring to the party, another way of connecting with the world of Tronji."

Those stories are built both on gameplay that borrows from MMORPGs and user-generated content. Since the target audience is young, Nice Tech is " taking is the bag of wooden bricks approach" for the user-generated content.

"So we build our buildings out of the bricks themselves, then provide those pieces to the players allowing new structures and content to be built," said Simpson. "For children it provides a secure way of playing with these worlds. For us it means no syntax errors can be built , and for Ragdoll ,brand identity is maintained as by definition the pieces are Tronji."

Check out our platform matrix for more info on Tronji.

Joey Seiler
www.VirtualWorldsNews.com
joey (at) showinitiative.com
(512) 535-8650
skype: joey.seiler.vwnews