It’s natural for a company, once it has grown to sufficient size — and has the dollars rolling in — to want to expand, even diversify. Despite your opinion of Buzzfeed and its particular formula of “news media”, it’s now in this very position, weighing up various opportunities off the beaten path (at least for it). Apparently one option Buzzfeed is taking seriously is games — it’s already recruited a couple of designers and developers to work on more interactive content.
As you’ve already guessed, it has little interest in the triple-A blockbuster business. No, after witnessing the huge popularity of its many quizzes, name generators and the like, Buzzfeed felt it should have a dedicated team coming up with — and executing — these ideas.
Anthony Ha over at TechCrunch had a chance to talk to Chris Johanesen, the company’s vice-president of product, about its plans:
Johanesen said he doesn’t know how big the team might get, but the idea is not to “build a warehouse somewhere and fill it full of 70 developers.” He added that the team is “not going to be creating Grand Theft Auto“, but rather working with the existing editorial team to pursue cool ideas … “We wanted to create things that people would play with rather than just consume,” Johanesen said.
Adult Swim seems to have had success dabbling in games, though more on the publishing side, so it’s not that far-fetched a move. Will this games division still be around in five years? That depends entirely on which Games of Thrones character you are.
Yep, BuzzFeed Is Building A Games Team [TechCrunch]
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9 responses to “So BuzzFeed Is Getting Into Games Development… Sort Of”
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