Welcome to the second blog on Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock. I’m Simon Harris and I am the Executive Producer for BBC Worldwide on the game, which means the project is my overall responsibility. I need to ensure that all aspects come together to make a great game that stays true to the Doctor Who brand. This means working with our developer, Supermassive Games, across areas such as design, art and programming. It also extends to working with the Doctor Who teams in London and Cardiff to ensure that everything looks and feels as it should.

For this blog post, I thought I would give you some insight into the monsters that will be appearing in the game. This goes alongside our first gameplay trailer, released today, which showcases them.

Choosing the monsters for the game turned out to be a more of a complicated process than you would imagine. Initially, when Supermassive put in their design pitch for the game, they had chosen the four monsters they would like to see, both as Doctor Who fans and from a gameplay point of view. However, at that time they weren’t aware of the new monsters that were going to be shown in the new series, which was just about to start on the BBC. Given the high level of security we place on information about the show, there were some great discussions where we had to talk very cryptically about a specific monster. We had to balance this with trying to understand what the design team at Supermassive wanted to achieve – we didn’t want to include the new monster if it completely broke the gameplay plans. Thankfully the design change felt good and The Silence was added to the monster line up. I’m not going to tell you which one got cut, but I can promise it will make an appearance in a future game.

Having settled on our monster line up: the Silence, Cybermen, Silurians and the Daleks, work started on the detailed game design on how they would challenge the Doctor and River. We also had to start modelling the characters for the in-game graphics. Accuracy is vital, and it was essential to have the models looking like they do in the show. It was great to start working with the Doctor Who teams in London and Cardiff to ensure our dimensions, the shaders (the technical term for an aspect of the graphics which give a texture a look and feel to it such as steel or cloth) and the colours were all entirely correct.

It was during this process that something slightly surprising happened. The art team at Supermassive were getting really positive feedback on how the monsters looked, which was great, and the Doctor Who team then asked if we could make some changes that deviated from the reference photos. It turns out that there were a number of small tweaks which the team would have loved to make to the designs of the monsters on the show, but had been unable to for various reasons. At this point they saw the opportunity to make these tweaks in our monster designs. Of course, we were more than happy to include these amendments. So, whilst you’re watching the trailers or playing the game, send a tweet to @DoctorWhoTEC if you think you know what the tweaks we have made are… We would love to see how eagle eyed the fans are!

Having got our standard monsters all approved and looking great, we turned our attention to the game “bosses”. As all Doctor Who fans know, there is always a leader or central character driving the troops forward and so we wanted to see if we could create some monster leaders that really utilised the technology and visuals we have at our disposal working on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita.

The team at Supermassive spent a huge amount of time looking at all of the references of the monsters from previous shows and games, as well as the massive amount of books, webisodes and other content available. The team then proposed two new versions of existing monsters which would become the finales for our monsters. This was a pretty nervous time; we wanted monsters that felt as scary as they do in the show and matched the scale of the locations and environments we were creating for the game. Creating a new version of a classic Doctor Who monster is a big ask – they have to be carefully detailed and you must establish exactly where they sit within the canon of the show. Thankfully, the Doctor Who team loved what we were suggesting and both of our new monster versions were approved and are in the game. There is a tiny sight of one of them in our new monster trailer; again, tweet @DoctorWhoTEC if you think you know which one it is…

So, just an insight into some of the thinking and things that happened to get our monsters into Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock. I’ll be back soon with another blog detailing more information on what goes on behind the scenes of making our game.

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Okay, so, here we go… the first blog post on Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock. I’m looking forward to writing more of these blog posts over the next couple of months as we move towards launch.

Developing anything for Doctor Who has to be done right. The show has such a following that we need to be certain that everything the game does fits with the expectations of the fans. So far, we’ve said very, very little about the game. This trailer just has the barest hints about the core of this story. What is The Eternity Clock? How is it related to the Doctor? How is River involved in this?

I’m afraid this post isn’t going to answer any of these questions; we’ll leave that to future posts and the game itself.

We’re very excited to be working with Supermassive Games as they’ve already delivered some great titles for PlayStation, such as Tumble, Start The Party and Start The Party: Save the World. The team are huge fans of the show and they’ve been great at bringing the key essence of Doctor Who into the game.

Working on PlayStation Vita, as well as PS3, is a real privilege and its unique set of features has allowed our designers to cut loose and we’ll tell you a lot more detail about how we’re using those features in a future post.

So, I hope you enjoy the trailer and look forward to sharing more details with you in the future.

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Following on from the 2010 Move-exclusive smash-hit Start The Party! comes a heroic sequel that will turn every party into a race to save the world.

Packed with over 20 fun filled mini-games, Start The Party! Save the World! puts you, your friends and family into the heart of the action and on the screen. The evil Dr Terrible has gone berserk and is trying to destroy the world – use your PlayStation Move to stop him!

See how with the trailer below:

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If you’re getting yourself a PlayStation Move this week and you want a challenging game that shows off how awesome your new motion controller is, we recommend you look out for Tumble.

In Tumble, you use the motion controller to stack up and knock down blocks. There are over 50 challenges to tackle across single and multiplayer modes. Balance, Solve and Destroy with blocks of all different shapes, sizes, weights and dimensions and reach into the screen like never before.

We’re already starting to get great reviews, and you can try it for yourself by playing the Trial version on your PlayStation Move Starter Disc or downloading it from PlayStation Store.

We’d now like to take you behind the scenes to learn some of the secrets from the development team, Supermassive Games.

The Move Is Too Precise?

We think Tumble has the most precise control system ever developed for a game: Every action you make with your motion controller is replicated on-screen perfectly.

We’re very proud of what we achieved, but early in development we had an issue with this amazing technology. The data we were getting from the Move was almost too precise; It picked up every tiny movement, every twitch, every overshoot and correction.

A long time was spent just working on how to use the huge amount of data we were getting back from the Move, smoothing out the raw data without introducing lag. It wasn’t just about getting 1:1 control; it was about making it feel like 1:1. We’re really happy with the outcome and sure you will be too when you try it out.

Multiplayer Attracts Crowds

There’s something about a massive, unstable, teetering tower of blocks that draws a crowd: People want to see it crashing down.

To test our multiplayer levels we invited everyone in the studio to have a go on Tumble whenever they liked. The crowds grew as the games got more intense. It made us realise that we had something really compelling with the multiplayer experience; everyone was a backseat driver, everyone wanted to grab the controller and everyone wanted to be the best.

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Hey everyone. I’m Tom O’Connor, Producer over at Sony PlayStation working on Move Party (working title) for the new PlayStation Move.

We debuted the game at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco back in March, and the response was awesome. Gamers are loving the augmented reality feature of the game. Seeing the PlayStation Move motion controller transform before your eyes into objects on-screen, actually in your hand, is a pretty magical experience.

Not to mention, the game is a lot of fun and we’ve been working hard on getting all the extra content into an Alpha build – and we are there! We are playing the games again and again, and then some more … and then again, tweaking and balancing and making sure that we cram as much fun into each of the games as we can before launching in the fall.

We’ve been showing the game behind closed doors and conducting lots of user testing. We’ve been really impressed at how quickly people of all ages are captivated by the game as soon as they pick up the PlayStation Move motion controller. The experience is extremely intuitive. There are no special gestures to learn like in some motion control games – you simply interact with the objects as you would in real life. It’s super easy and fun to just pick up the controller and start playing.

Move Party is really only possible due to the amazing accuracy, freedom and precision that the PlayStation Move delivers. Cut hair, bash moles, bounce a ball, paint a picture, fly a helicopter, zap some robots and so much more…

That’s all from me for now, but watch this space for more updates and lookout for us at E3. In the meantime, check out this video featuring Jonathan Amor, Steve Goss and Tom Heaton, the Move Party developers over at Supermassive Games for an insightful look into how the PlayStation Move allows us to bring games like Move Party into your home.

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