Seven Ages of Britain (Six to Start / BBC / Open University)
Role: Producer (for Six to Start) | Play the game
In early 2010 I worked with Six to Start as producer for this innovative game around David Dimbleby’s new history show, Seven Ages of Britain.
To complete the game, players must answer seven weekly rounds of tough questions related to the objects featured in the show – the twist being that they’re allowed to use the web to research their answers. As such, the game becomes a quest through some of the most interesting corners of the web; including online copies of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, The Bayeux Tapestry and the Domesday Book.
It’s one of the first games to have used such extensive video from a BBC 1 show and possibly the first to encourage people to use Facebook and Twitter to find out answers.
As well as building the platform, we were also responsible for producing the questions. Getting the difficulty level right was really important; consulting with the OUs research team, we aimed to create something which would really challenge the history geeks while also being accessible to the general viewer.
The game features exclusive video content not shown on TV, and we even persuaded the great man himself to do the video links!
We’re really pleased with the result and reckon we’ve made something both genuinely fun and educational.
