Commentary: Displaced game developers launch BreakAway Games

When ABC Sports approached Deb Tillett and Doug Whatley to start up an $8 million joint venture to develop and market sports video games, they were really excited.

Advances in microchip technology were enabling games developers to develop simulations that were almost as good as the real thing.

It was a real challenge, recalls Tillett, but we put a great team together for ABC, and went from zero to an award-winning product in just one year.

Then Disney bought ABC. Disney never joint-ventured with anybody, Tillett and Whatley were told, and so the two found themselves with a nice severance package, but unemployed.

What emerged from this was BreakAway Games Ltd., a Hunt Valley- based video game developer with a remarkable track record. Whatley is CEO and Tillett is president.

We'd put a fantastic team of games developers together, says Whatley. Disney wanted us all to become employees and move to L.A., and I had a team that didn't want to move. I thought to myself, 'If ever there was a time to start a new company, it was now.'

He named his new company BreakAway Games, he explains, because just like a great athlete in a race, we were going to break away from the pack when it came to sports games.

Whatley loved sports, and was an avid participant in his Rotisserie Baseball League. He carefully crafted a business plan around sports. An analytical type, he outlined in detail the target market, the products he would bring to that market, and the revenues and profits the sports games would develop.

My business plan included a whole range of games tied to the sports industry, Whatley recalls. And we've never done a single sports game, he adds, smiling and shrugging his shoulders.

What happened?

We were an independent developer without deep pockets, Whatley explains. Sports games were such a big deal that the major publishers couldn't afford to take a risk with an independent developer. So, they brought everything in-house and did it themselves.

Whatley would not be discouraged.

Sports to history

Besides sports, Whatley had another passion - history. I've always been fascinated by the interactions that cause things to happen, he explains.

Whatley turned to another segment of the games market that has a huge audience - historical games. In the last several years, BreakAway Games has brought such games as Civilization III: Conquests, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Cleopatra, and the collection of Civil War games authored by games developer Sid Meier, including the popular game, Antietam.

BreakAway Games newest addition, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, is set in ancient China.

Whatley's passion for history has led into a whole new area that is beginning to take hold: serious games. These are games with a purpose: educate and train.

The Serious Games Initiative states as its objective: [to] focus on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.

The U.S. military are the best planners in the world, Whatley points out. They have taken the computer modeling of game strategies to new levels.

It is widely accepted that video games can improve manual proficiency. It's been acknowledged that the new breed of fighter pilots who grew up playing video games have better reaction times. A study at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City concluded that laparoscopic surgeons who played video games at least three hours a week had a markedly lower rate of mistakes.

Serious computer games can take us out of reality in many different ways. Brian R. Morrison, founder and national director of Baltimore-based Believe In Tomorrow National Children's Foundation has teamed up with BreakAway Games to help children facing the pain of chemotherapy and other painful medical procedures. The concept is simple, according to Morrison.

Virtual reality has the ability to immerse a child in a computer- generated environment, he explains, thus focusing the child's attention away from medical treatment and the pain that they are experiencing. VR has the ability to immerse a child in another world, so that they are not consciously aware of what is going on around them.

It was Whatley's understanding of the significance of this concept that brought him to Morrison's attention.

When I met Doug and explained our objectives and challenges, he immediately understood the issues and had practical and creative advice on moving the project forward, says Morrison.

Serious games can also make education fun and help students gain a real understanding of history by playing what if scenarios. A good understanding of what created the past can help policy makers build a better future.

Nathon Gunn is president and CEO of Bitcasters Inc., a Toronto- based production company that advises Historica, an organization dedicated to educating kids about Canada's past. In this role, his company had been looking at ways to use games to create compelling educational experiences.

We discovered BreakAway Games at a Serious Games workshop in D.C., Gunn recalls. As the leading developer of fun games with historical context, BreakAway was a natural fit for collaboration.

Bitcasters is working with BreakAway to develop a game based on Canada's past - allowing players to go back in time and become the architect of a whole new history for the country, changing key events and seeing what if things had been different.

BreakAway and Bitcasters aim to teach by stealth, putting fun at the top of the priority list, Gunn explains. Bitcasters is also an advisor to Prime Minister Paul Martin's re-election campaign and has been exploring ways to use games to develop public policy as well as engage, educate and interact with citizens on complex issues.

Computer games have come a long way from the early Pong type games that amused and frustrated us 30 years ago. Doug Whatley and BreakAway Games are on the cutting edge of what may come in the future.

Neil R. G. Young, CLU, ChFC, is president of Young & Company, a financial planning firm in Lutherville. If you have any comments or questions, you can send him an e-mail at neil@yco.com or call at 410- 494-7766. The Web site is http://www.yco.com.

Copyright 2004 Dolan Media Newswires
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