ShareThisBy ANNE KRISHNAN
Sunday, October 22, 2006
IEntertainment Network is joining forces with the new MGM movie, "Flyboys," for its first videogame in three years.
The online game company, known for military aviation games such as "WarBirds," has developed a World War I-themed game to coincide with the movie's theater run.
"Flyboys Squadron" demos are available for free downloads at flyboysgame.com. The packaged game hits stores Friday (Sept. 29).
The game puts players in the pilot's seat for the kind of dogfights that are featured in the movie, said J.W. Stealey, IEntertainment's CEO and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
The deal gives the 15-employee company serious marketing muscle. The producers are spending $50 million to promote "Flyboys," with the videogame going along for the ride.
The game also is a sign of renewed energy at IEntertainment, Stealey said. In 1999, he left the company he had founded four years earlier, only to return as CEO and chairman, with the business facing bankruptcy in 2001.
Since then, he has worked to straighten out IEntertainment and its finances. The company, which was profitable in an earlier incarnation as Interactive Magic, returned to profitability in 2005 and could go public before long, he said.
In addition to "Flyboys," Cary, N.C.-based IEntertainment is talking to a European company about making games out of old World War II movies and packaging the movies and games together. The company also is working on aviation simulations for military applications and games for mobile phones.
The movie tie-in could give IEntertainment a blockbuster audience, but there's a danger that the game could crash and burn if "Flyboys" isn't a hit on the big screen.
"It's no longer just about the quality of the game. It's also about whether the movie succeeds or not," said Sridhar Balasubramanian, a marketing professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. "If the movie is a flop, the game will find it very difficult to take off by itself."
Stealey, however, says there's no downside in tying his company's game to "Flyboys." In addition to the marketing budget, the movie provided good story lines for the game and generated some cash with an investment by its producers.
"The game's going to be terrific, no matter what the movie is," Stealey said. "The movie can only help us. If the movie's a stinker, the help goes down."
But he doesn't expect the movie to be a stinker if it's anything like producer Dean Devlin's earlier hits.
"Both 'Independence Day' and 'The Patriot' were ones where I yelled and cheered and watched them five times," Stealey said.
Devlin and Stealey already are discussing more movie-related projects if "Flyboys" goes well.
Stealey expects to sell "a few hundred thousand" copies of the game for $29.95 at stores that include Best Buy and Circuit City, and attract up to 15,000 customers to IEntertainment's online game portal. The movie producers will receive part of the retail sales, but IEntertainment will keep most of the $14 to $25 that subscribers will pay each month to compete against other players online.
Playing the game will take technical skill, but IEntertainment has tried to incorporate elements to appeal to the film's wider audience.
"It will not be an easy game," he said. "If it was easy, we pilots wouldn't be that cool."
(Contact Anne Krishnan at annek(at)newsobserver.com.)
