Digital Chocolate on Sopranos Bada Bing! Manager

Following our story on The Sopranos: Bada Bing! Manager the other day, Digital Chocolate's Peter Farago has got in touch to give us some more information on the game, and the thinking behind it.

And the first thing he's keen to make clear is that Bada Bing! Manager is not just a reskin of Digital Chocolate's existing Nightclub Empire game.

"Absolutely not, this is a full production SKU," Farago says. "A more appropriate comparison would be to Gameloft's Prince Of Persia / King Kong / Mission Impossible / Splinter Cell 2D side-scrolling platformer engine, upon which Gameloft built nine different games."

"While The Sopranos Bada Bing! Manager leverages the underlying logic of our award-winning Nightclub Empire engine, the game design, layout, objectives, characters, art assets and animations are all completely new, and a lot of attention was paid to delivering the authentic feel of The Sopranos world."

Farago also points out that strictly speaking, the new Sopranos game isn't the first time Digital Chocolate has worked with a brand, following previous games based on Ferrari, Pitfall, Survivor and the NCAA, as well as an application based on the Atkins Diet.

But it's also true that company founder Trip Hawkins has been public in his aversion to working with big brands, particularly console games, movies and TV shows.

For example, earlier this year in an interview with GameDaily, Hawkins said: "By the time those brands map over to a mobile phone, so much is lost in the translation. Do you think the gamer is going to continue to buy mobile games when all they get is second-rate versions of what the brands are supposed to be about?"

So does the Sopranos news mean Digital Chocolate has changed its mind about preferring to avoid big brands? Farago offers some insight into the problems publishers face when working with these kinds of titles.

"Some of these include tighter development cycles, unrealistically expensive licensing costs which often drain from the development budget, unrealistic revenue share expectations which drain on revenues, unmovable day and date releases (especially in the case of movie licences), and distracting approval processes with some brand holders who focus on elements not germane to good gameplay," he says.

"As a result, Digital Chocolate turns down more deals than it accepts. But this does not preclude us from building licence-property games. While Digital Chocolate will continue to focus the majority of its development around original content, it has always had, and will continue to have, some licences as part of its portfolio, when it makes sense."

So why The Sopranos then? Apparently, it's mostly down to HBO, which owns the rights to the gangster series.

"We really like what they do with original content across the board," says Farago. "They get it. Additionally, they allowed us to do what we do best, which is to create a great game. They are a very supportive partner from a creative standpoint, which we value. And many of us, incidentally, are huge Sopranos fans."

So there you have it. While The Sopranos Bada Bing! Manager is currently only slated for a US release, rest assured that if it comes to Europe next year, we'll be first on the case with a review.