SECRETLY BUILDING A NEW FANBASE OF LITERATURE – THROUGH ONLINE AND MOBILE GAMING

SecretBuilders is the company that aims to keep the classics alive through a virtual community and a catalogue of games that enable children to enter the stories themselves. “We're gamifying the classics,” says Umair Khan, founder and CEO. “Engagement makes content much more memorable.” The company’s games allow children to play alongside historical and fictional figures, from Huckleberry Finn to Macbeth to Dracula.

Not a moment too soon, according to the experts. “The classics are less accessible to today's children,” says Leila Rasheed, who teaches writing for children at Warwick University. “It may be unfamiliar vocabulary that puts them off. It may be that a relatively slow pace and gentle content fail to stir the imagination of modern, video-gaming kids.” Whatever the case, the new UK Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman agrees, and even says that children are falling out of love with reading because schools are forcing them to read the classics.

In contrast, Umair is proud to declare his love of all things literary. A former maths teacher from Pakistan, he wanted his three children to have the same enthusiasm, but recognised the need to change the format to ensure the appeal for some young people. He first got the idea of bringing classic books to life when reading Alice in Wonderland to his daughter. “I thought it would be amazing to actually go down that rabbit hole and experience the story in real-time, to engage with the characters,” he says.

The route to market has been two fold.  His company first created an online community which was sold to schools, then a year and a half ago it entered the mobile games arena. The mobile market is proving a huge opportunity for the company as this is the way most young people play. Secret Builders is therefore currently working with 100% Indie to bring the games to market via Samsung Apps and reach the huge worldwide Samsung mobile market.

“When I first started thinking about this, back in 1997, CD ROMS were getting popular and multimedia was starting to take hold,” says Umair. “But I didn’t actively pursue the idea for nine years, by which time Club Penguin had taken hold and NeoPets were all the rage. I knew it was time to create my virtual world.”

SecretBuilders was born in 2007; an online community where gamers could enter the world of literary legends, interact with them and play games with them to help them retain the plot and characters. It took two years to build, and started with Shakespeare. “We considered Russian literature but decided to go lighter,” jokes Umair. Dickens and Jane Austen followed, among others.

The US economy in 2007 was in dire straits and with no money for marketing, the company relied on investors and word of mouth. After launching in the US with just a handful of schools, the popularity of the community took hold and started to spread. Teachers loved it, as it enabled them to fulfil the criteria of the literature curriculum, while children also loved it as it brought the books to life for them. The community games included player incentives to encourage competition, and school incentives through charity donations. “We knew we were succeeding in appealing to teachers and pupils alike when we started receiving emails from schoolchildren pretending to be teachers, requesting more games and access.”

The SecretBuilders community now has over 9 million registered users and is still growing, so taking that virtual world into downloadable games was a natural move for the company. Mobile was the focus from the outset, because of the target audience. The challenge was ensuring a constant stream of content, and for that the company needed to partner with book publishers.

A meeting with Oxford University press led to the world famous book publisher coming on board with over 300 titles and a rich library of content to gamify. Harper Collins is also now a partner. For SecretBuilders, it means a wealth of content ready for turning into games and for the book publishers, it’s a non-exclusive marketing tool to keep their stories alive and target a whole new generation that otherwise might never have been reached.

The model is simple and effective. Monetization is generated through additional paid for game levels and in-app purchases, or through ads in the ad-supported versions of the games. The ROI is larger because of the ready-made content and rather than pay for each individual license, the book publisher gets a percentage of the profit for each game.

“The beauty is this simplicity and the turnaround time,” says Umair. “We already have the content, the visuals, the audio and the characters. The narrated plot is placed straight into the game with additional breaks for relevant challenges, such as helping Sherlock Holmes find a clue in a room. We can create a game in less than three weeks.”

The games range from spelling challenges to hidden objects and adventures, and Umair is aware the style will not appeal to older or more experienced gamers.– But for the target market, it works. “I recognise that many gamers might look down on the old school illustrations and styling but we're not trying to produce the world’s most polished game artwork. We stay true to the style of the books.”

Since launching just over a year ago as a mobile games company, SecretBuilders has created 25 games with several million downloads and 175 SKUs across different platforms. The company is preparing to launch its catalogue of game books onto the Samsung Apps marketplace through 100% Indie, targeting the vast Samsung mobile games market.

Success for the full range has mainly been in the US and UK, with pick up in Australia and the Middle East with plans to go global. The fourth quarter of 2013 will see the launch of the first non-English speaking games, in Spanish and Portuguese.

And it doesn’t stop there. Umair is in discussions with publishers of cookery books and car books, who are enquiring about how to bring their content to life. “For us it is all about the content,” he concludes. “In the future we’ll look into multiplayer options for mobile too. It worked on the web for us and we’d like to bring that aspect into our games. That way we’ll have a whole new generation playing in classic historical and fictional environments together, using the wonderful world of gaming to help prevent these worlds from being forgotten.”

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