Last week was a busy week for Dundee’s Tag Games. A gentlemen by the name of Graham Chambers has just been appointed as the company’s new head of global sales.
Graham has years of experience within the entertainment sector, most recently as Amazon UK’s head of Games & Software. He was also the managing director of Ubisoft UK, Gauntlet and sales manager for Nintendo UK.
Tag’s looking at this as further evidence that the traditional retail and boxed product aspects of the games sector are recognising digital and mobile as the future of the games and entertainment markets.
Over coffee and biscuits, Tag’s managing director, Paul Farley, told us:
“I am extremely pleased to welcome Graham to the Tag team. I am looking forward to working closely with him as we continue to grow the studio in both stature and scale. His unique blend of experience, skills, network and expertise will be of huge benefit across all aspects of the business, especially in attracting the very best global clients for our industry-leading bespoke game development offerings.
Attracting him from Amazon is a fantastic coup for Tag and another sign that we are experiencing a power shift in video game industry from the traditional console retail space to mobile and download.”
That’s not all. Tag also announced that their latest project is Hotel GB, a tie-in with Channel 4’s latest celebrity-driven reality blockbuster, starring Gordon Ramsay, Mary Portas – and some of the channel’s most popular stars.
Hotel GB challengers players to run a hotel, making sure staff are trained, guests and happy – and the celebrity judges impressed, in order to unlock new hotel services, build new floors onto the hotel and even set traps to stop the judges checking up on them.
The show’s first episode will screen on October 1st in the UK. The game will launch for Android and iOS prior to this date.
According to Channel 4’s website:
“Welcome to Hotel GB, staffed by some of Channel 4’s most well-known and popular faces, who, for one week only, will give unemployed people a chance of a lifetime”
While Channel 4’s commissioning editor for games, Colin Macdonald told us:
“As soon as I heard about the show it struck me how perfect its content was for a game, and it’s been a real pleasure working with Tag Games who’ve created it for us. I very much look forward to seeing who’s able to build the highest and best hotel!”
We went back to Paul Farley (Tag’s MD) for a closing comment:
“Tag Games has been delighted to work with Channel 4 on such an exciting project. Having the country’s top celebrities working together in close proximity, and for a good cause, is sure to offer some amazing fly on the wall situations. Not only will Hotel GB make for compulsive television viewing, we trust mobile game players will find the game just as enjoyable”.
You can keep an eye on the programme via the Channel 4 website, follow the programme on Twitter and join in with the hashtag #hotelGB.
We’ll keep you posted on the game’s release and let you know once it’s LIVE on the App Store and Play.
Hotel GB looks like a complete rip-off of Tiny Tower… which has already been ripped off by Zynga (Dream Heights).
It saddens me to see that companies are no longer capable of thinking up new, creative and interesting ideas but resort to just cloning existing products in their entirity.