While most of the media is focused on the BBC’s impending cuts, the BBC are pushing ahead to shore up their online presence with a new semi-educational 3D game called Adventure Rock (AR).

AR was launched at MIPCOM and is currently recruiting 10,000 students for its bug catching pilot phase. AR was developed by Belgian company Larian Studios and is based on their Kids Interactive Community platform and a 3D game called Ketnet Kick (a joint venture with Belgian national broadcaster VRT). BBC signed the licensing deal back in February and while Larian put a small notice on their website the BBC waited until MIPCOM to say anything about it.

This raises a couple of interesting questions:

• What links will AR have to BBC Education?
• Why didn’t they use a UK software developer - there are plenty in both the games and education sectors who have the technical and creative capacity?
• Will this be run by the BBC or BBC Worldwide? Unless it is limited to users from the UK (as BBC jam attempted) then the majority of users may end up being outside the UK, pushing this far more into BBC Worldwide’s remit
• Are schools and students the key target audiences in the UK (it certainly looks so)?

We doubt this will raise the hackles of the commercial sector in the same way that BBC jam did, but we will keep a watching brief on AR.

www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/adventurerock
www.ketnetkick.com
www.larian.com

www.mipcom.com