Google partners with Mummy producer Sean Daniel Co. to make its augmented reality game Ingress into a TV show
Google Takes Its Web Game to TV — When Google launched a gaming studio five years ago, it was largely an effort to keep a valued employee. Now, the first game developed by the studio …
Context & Ripple Effects
Ingress began inside Google as the first product of a gaming studio the company created largely to keep a valued employee, and it has since grown into the studio's flagship property. The new partnership with Sean Daniel Co., producer of The Mummy, moves that property from phones to scripted television.
First-order effects
- Sean Daniel Co. gains a built-in audience franchise with existing player lore to adapt, while Google's gaming studio sees its first title validated as transmedia property rather than just a mobile experiment.
Second-order effects
- The deal strengthens the case for spinning Ingress's team out as an independent company — which happened later that year — and gives outside backers like Nintendo and the Pokémon Company a reason to fund Niantic's next games.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform-owned games become entertainment franchises licensed across film and TV, with the tech company retaining IP while Hollywood studios supply production muscle.
The trend: Tech platforms are converting their own game worlds into cross-media franchises through partnerships with established Hollywood producers.