Despite being a franchise that has existed since 1963, there’s a serious lack of Doctor Who video games. Over the years, several have been released, but none have really taken off, despite some of the games released on consoles, such as the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii.
There was even recently a title that launched on modern platforms, yet it wasn’t at all successful and has left the franchise in the dust when it comes to making the jump to gaming. Yet, once upon a time, the franchise tried to make a jump into an MMORPG and failed dramatically. Doctor Who: Worlds in Time is an attempt to break into a genre that nobody ever talks about, and one that there’s so much to learn from.
The game was first announced in 2011 and seemed like a dream come true for fans of the franchise, especially given its sheer popularity at the time (Doctor Who had just broken America, with the Matt Smith era seeing a soar in popularity).
“For the first time, players from around the world will be able to follow in the footsteps of the eccentric and brilliant Doctor by travelling through time and space, exploring new worlds and encountering many alien races, both friend and foe. The game allows players to enter the TARDIS and be set a challenge by the mysterious Time Lord to help him defend civilized culture against infamous Doctor Who enemies,” the official press release for the game read.
Players didn’t play as the Doctor; instead, they created what can be equated to a companion from the franchise who was sent on missions by the Time Lord. Bafflingly, there were four different races that players could choose from in addition to the traditional customization options: Human, Silurian (a race of Lizards who lived on the Earth before Humans), Catkind (an evolved humanoid Cat species that tended to work in health-related services) and the Tree of Cheem (a tree-person that appeared in exactly one episode of Doctor Who from 2005, making this a very weird inclusion).
There was also a class system that players could invest in, with four different classes available: Adventurer, Diplomat, Guardian, and Technologist. Each was good in their own field, and working together was the only real way to solve major puzzles and adventures. Classic characters, villains, and species from the franchise also appeared, some of which were there to help and many of which were there to hinder, as players tried to solve six different types of challenges.
It’s an extremely basic premise and one that clearly didn’t really have a budget. Footage of the game is flat and extremely basic, with an attempt made to have a unique art style hampered by a total lack of money. This isn’t World of Warcraft, it isn’t Final Fantasy 14, it’s a game designed almost entirely through passion alone, and passion sadly just isn’t enough here.
The biggest problem when discussing this game is trying to work out exactly what happened. Contacting developers from the team is increasingly difficult as more and more of them move onto other projects or away from social media, and since the game was niche even among fans of the TV series, even breakdowns of what exactly happened in each mission are hard to come by. What we do know is that it only lasted for a mere two years before closing down completely.
In January 2014, the title was announced to be closing down. No reason was given for the closure, though it’s more than likely that player count wasn’t where it needed to be in order for SEGA to keep the game live. Since then, not a single Doctor Who MMO has been released, and the vast majority of titles have been mobile games, some of which have performed better than others, but not of which have captured the consciousness of the public (the closest the franchise ever came to doing this was with the release of an expansion pack for LEGO’s ‘toys-to-life’ project, LEGO Dimensions, but even that couldn’t light a fire under the fandom).
Part of this is likely to do with the very visible decline in popularity that the franchise has had since 2013, when Matt Smith (The Eleventh Doctor) left the role. But even now, with the popularity of the franchise on the rise and with Disney helping to fund the show (for now, at least), there’s no real sign of a return to the gaming sphere for the series, despite more people than ever before pining for it.
But why not? Since the 60th anniversary of the franchise in 2023, a milestone so wild that it’s hard to put into words, the series has received heavy investment from Disney to the point that in countries other than the United Kingdom (where the series is made), it’s hosted on their streaming service. It’s not like Disney doesn’t have experience in the video game space, and it’s not like they’ve not made weirder stuff before, so why not take a chance on this cult franchise, give some money to a known developer and see exactly what they can come up with. Sure, there’s always the chance that it fails, but without experimentation, you’re unlikely to find success.
