Netflix began streaming new episodes of the popular British preschool series “Peppa Pig” in the U.S. today — and will offer the “World of Peppa Pig” gaming app within the streamer to go with it.
The move is one of Netflix’s splashiest to date when it comes to building out not just its video game offering, but specifically its kids and pre-K titles.
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“When we think about the overall kids game strategy, there’s taking from what we know from film and television and what they’ve learned with kids, which is about focusing on familiarity and focusing on things that kids already know and love,” Netflix kids gaming chief Lisa Burgess told Variety. “And we’ve also seen hints of that with our games portfolio, too. If you focus on bringing things that are familiar over onto our service, it helps our members to understand what we’re offering. So from from the highest level of what kinds of games do we want to select? We want to go after things that are big IP, beloved IP, a connection to Netflix — and Peppa falls to the top of many of those things, big IP, beloved on our service. And then ‘World of Peppa Pig’ has been a great game for many years. And so when we were thinking about all the opportunities, it was one of the very top ones that we wanted to go after.”
Per Netflix, the “World of Peppa Pig” app will offer users activities including puzzles, mini-games (spot-the-difference, dress-up games and memory challenges) and coloring books.
Burgess describes the “World of Peppa Pig” games as “very approachable” for a two year old and of interest to kids up to eight year olds, with the “sweet spot” being children ages two to five. “It’s less about the age spectrum and more about how much have they been exposed to games before in the past,” Burgess said.
“Overall, the strategy is focusing on things that are familiar, and so that familiarity can be an IP, and not necessarily an IP tied with a game,” Burgess said. “And kids at this age are very IP driven. They want to play with their favorite character like that’s their best friend. And so they want nothing more than to be able to engage with those characters. There are a lot of great kids games that are out there right now, ‘World of Peppa Pig’ was one of them. And so I do think we want to think about our strategy of, what is the value add of us being able to bring some of those other great games onto our service that add value for our members? And then in the other dimension, what about IPs that exist but don’t have great gaming experiences around them for kids? And how do we actually build up good experiences and great gaming experiences for that?”
Example: On Monday, Netflix announced it had acquired the streaming rights to powerhouse PBS Kids series “Sesame Street” and would be developing video games for both “Sesame Street” and “Sesame Street Mecha Builders.”
“A the high level, it’s all about familiar, big IP,” Burgess said. “Some will be existing games that are already built, and some will be games that we’re building up from the ground up, based on big IP.”
To date, Netflix says kids and family viewing represents 15% of its total viewership, and the streamer weeks to make its kids gaming offering “an extension of the safe environment parents already trust” that’s included with that subscription.
As Netflix builds out its overall games lineup, it’s also laying the groundwork for keeping a user interested in its offering from pre-K through adulthood by having titles targeted to subscribers in each age demographic.
“It’s the million-dollar question: how do you actually facilitate through that journey?” Burgess said. “And with kids, there comes a certain point in time where they no longer want to sit at the kids table. And so you cannot design experiences that are labeled for kids, because they’re not going to want to do that anymore. And so finding that line of, how do you start introducing kids to things that are safe and accessible, but not necessarily just for kids, that are more like for all ages?”
Burgess says Netflix is able to use its existing data from kids profiles and family viewing habits to adjust the flow from kids games to more adult games the same way it feeds new content to children as they get older.
“For every place possible, we’re going to try and take those learnings and apply them to games,” Burgess said, adding: “but we have a lot that we need to do on the overall journey and discovery experience and it’s something that we’re thinking about as we’re scaling out the portfolio of games for kids, and as that diversity gets bigger.”
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