Why major UK film PR agency DDA is moving into games
You'd be forgiven for not knowing who DDA is. The public relations firm has several decades of experience in our sister industries, but is a newcomer to games.
Founded in 1970 in London, DDA specialises in TV and film PR, employing over 150 people across its HQ and two other offices in New York and Los Angeles.
And earlier this year, the firm initiated its foray into games, hiring Media Molecule and Bandai Namco alumnus Gemma Cooper as director of gaming.
The company also recruited Julie La'Bassiere in April, as its new chief strategy officer. La'Bassiere is a BAFTA deputy chair, having previously been CEO of its New York branch. She's previously worked for the likes of Tribeca, Obscured Pictures and Apple TV in a career spanning over 25 years.
The convergence of film and games has taken a serious turn in recent years, thanks to the success of adaptation including the Mario and Sonic films, the Last of Us and Fallout TV series (the latter of which DDA handled PR for), and more. Initiatives like Amazon's upcoming anthology series Secret Level also are an exciting sign that these worlds are merging – from the creators of Love, Death & Robots, the series will adapt popular game IPs as standalones stories.
It's these increasingly open ways of communication between film, TV, and games that have led DDA to want to make a move into the industry.
"From the very beginning, way before my time, DDA was working on those film franchises which were based on games, which no one really thought about," La'Bassiere tells GamesIndustry.biz. "We think about convergence now, but convergence was around Silent Hill, and Max Payne, and Hitman, and Resident Evil, which were films that we worked on in our history. [But we were] not necessarily thinking about, 'Maybe we're going to get into games someday.' But I think it was the beginning."
As years have gone by and "that convergence has happened," La'Bassiere continues, DDA just organically ended up working on an increasing number of games-related
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