Pop Games: A Game Of Thrones: Genesis
by Kate Welch (She Geek Show)

The geek world is all atwitter (no pun intended) with talk of the Game of Thrones premiere on HBO this past Sunday. The premiere did marvelous justice to a book series worshipped by geeks everywhere, with an absolute minimum of tweaks and changes to make it work on the screen. Old fans and new get to enjoy the visual richness that HBO is bringing to life in Westeros and beyond.

But did you know there are video games in the works for Game of Thrones as well? Of course there are.

Cyanide Studio, a 60-person French game developer based in Paris with a smaller 15-person studio in Montreal, secured the rights to George R. R. Martin's book series in 2009. They've been developing two games since then.

The first game slated to be released is titled A Game of Thrones: Genesis, a turn-based strategy game for PC. The campaign was written under direct supervision of ol' George himself, which is reassuring, and spans over 1000 years of Westerosi history, allowing the player to participate in critical events only mentioned in the book series (like the War of the Usurper, where Robert and Eddard won the Iron Throne away from the Targaryens).

In true Game of Thrones style, it isn't just your military prowess or brute strength that'll win battles in this strategy game. There are multiple ways to deal defeat to your enemies; you can choose to force them out through an economic standoff, or manipulate the politics of the realm to fight dirty. The Sid Meier's Civilization series already uses similar tactics to achieve victory, so it will be interesting to see how Cyanide manages to make this feel like something more than a Civ clone.

A Game of Thrones: Genesis is currently slated as a summer 2011 release.

The second of the two games Cyanide is developing is shrouded much more deeply in mystery. It's an as-yet-untitled RPG being developed for both PC and next-gen consoles, but there's no release date or any other kind of information.

The screenshots that have been released for Genesis look pretty good, albeit pretty generic stuff when it comes to RTS. The RPG looks like an Elder Scrolls game -- not a bad thing, but again, it gives it the feeling of a knockoff.

Cyanide's release titles to date have been sports strategy games like Horce Racing Manager and most recently the adaption of Blood Bowl; they don't have anything RTS or RPG related under their belts. We'll just have to wait and see if they can do justice to the series the way HBO apparently can.