She added: “I’ve said to the team when we were first developing me into the game – you need to make sure my boobs look big.”
The reality-show-inspired games are part of Netflix’s growing library of mobile-only interactive offerings, which are available to the streaming service’s subscribers.
The company’s gaming service has about 100 titles, including 13 that are based on Netflix original programmes. The streaming giant hopes that by providing these ad-free games for users, it will increase the amount of time people spend with the service.
It is also looking to use its gaming operation to promote its programming and prevent subscriber “churn”, or cancellations.
Netflix recently announced four additions to its gaming roster: Netflix Stories: Perfect Match, Netflix Stories: Selling Sunset, Too Hot to Handle 3 and The Ultimatum: Choices, all based on the company’s reality shows. The games will launch in tandem with new seasons of the shows.
“It is that amplification effect that if you love the show or you love the game, there is another iteration for you to immerse yourself in, to enjoy that world,” says Brandon Riegg, Netflix’s vice-president of nonfiction series.
In the games, players get to design their own characters and take part in choose-your-own-adventure-style stories. The outcomes can be as racy as a romance novel.
With the Too Hot to Handle games, for example, players must choose whether to stay chaste with the other animated contestants or break the rules by making out or having sex in a suite.
Netflix has not released numbers to gauge the performance of its games business. But third-party data suggest reality-show-based games have performed well for Netflix.
“These will be great hooks to draw in new users but also can be a great incentive to prevent losing users,” says Randy Nelson, head of insights at Appfigures. “It keeps them in that Netflix world longer, and they’re exposed to more Netflix content. In the long run, this will be a pretty big positive for Netflix.”
Since inception, Netflix games have achieved 119 million downloads, Appfigures estimates.
Netflix games remain a small part of the company’s overall business, which has 270 million subscribers globally.
Subscribers have spent hours playing the reality-show-based games, Netflix executives said. As with the shows themselves, the games tend to attract a female audience.
In some cases, players first discover the games and then later watch the reality series they are based on. In other cases, fans of the show pick up the games.
“Games can fuel fandom, but they can also create it,” says Sarah Springwater, director of story for Netflix Stories, the library of interactive fiction games based on the company’s programmes.
The stories in games like Too Hot to Handle 3 and The Ultimatum: Choices branch out depending on the decisions players make. Those games have more than 15 possible endings. That gives players room to explore and stay engaged for longer, says Leanne Loombe, who leads external game development for Netflix.
“The thing with games is that they definitely allow you to engage over the longer period of time, and that’s the opportunity that we see,” Loombe says.