Carmen Sandiego
Carmen Sandiego is a media franchise based on a series of computer video games created by the American software company Broderbund. While the original 1985 Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? video game was classified as a "mystery exploration" series by creators and the media, the series would later be deemed edutainment when the games became unexpectedly popular in classrooms. The franchise centers around the fictional thieving villain of the same name, who is the ringleader of the criminal organization V.I.L.E.; the protagonists are agents of the ACME Detective Agency who try to thwart the crooks' plans to steal treasures from around the world, while the later ultimate goal is to capture Carmen Sandiego herself.
The franchise primarily focuses on teaching children geography, but has also branched out into history, mathematics, language arts, and other subjects. An attempt was made to create a series of state-specific games in the 1980s, but the only prototype to be completed was in North Dakota. Beginning in 1988, Carmen Sandiego Days became popular across American public schools. In the 1990s, the franchise extended into three television shows, books and comics, board games, a concert series, two planetarium shows, and two music albums. By 1996, the Carmen Sandiego character and game concept had been licensed to over 20 companies including HarperCollins, University Games, Great American Puzzle Factory, DIC Entertainment, WGBH/WQED, Micro Games of America, Publications International and Troll Associates. Towards the turn of the 21st century, the Carmen Sandiego property passed through a series of five corporate hands: Broderbund, The Learning Company, Mattel, The Gores Group, and Riverdeep. Subsequent acquisitions and mergers of Riverdeep led to the franchise currently being in the possession of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. For the next 15 years, the series would become mostly dormant despite a few licensed games. In 2017, soon after Netflix commissioned an animated show based on the property, HMH hired Brandginuity to reboot Carmen Sandiego through a licensing program built around the show and the franchise as a whole including toys, games, and apparel. HMH Productions, established in 2018, is currently the content incubator, production company, and brand manager for Carmen Sandiego. HMH Productions co-produced the animated Netflix TV series Carmen Sandiego, which ran for four seasons from 2019 to 2021, and is set to produce a live-action film as well.
The franchise has become known for its ability to surreptitiously teach facts, breed empathy for other cultures, and develop logic skills, while creating detective mystery experiences intended to entertain. One aspect of the series that has received consistent praise by critics is its representation of strong, independent, and intelligent women.
Carmen Sandiego has maintained a considerable popularity and commercial success over its history. Carmen Sandiego is one of the top 30 longest-running video game series, having existed for just over 30 years with the release of Returns in 2015. By 1997, Carmen Sandiego games had been translated into three different languages, and over 5 million copies had been sold into schools and homes worldwide. The three 1990s-airing television shows have together been nominated for 45 Daytime Emmy Awards, while World also won a Peabody Award. They had a combined viewing audience of over 10 million viewers each week.
History of franchise
Broderbund era (1985–1998)
The original game idea started in 1983 from Broderbund programmer Dane Bigham, wanting to take the idea of text adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure, but create a menu-driven interface to be played on the Apple II computer. Initial work was done with Broderbund's "Rubber Room" artists, Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott, creating a game where the player would chase down various crooks. Broderbund co-founder Gary Carlston suggested changing the concept to be focused on geography, anticipating shipping copies of The World Almanac to let players research clues and find the right answers for geography questions.Bigham focused more on the interface, and Carlston hired David Siefkin to write the game's story. Siefkin had traveled around the world with a backpack and a map, and had also played "Colossal Cave Adventure". In his draft he substituted real countries for the rooms of the cave, and proposed a list of villains, including Carmen Sandiego. The other staff found this name mysterious and exotic, in addition to being a female character they could use to attract younger women to the game. From Siefkin's script, they expanded out the idea of the criminal organization V.I.L.E. - Villains’ International League of Evil – and the ACME Detective Agency – with ACME jokingly considered an initialism for "A Company that Makes Everything". The core gameplay was then established, having the player as an ACME recruit to chase down underlings within V.I.L.E., following geography-based clues to complete their search, and working up their ranks in ACME until they were tasked to go after Carmen herself. The game proved successful, unexpected from the educational market, as it became a staple in many classrooms.
Portwood and Ellliot produced storyboards and initial graphics, while staff completed the software. They used a "Carmen bible" to maintain quality and consistency. Each design team consisted of 8-10 people. If a game idea became dull within a week, it was discarded. Games were play-tested in schools prior to release in order to identify problems. Prior to Carmen Sandiego, Broderbund had been involved in distributing and marketing software; therefore careful consideration was put into how to market the franchise. Awareness was built through editorials in magazines, placement on retailer shelves, and promotions. The launch price of $38 was chosen to suit cost-constrained teachers. Playing an entertaining game at schools led to children beginning to request the game from their parents, leading to a "pull-through effect" in the distribution chain. Broderbund emphasized that the games were fun and labelled them 'explorations' rather than highlighting the educational aspect. The game play succeeded in this by giving the player a sense of agency while travelling through an adventure and chasing the villain. Broderbund included response cards in their games to gather information, which once in a database could be used via direct mail to sell upgrades or future products. According to New Product Success Stories: Lessons from Leading Innovators, Broderbund had also built an "organisational capacity that supports creativity" and was customer focused on its game development.
From 1986 to 1998, Broderbund followed the first Carmen Sandiego video game with U.S.A., Europe, Time, America's Past, Space, and Junior Detective, reboots of World, U.S.A., and Great Chase Through Time, and finally released Word Detective and Math Detective. The first seven games of the franchise were each awarded one or more SPA Excellence in Software Awards, particularly for their educational effort. In 1991, Broderbund went public, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange as BROD. At the time, the Carmen Sandiego games were Broderbund's second-biggest revenue source, comprising 26% of total revenue; the biggest was The Print Shop, which brought in 33% of revenue. By 1997, Carmen Sandiego games had been translated into three different languages and over 5 million copies had been sold into schools and homes, worldwide.
Carmen Sandiego also appeared in three television shows during this era. The World game show was broadcast on PBS from 1991 to 1996 and won six Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award. World was followed by Time, which was cancelled in 1998 due to the geography-based premise having "run its entire course". It was acknowledged that history can be more subjective than geography, but the show hoped to tackle more challenging material like the infamous Japanese American internment camps during World War II in a straightforward and educational way. The Earth animated series was broadcast on FOX from 1994 to 1999. In 1996, President Bill Clinton stated: "When I met the co-leaders of San Marino at the Olympics, I knew where it was because of Carmen Sandiego".
The Learning Company era (1998–present)
After Brøderbund ceased to exist in 1998, The Learning Company apparently sought to redesign the series. The company determined that the brand was stagnating but thought it easier to revive an established brand than start a new one. Under The Learning Company, the series seems to take its premise more seriously and uses character-based humor. Since The Learning Company has only created two Carmen Sandiego games, one of which is no longer sold. This change is evident mainly through the marketing of select Brøderbund products.The first title released by The Learning Company was ThinkQuick Challenge, a quiz game with a similar tonality to Word Detective and Math Detective, which included the reappearance of Chase Devineaux. The new structure of Time was apparently to The Learning Company's liking since their new version of World, titled Treasures of Knowledge, was similar. The Learning Company decided to return the series to its original focus on geography, discontinuing Word Detective, Math Detective, and ThinkQuick Challenge.
In 2004, Bam! Entertainment released The Secret of the Stolen Drums on the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. It is so far the only game of the franchise to use real-time 3D computer graphics, although many previous games had used pre-rendered 3D graphics. It was also an action game and while geographical facts were included, learning them was not necessary to complete the game. Although The Learning Company evidently licensed the use of the series as well as some of their own characters from Treasures of Knowledge, this game is not distributed by or sold under The Learning Company name. An animated Netflix series, Carmen Sandiego, aired for four seasons from 2019 to 2021.