The Digital Village was a digital media company based in
Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 WC2 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. It was founded in 1994. The science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

/comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

 was one of the founding members, along with Robbie Stamp

Robbie Stamp

Robbie Stamp was the CEO of The Digital Village, a position that came about partly because of his friendship with author Douglas Adams, whose works inspired the site. Stamp was also the executive producer of the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.Robbie was a producer of...

, who is the Executive Producer of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a 2005 comic science fiction film based on the book of the same name by Douglas Adams. Shooting was completed in August 2004 and the movie was released on April 28, 2005 in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and on the following day in Canada and the United...

 movie, released worldwide in 2005. At its highest point in October 2000, the company had over 40 employees.

TDV produced the computer game Starship Titanic

Starship Titanic

Starship Titanic is a computer adventure game designed by Douglas Adams and made by The Digital Village. It was released in 1998. It takes place on a starship of the same name which has undergone "Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure" and crash landed on Earth on its maiden voyage .The player...

, and started h2g2

H2g2

h2g2 is a British-based collaborative online encyclopedia project engaged in the construction of, in its own words, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the science fiction comedy series...

, a community site dedicated to producing what is referred to as the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...

.

The company was renamed after its main asset in 2000, to h2g2. Following the dot-com crash in 2001, many h2g2 staff continued to work without pay until the h2g2 site, brand and several staff moved to the British Broadcasting Corporation

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

. The game division became a new company, Phase 3 Studios, which continued for several months under the ownership of PAN Interactive, but ultimately closed in 2002. The 3D game of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it was working on was never released.

Adams died suddenly on May 11, 2001, although the company's fate had already been sealed by that time.

External links

• The former website of The Digital Village - http://www.tdv.com/