Geographic gets into games

National Geographic, best known for its yellow-framed magazine and often breathtaking nature shows, is getting into video games.

National Geographic Ventures, a unit of the nonprofit National Geographic Society, will work with game publishers to turn its material into games for PCs, consoles and hand-held devices.

“Our content is extremely well-suited for a global gaming audience,” said Paul Levine, the National Geographic executive who will lead the new games division.

The games will be drawn from a broad range of content and themes across National Geographic’s properties.

The first title -- available now for computers and the iPhone -- is “Herod’s Lost Tomb,” a simple hidden-objects game built on a story in the magazine’s December issue.