HEAD BLOG

The bandwagon gets a rough ride. Jump on board and everyone thinks you’re being lazy. The bandwagon haters form their own to ride alongside you and throw insults in your path.

It’s a fad, a phase, the next big thing. The bandwagon is, they say, where the also-ran sits, the followers, the sheep. Don’t ride the bandwagon because you’ll never find your way home to the cool stuff.

So iPhones and social media are what to avoid, hate Flash and eBooks. They have none of those on the anti-bandwagon bandwagon. Go your own way and travel with us.

But you’re in Marketing, they say, so what can we expect. The things we like don’t need marketing. Paper books and cathode ray tellys, open source systems and food from the bins. These are a few of our favourite things.

They are wrong though. The bandwagon isn’t such a bad place to be. Sure it gets crowded but what’s wrong with that? If you’ve something to say you need people to hear. A wagon full of people enjoying a trend or a movement or a product isn’t such a bad place to be. We all have to spend our leisure time doing something and if other people are drawn to a particular thing then maybe, just maybe there’s something to it. Something worth participating in, something worth enjoying alongside others.

It’s not all bad, this like-minded thing.

Yes, the bandwagon is fine form of transport. Hitch yourself to it and see where it takes you.

That’s the line blurted out by lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) in Cameron Crowe’s retro rockumentary, Almost Famous.

It’s a plea that cuts straight to the heart of the film, capturing the hopes and desires of boys everywhere as they make the transition into awkward adulthood.

For gamers and film-goers it holds resonance even after that transition is complete. The subject matter of many games, especially those with an 18 rating, is clearly designed to draw us back to our childhoods – but with an edge that makes it more acceptable, more adult to do so. So how do we explain the seemingly endless stream of “childish” games for sale that contribute, in general, to the view of gamers as childish and socially awkward?

It all revolves around archetypes of course and is linked to the idea that as creative people we draw our inspiration from what inspired us when we were young and most impressionable. It’s sort of a snake eating its own tail scenario and explains why we get rehash after rehash of watered down science fiction “ideas” like Babylon 5 – poor Star Trek retread if ever there was one.

Take one game, Red Dead Redemption, something currently being played by most of the people here at Head First. It plays directly into the hands of everyone who ever wanted to roam the Wild West. More than just making the lead character a cowboy, however, it lets you role play fully, bringing your own personality to the part just as a child would. I have a family relation who refuses to do anything bad and spends all of his time helping people. I know of someone else who takes every opportunity to drag strangers behind his horse.

It’s easy to build up a psychological profile of individuals as children.

It isn’t just games, however, it’s every form of media. The most mainstream (measured by commercial popularity) success stories are the ones which appeal most to children. Take Harry Potter or the Twilight series as an example. If, like me, you spend half your waking day sat on a train observing the commuting class spend half of their days glued into a book or watching a film on a two inch screen then you can’t help but notice the subject matter. It’s rarely Shakespeare.

Archetypes explain a little of what’s going on. We all (in Western culture at least) buy into the hero, the trickster etc. Yet to take GTAIV as an example we find that archetype only gets you so far. Listening to the buzz in the office surrounding games such as Red Dead, Mass Effect, GTAIV, Batman Arkham Asylum and Just Cause reveals audibly greater championing for the titles that are more linked to childhood than others. So as great as GTAIV undoubtedly is, it is a lot harder to associate (and relate) to an Eatern European gangster than it is to a cowboy or spaceman. Few children, one would hope, would yearn to become a gangster when they grow up.

To many of us, the notion of “cool” IS what we wanted to accomplish as a child. The hopes we had back then of emulating our grown-up heroes who, it has to be said, were probably caught in pursuit of their own childhood dreams.

Perhaps it is the remembrance of an unihibited childhood that draws us back to certain entertainment types but it is revealing that, back in Almost Famous, it is the adult rockstar pleading with the teenage reporter to make him look cool.

In 1983 I received a ZX Spectrum. The one my dad bought had 16k (smaller than this Word file) but could be upgraded to 48k by sending it off again.

I don’t remember why he did it this way but I remember having to be very patient around Christmas until the postman finally delivered the newly upgraded home computer.

Many people my age will have been through the same experience but what made my ZX Spectrum different to everyone else’s was the case it sat in whilst I learned the art of up, down, left, right, fire and the basics of Z80 assembler language.

The case was built by my dad and it was a beauty. It held the computer, the tape drive and had space for an armful of cassettes hidden by a lid as well as providing a neat solution for channelling the cables. It was even designed to raise the computer to a comfortable angle of 20 degrees; dad certainly was keen on me doing a fair bit of typing as well as playing games.

Twenty seven years later and a bunch of us are sat, surrounded by flat screen monitors, Apple Macs and games consoles, discussing the latest in user experiences as represented through video games. Everything around us has been designed and mass produced to fit everyone.

The ubiquity of product design is not lost on us as we consider what it is that makes for a user experience. At the heart of this is speculation over whether the new boys on the block (Microsoft and Sony) have any chance of challenging Nintendo on their home turf of motion control.

The thing about the Wii is that it was conceived and designed as a mass-market, motion controlled device. Every part of it from the way in which the Wii-motes were made to emulate an average TV remote, to the limited graphics and chunky option screens, was part of what made the Wii grandparent friendly.

It worked.

Beyond most people’s expectations, it worked.

The user experience that Microsoft and Sony now want to emulate wasn’t added on afterwards, it was built in.

So does that make it any more robust? Does it make it any more likely to succeed? Where does the user experience end and the gimmick begin?

I’m not sure you can discount bolt-on solutions to user experience. Buzz and Guitar Hero were essentially exactly that and they intensified the idea of mass market gaming. The Eye-Toy back on the PlayStation 2 felt like an idea needing a market but Nintendo certainly solved that with the Wii.

And that is, perhaps, where this issue becomes more complex. Nintendo defined their own audience by knowing what it wanted to achieve with motion controlling whereas Microsoft and Sony are “lumbered” with an existing audience who are all very vocal about what they expect from gaming. I remember arguing against the flood of moans regarding the Wii name. The existing gamer base was hostile towards the very idea of “soft” gaming, an approach I feel has been behind the perception of gaming as a pursuit for the less socially able amongst us. Will they view the new user experience in a positive light?

The two companies must certainly hope so because on the flip side of that coin is a public who may already be convinced that the 360 and PlayStation 3 are for the gamers, the stereotypical gamers locked in their bedrooms screaming about Red Dead Redemption.

In such a world, the task becomes how to convince both camps that the user experience is one worth buying into because not everyone has a dad who will make that experience feel personal.

They’re all singing from the same song sheet but when it comes to 3D I’m not sure I’m hearing them.

Everybody seems able to recall images of strange black and white folk in even stranger red and blue glasses. It’s a part of all our sci-fi childhoods along with transporter technology and blue skinned aliens.

Some things just won’t die.

Those 3D glasses have made such an impact upon every fan boy’s psyche that when it comes to getting a job and having a say in product design, the memory steers the adult, making the dream of 3D a constant in the lives of successive generations.

Whereas, in previous decades, 3D was used as a show stopping gimmick now it is becoming a game changer and every company in this dimension is determined to make it happen.

From super expensive TV sets to handheld gaming systems, the time of 3D might finally have come.

Where there’s a will there’s a way too much and we’ve seen every form of entertainment trial 3D as much ad they possibly can. Studios are scrambling to convert films to the format (stopping just short of the Police Academy series) and video games are all set and ready for it also. It would come as no surprise if we see a 3D Switchover being publicly funded a few years from now.

But beyond the pre-pubescent fascination with the technology (no doubt born from a desire to see naked ladies with depth) where is the real value? Is being able to see Elsie Tanner (she’s still in Coronation Street right?) push a pint of mild out of the screen really worth the awkwardness of wearing a pair of glasses that dull the image and thereby actually reduce the user experience?

And that’s what it’s all supposed to be about, right? The user experience. Not the continual need to create new products, however vacuous, in order to persuade us to ditch things like those old fashioned flat screen HDTV sets we bought for the World Cup. If we can persuaded of the need for something then the rest is just a PIN number away.

So will it change the way we tell stories? Probably not but then neither did the coming of colour.

There's a snake in mah boots

I’ve never been a huge fan of westerns.

I don’t know why. I guess the setting never really appealed to me. Maybe the landscape of the old west wasn’t as much of a draw to the younger version of me as the notion of barrelling down the Death Star trench. I had no understanding of the freedom it represented – the lawlessness and the excitement. I grew up in a bungalow in Wigan, a million miles away from Cowboyland.

All that’s changed now. Well, since I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption anyway.

I’m not saying that I now know just what life in the old west was like, due to me simply playing a game, but I’m starting to see why kids are expected to like “cowboy stuff”.

The multiplayer version of Red Dead Redemption is great fun. It contains all the iconic elements of life as an outlaw, without any of the boring stuff, like eating or resting or having to face the law if you shoot someone. I realise this semi-review arrives a good few weeks after everyone else’s, but it’s finally starting to hit home just how appealing the cowboy life can be.

The game world affords a similar sensibility to the old west, in that there are no real consequences for your actions. You can choose to help, befriend or shoot anyone or anything you happen across. And in an online multiplayer world where strangers inhabit the same space as you and your friends, this presents so many opportunities for fun, it’s unreal.

Last night I rode out across the plains of New Austin with three friends in my posse. We chose a simple mission and headed across land to our destination, only to find a group of other players had already arrived before us, intent on taking the loot we wanted so badly. What followed was an astonishingly enjoyable massacre that saw us ousting the bad guys, taking the swag and riding off into the sunset.

I never left my comfortable seat, but I had a storming time with a bunch of friends, playing a classic role in a guilt-free environment. Finally, I understand why the old west is such an enticing prospect.

I walked out the room last night with a little bit more of a swagger in my step.

Right. Start again. This is supposed to be a quick few thoughts on E3 2010 but quickly turned into a ramble on Kinect. That ramble has now been spun out into its own post going up in the very near future.

So, E3 2010, good eh? Wasn’t it?

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the right question, of course it was good it was a big huge gaming expo after all. The question I’m searching for should be was it disappointing? Even that doesn’t seem quite right, how can loads of great games being shown off disappoint?! How about… did it meet your expectations?

Each year I bemoan my inability to head off to LA and take in the spectacle that is E3. Not because I want to go networking with industry types but because I want to experience the utter madness of the launch events and be surrounded by the not-yet-released and newly announced games. But that is where my expectations would have sadly been left a little wanting this year.

There’s no denying the raft of spectacular and must have games that were on show this year. Fallout: New Vegas, Halo: Reach, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Fable III, Medal of Honor, Gears of War 3, Dead Rising 2, Brink, Crackdown 2, and Call of Duty: Black Ops to name but a few(!) of those I am looking forward to.

Now read that list of games again. You’ve heard of them all haven’t you?

There in lies the problem. Almost every game or piece of hardware on show was already firmly on my radar. It was great to see new trailers and find out more information on Title-X but I really wanted something unexpected to wow me. I understand in an age of leaks and online journalism it is pretty difficult to keep things secret for long but still. The only titles I wasn’t aware of pre-E3 were the new Silent Hill game and NeverDead, both from Konami. No doubt there were more but none within my scope of interest. And I suspect these too were probably already known to many just that I hadn’t stumbled across them!

The same can be said of the new hardware announcements. Nothing I didn’t already have some degree of awareness about. Nintendo’s 3DS came close, I knew and had heard very little on it. Once again it appears Nintendo have got it right – introducing 3D to their already successful and established platform but ultimately keeping it simple and, more importantly, fun. Now for the obvious. I can’t talk about E3 without mentioning Kinect and Move. I have little interest in Move so more or less skimmed anything from Sony on the subject. Being an Xbox fan I was much more interested in Kinect and there’s nobody who can say it isn’t an impressive piece of kit. Technically it blows the competition clean out of the water but to be honest it’s big Cirque de Soleil showcase and subsequent presser left me feeling rather flat about the whole thing. Last year it was positioned as a real game changer, literally, with far reaching implications and possibilities. Nobody saw it coming, it was genius. Fast forward 12 months. After a very long build up the result was rather anti-climactic. The problem was too much was revealed the first time around. All that was left to show this year was an unfortunate name change, a new form factor not a million miles away from the dev kit and the games you’re going to be playing on it. None too surpassingly these were nothing we hadn’t seen before on the Wii which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. Even the announcement of a new ‘slim’ Xbox wasn’t enough to appease me (it didn’t help that I’d bought an new Super Elite only 6 weeks ago). Again, the rumours had been circulating for a while and really took the wind out of the sails when it was officially announced.

Ultimately there might not have been any real stand-out revelations but when you have so many talented developers and great publishers flooding the market with fantastic games you’re never really going to get a ‘disappointing’ E3. I may have been left a little underwhelmed overall but I’ll take solace in the many great games I’ve got to look forward to in the next 18 months, and if anybody would like to take me to E3 2011 then by all means do!

Microsoft kicked off the first big conference of E3 this year. It held the attention of the audiences with previews of upcoming game releases such as Gears of War 3 and Halo Reach and announced and all new slimline Xbox 360 but it was the Hands-Free Kinect presentation that was really the focus of the show.

Originally named Project Natal, Kinect is an upcoming motion control peripheral that requires no controller. It tracks your body movements allowing you to interact with games directly and was touted as being able to do a lot more than the Wii. Basically, Microsoft is jumping on the motion control train (and Sony seems to be following suit with Move) in order to grab a slice of the Nintendo pie. It makes sense, of course. Nintendo have shown that there is a lot of money to be made in the casual gaming market and any business would have to be very myopic to turn a blind eye to that.  Microsoft want in. They want some of those brand new casual gamers playing on their console and in order to do that they’ve come up with Kinect. I don’t think it’s going to work out.

It should be remembered that when Nintendo started marketing the Wii they moved into a blue ocean of opportunity where there was no competition. Whilst Microsoft and Sony were focusing on the more hardcore gaming crowd with the 360 and the PS3, Nintendo struck out to attract a brand new audience who had perhaps never been interested in gaming before. It resulted in the Wii selling millions. It also resulted in a lot of gamers who prefer a larger amount of depth and complexity in their games buying a 360 or PS3 instead of a Wii. If Microsoft want to sell to the more causal crowd they will be mostly be competing with Nintendo for customers rather than attracting brand new ones. They will have to convince them that Kinect is worth spending money on; which could end up being pretty expensive if the customer doesn’t already own a 360. They will probably have to convince them that they need Kinect even though it is probable they already own a Wii. Most importantly of all, they are going to have to convince them that the Kinect can provide a different sort of entertainment than the Wii.

Ingenuity. That’s what helped bring so much of the Wii’s success. Unfortunately, it seems to be lacking on Kinect. For every popular Nintendo title then Kinect has an answer. If you enjoy playing Mario Kart, why not have a go on Joyride? If you like using Wii Fit for exercise then give Your Shape a try! And it goes on – the answer to Just Dance is Dance Central, to Wii Sports is Kinect Sports, to Wii Sports Resort is Kinect Adventures. They’ve even got a giant tiger/kitten pet simulator called Kinectimals which is very, very reminiscent of Nintendogs. Nintendogs was released in 2005. Have there really been no original ideas since then? Do Microsoft believe that the controller free technology on Kinect is enough to push these games onto customers who are likely to already own similar games? Maybe they do and maybe they are right. Maybe they plan to make games in the future that really push the limits of motion control with new and interesting ideas. At the moment, I wouldn’t bet any money on it.

There is only one sure-fire way to create new gaming audiences and to put consoles in the hands of people who may not have wanted one previously – innovation. An audience normally doesn’t know what it wants until you invent it and tell them so – something Nintendo did very well with the Wii. To be fair, innovation is hard to do and it is easier to try and jump on a bandwagon for an audience that has already been proven to exist. Kinect is playing it safe by chasing Ninentdo’s casual gamer but it is unlikely to reap the grand rewards that Microsoft is hoping for.

Hands up anyone who knows someone who buys books because of the way they can compliment a room? Leatherbound or classic Penguin, definitely old and from a worthy writer, the checklist is easy to compile. They add dignity to the space they inhabit and weight to the owner. Buying them and displaying them, perhaps on shelves or perhaps in carefully arranged stacks, is a declaration of taste as the owner looks to impress upon us a holistic approach to interior design.

Many of us shrink from such displays even if we also display our books in such a way. Ours, for starters, have all been read, all loved and bought for the right reasons. We don’t buy art to match the curtains and we don’t buy books to rest between carved, wooden bookends.

But we do like it when others notice our more natural display of bookish taste. That old copy of Oliver Twist was bought second hand and read on holiday. That’s genuine. Dickens is a genius and still relevant today. And yes, we now buy hardback books, special editions where available, signed if possible – not because they look good to others but because they add to the pleasure of reading.

Because there is nothing wrong with collecting.

What is it about owning things that brings such pleasure? We all make our decisions, draw our lines in the sand when it comes to ownership. For some a “serious” book must be real but quick reads could probably be digital. For others all books could be digital but take away our LPs and there will be a ruckus. The pleasure is in the decaying paper, the smell, the scratchy sounds of the stylus, the ritual of purchase and consumption; things come into focus like stars aligning with our self-image.

Is the value, therefore, of a product in the core offering (the words, the ideas) or is it something entirely different, larger? Is it in the way it is wrapped up and presented? Is it in the kudos it bestows upon us? Why do we pay more for nicer packaging and to what level will this be replicated on digital devices? Much space is given over to the “dvd extras” approach but do they add any real value for the customer? Would, in short, the same consumer who might have bought into a physical special edition be persuaded to pay an extra few pounds for some behind the scenes video extras or author journals? Is physical design worth more than digital design?

Look at the chatter surrounding pricing on the iPad vs that of the iPhone. The standard of games on the latter impressed everyone and has shaken the world of gaming. Fully featured games for less than a fiver. Yet when it comes to the iPad people are wondering what is justifying the extra cost. Is screen size enough to charge more and if not how do we really know whether the game has been improved on the iPad?

It’s all a magnificent, personal and rambling subject of course. But as the road to digital downloads becomes as assured as the road to hell, it’s a subject worth considering.

I’ve written about the possible dangers of Apple becoming the gatekeeper to entertainment. To me, the rise of the corporate State is a big, hairy and deeply scary shift in global politics. That one company can be the arbiter of morality above and beyond any nationally or internationally agreed laws is increasingly becoming a reality and shifting our sense of what democracy can acheive just at the very time when global democracy is moving within our reach.

This post isn’t, however, about politics. At least, not entirely.

It is about Apple and its attitude towards development and, more specifically about how ideas and innovation is fostered within the new one party State.

A post by the well respected Dan Grigsby of Mobile Orchard got me thinking. At first his claims of operating on the edge chimed with my sense of how creativity should work that great ideas are not born from control and order. but between the cracks; wild and wilful; the result of non-conformity.

That’s what want to believe. I want to believe that the approval system imposed by Apple is the antithesis of creativity and that it will end in a steady stream of stilted, unoriginal products that will ultimately turn people away from iTunes.

Only I don’t.

I don’t believe that at all.

I wish I did of course. I like the idea and I completely respect Mr Grigsby’s decision to quit iPhone development. It’s principled and therefore admirable. I like that a lot.

I just think it isn’t accurate. I think great ideas come from necessity. We all operate under some kind of structure imposed upon us. All of publishing works the same way; films, books, music – if you want to be heard then you generally have to follow the rules, even if breaking those rules is another one of the rules. Getting product in front of consumers takes money, even in these days of the long tail and the people who have the money are, by and large, interested in ROI and minimising risk. To them, innovation is useful only as a means to an ends.

Look at the studio system in Hollywood – great films still come out of that. Books are different but the economic pressures are no less (and increasing all the time). Games certainly operate under very strict control systems which companies such as Apple are merely emulating (ok, and strengthening).

Great things still happen. Great films, books, games – they all come out and on a regular basis. Ideas can’t be controlled no matter what systems gatekeeper companies such as Apple put in place. Ideas flow around such barriers.

Maybe there will be a corral of wild ideas for the iPhone. Maybe Apple will empower greater freedom for developers so they can experiment. I can’t see this happening if it threatens stability and control but maybe it will, in some form, happen.

If that happens it could be because all the real innovators have left to pursue other platforms. Most likely, however, it will be because it seems like a good idea.

It must have been fifteen, sixteen years ago. Not to the day, that would be stretching truth and memory a little too far and it is vital that you trust me on this: Microsoft almost killed me.

When I say “killed” I mean killed but when I say “me” I do, in fact, mean my career.

It was fifteen or so years ago and I had left college with a degree to my name and a whole load of skills without a place to put them. A job was needed but not just any job. With all the arrogant hope of the newly graduated I scoured the papers for the writing job that would suit my unproven skills. Teaching poetry? Not a problem. Writing for Coronation Street? Sounds easy enough. I had the comfort of a supportive creative writing lecturer and the knowledge of what zeugma means. How could I fail to impress?

The weeks turned to months and still no interviews. Then one turned up for a start up magazine. I wrote my sample piece (ok, maybe I ought to have written a LOT more sample pieces) and submitted.

That the interview took place in a upstairs room should have set the spider sense a-tingling but any fears I may have had were allayed by the deployment of the ultimate weapon: Excel.

Some people are getting all hung up on Powerpoint but for me, Excel was the killer (I’m not sure Powerpoint even existed back then – this was a time when Word came on a whole stack of floppy discs).

I thought my writing had secured me the coveted place in what would be the next Loaded (I know, NOW I know) but looking back it was the “editor” pitching me.

And he got me.

A detailed Excel based presentation proved beyond all shadow of a doubt that not only was the magazine viable, it was potentially revolutionary. All it took was example after example of how a simple change in one cell could affect every other part of the spreadsheet including (and spectacularly) the bottom line. That sold me. That paved the way for me to accept a job on the basis of a deferred first payment.

Then a second.

Then, yes, a third.

Month after month I wrote and (shudder all ye DTP afficianados) designed the magazine using Pagemaker and Photoshop.

The months I spent there kept me looking for real, paid, work but they awoke the urge to learn any and every new application I would need to do any and every new job that came my way. Working with the people I now work with I see just how important this first stage was and that despite the despondency, despite the scam, Excel showed me what could be achieved by a wing and a prayer.

I’m still owed £833.33 though.