HEAD BLOG

Jonathan Jones makes a wonderfully high minded claim that todays Leonardos (no, Turtle fans, that’s as in da Vinci) can be found alive and well and working at Pixar.

I can’t argue with that.

What I would add, however, is that the same drive, the same talent, can be found alive and well within the games industry.

If the search for experience, and giving people the ability to access and understand that experience isn’t just as worthy of the “art” tag then I’ll be Pollacksed.

Bioshock, Red Dead Redemption, Modern Warfare – these are brave strides into understanding and relaying the human experience in a way that can be accessed by millions.

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.

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!

Would gaming benefit by following United Artists and Image Comics in creating a publishing model that put power into the hands of the developer?

I’m not talking here about sharing resources for marketing or creating a high profile publishing brand that the consumer can look to as a mark of quality simply because it’s developer led, not entirely at any rate. I’m talking more about creating a publisher that can better nurture the production of better games through a business that values ideas above strategic loss and minimal risk.

When Chaplin, Pickford and Fairbanks used their collective power to break away from the studio system they discovered that there was more to making money from movies than just starring in them. Being loved is one thing but producing the quantity of movies it takes to run a successful business… well that’s something else entirely.

Especially when, as an artist, you actually care about quality.

In the hands of Duke Nukem creator 3D Realms it would be easy to see a “talent first” studio fail before it started. Sure Broussard no doubt believes in quality but the harsh economic drive that makes an artistic venture financially viable isn’t all that evident.

A new publisher would most likely be drawn from the development studios who hit the headlines (not so long ago this name call would have almost certainly included Infinity Ward but times change). Their proven success at making huge hits grants them godlike power in calling the shots.

But are they the right model to follow?

There are, after all, other developers who produce big hits that make the money but don’t get the critical acclaim of the games press. The likes of Ben 10 and Carnival Games spring to mind. The latter especially because it doesn’t have any grand brand or technical wizardry driving its success. Carnival is, it appears, just a game that the quiet gamer wants to buy. And buy. And buy again.

Surely, in this new publishing model we are creating, they would get a seat.

Of course it depends on what a coalition of developers want out of such a publisher. Individually they can probably all get more of the profits or call the shots on IP.

So maybe they would want to create a publisher of been there done that; of experience where the developer of Carnival can turn to the developer of Duke Nukem and say “forget about the tech, just make him dance.”

Back when I was studying Victorian literature there was a seminar based on Mills & Boon and the art of writing to a market. Like most students of literature I was quick to dismiss the genre because a) I wasn’t the sort of reader who cared for heaving breasts and stallions being ridden by jodhpur wearing banking executives and b) I thought that sort of literature was “literature”; churned out for people who didn’t care what they read.

Ah, youth.

Luckily that same seminar set me right on how complex a craft the writing of Mills & Boon literature is. Sure it channelled great writers such as Emily Bronte but it did so knowingly and with a very clear understanding of a target market. The execution is also carried out by writers who can, y’know, write. Properly. They are clever, talented authors who know how to structure a novel and deliver total entertainment to their readership.

And by strange coincidence, I just saw this article.

Mills & Boon is targetted, commercial writing.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Anyone browsing through Waterstones these days (or watching ITV2) can’t have escaped what seems to be a glut of book covers featuring pale men, blood red roses and even paler women. It’s a style designed to signal that if you enjoyed Twilight by Stephanie Myers then you’ll love anything else in the “range”. Vampire fiction is hot property.

Like Mills & Boon though, it’s not the only range on the block. YA (young adult) fiction has many ranges appealing to many different readers (with a great deal of crossover appeal too).

And like Mills & Boon, these books are targetted, commercial and created by very talented writers.

Which got me thinking about how this approach works when it comes to creating games. Which it doesn’t.

Unfortunately.

Otherwise we’d be seeing some interesting games right now that tapped into this demand.

Development schedules, a desire for “originality”, costs, procedures – the list of why not to react to the market can be endless.

But what if games could react? What if a team of developers decided that instead of chasing the latest technology they would release games based on a simpler model which could be turned around within six months and be more focussed on engaging existing or potential gamers in the worlds they want to be engaged in.

Imagine a game based on the Max Payne engine. It has the right sort of feel and functionality to be host for a Vampire game. Why can’t that be repurposed to allow for different characters and a different storyline every six months? I know the reasons why it isn’t. But what are the reasons why it can’t be?

A new development model allowing for  game creators to dovetail their skills with those of the productive YA author could be exciting. It could develop a market for YA games that isn’t based on what a hardcore, live with games every day of my life developer sees as quality but rather based on the interests and aspirations of a generation who might want different things from their gaming time.

And yes, Head First has plenty of ideas what those things might be

Working with the new breed of developer publisher has been an exciting challenge. In a world of digital downloads how are you going to make your product stand out? Do you confine your promotions solely to the online world or do you learn from companies such as Google and utilise the power of old media and the attention it still attracts?

At Head First we ask all of these questions and help shape the creative campaign to suit the product and the client. With The Mysteries of Little Riddle we have been lucky enough to bring our skills to this issue and create a series of images that are sales focussed.

And luckily there is still great fun to be had in creating real world objects.

A few nights ago I was reading a book to my son. This isn’t, in itself, unusual enough to write about but, after writing about how much I think the iPad will change the book buying market it did make me think more than usual about the process I was going through in reading the book.

Earlier that day I’d been discussing e-books with an author as we outlined plans to help him promote his first book. Creating eye-catching advertisements is a large part of what we do here at Head First and our experience in games has given us a pretty (I’ll resist saying unique) appropriate perspective in promoting certain types of products. As books increasingly vy for attention against games (which is intensifying in the face of the e-book) we all felt that our knowledge could be put to good use.

The upshot (after many preambles like that) is our discussion. We both agreed that e-books are here to stay but that print was where the real joy was.

As the wide format book opened in my hands that night I found myself enjoying its shape, weight and texture just as much as the marvellous writing. This, I thought, was what books were all about: the pleasure of the format and the joy of reading it outloud to someone too young to walk away. Every author desires a captive audience, every father no less so.

This, I felt, could never be lost. The amazing shapes (and sometimes sounds) built into the idea of a book are infinite. Wide books, tall books, flap books and pop-up books – all of these are part of teaching a child not so much to read but to feel; to engage in their tactile world. As enchanting as the words on the page are, as charming as the illustrations are, a book is so much more. How could an e-book ever threaten this?

They won’t. They will offer something different. As they mature, writers and artists will explore the format in the same way they have explored new printing process. New ideas will be born from the potential of e-books but the role of print will not disappear.

There are many migivings about the rise of digital books. Adjacent business models in games, music and even films offer glimpses of what could be around the corner and clues as to how to deal with the changes. Totalitarian regimes and corporate anti-trust cases should serve to remind us of the power and dangers of allowing a single entity to control a communication gateway and new threats will no doubt arise that must be dealt with from the perspective of what is beneficial to society rather than propitious for commerce.

We must never forget that a book isn’t solely the material from which it is made. The paper, the card, the vinyl or the silicon offers writers and artists a format to work in and explore but the ideas they invest in that format are altogether bigger.

Volkswagen have created a wonderful piece of what they call “social marketing” but which anybody familiar with gaming for the past thirty years would just call “gaming”.

At Head First we pursue work where we can make a difference; where we know that our ideas would be appropriate. Sometimes this takes us outside the games industry and the usual response is “where’s your relevance?”. I never struggle to find an answer.

I say something like games brings everybody together. To which I am told that the client isn’t a gamer.

I don’t believe them.

Everybody is a gamer.

They might not consider buying Modern Warfare 2 or Bioshock 2; they might not even own a “games machine”; but they are gamers.

The rise in what is commonly called social media has gaming built in as standard. Look at your friend’s Facebook updates and a game won’t be far away, clearly VW understand this.

Games unite people. Games teach people and games blaze the trail in terms of user experiences and technical accomplishments.

And if everybody is a gamer then it follows that there are certain elements they have in common; certain elements that can be used to reach them.

VW’s boast centres around the fact that their promotion had been downloaded over four million times. The “revelation” of their claim is supposed to be that all this was achieved without spending a penny on media. However, when you understand the power of gaming the revelation, however brilliant, isn’t surprising.