Computer is dead again, so I'm now writing this on my whizzy new mobile. I'm trying to make myself do good Sunday things like cook or play my guitar, but I can't quite relax because tomorrow I start my new job. I'm half wildly excited and half bricking it, to be honest.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Whose games are these?I went to the London Games Festival last week. I was volunteering, which was great, because it meant I could go to the careers fair that I was going to go to anyway but also get into the Game Developers Conference, which is the main European conference for games. The other perk was that at the careers fair, all the other candidates, in addition to being generally mumbling and unwashed, had crappy green tags on which they'd (often atrociously) handwritten their names. I, by contrast, had a blue tag, with my name printed on it, and big letters saying "CONFERENCE STAFF". Mwahahaha. Anyway, I must admit to being more than a little underwhelmed by the kind of things that most of the people were talking about.
The central focus of the conference was next-gen - fair enough with XBox360 out already, Wii due out before Christmas, and PS3 "soon" (whenever Sony actually manage to fix blu-ray). However, all anyone seemed excited about was how to make everything bigger and more technically advanced than before, and I'm sure in some cases better, but not different. Case in point: Evolution Software (they all have silly testosterone-fuelled names, this is one of the milder examples) gave a presentation of their super-next-gen racing title, Motorstorm. Motorstorm's unique, revolutionary idea is that your buggy/bike/pickup makes deep ruts in the mud that covers every course. These mud ruts then harden, with the physics engine calculating a new surface on the course, so that on the next lap there are deep tracks in the mud which makes driving more of a challenge. For those of you whose eyes are already starting to glaze over, that's a pretty appropriate reaction - that is really quite hard to do. All that plus the innate difficulties of developing for a brand new system. But, seriously, who cares? I just don't see how that makes the game better. It certainly doesn't make me want to buy it, and I'm a game-playing type. I'm into it, and I can't be arsed. Is that going to attract new people? Is Martin going to buy that? Kat? Fat chance. Another podcast I was listening to had a developer talking about the new trees in his company's next-gen racing game. Trees, which are really central to a racing game. I despair. What am I getting myself into? Oh and another thing, and I know this is a little bit I'm-so-windswept-and-interesting, but no-one asked me about Japan. What are Japanese kids like? What games do they play? How do you think they compare with British kids? Seriously, I've spent the last two years pretty dammned focussed on kids that make up a sizeable percentage of their target audiences, learning all about what they like, how they live and how they learn, and I'm also looking for a job so I'm going to be eager to chat and I'll tell you anything I know. Nothing. Bugger all. I'd ask.
Anyway, I've got an interview on friday with a game developer who are based in Oxford. They make fairly gory blowing-lots-of-stuff-up-with-big-guns games, but you've got to start somewhere. Maybe they've been thinking the same things as me and are hatching secret plans to make interesting, sophisticated, highbrow interactive entertainment for people who read the guardian, go to art galleries and write with fountain pens. Who knows. It'll be interesting to see what they ask and how it goes and everything, but I don't think I'll get it.