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It’s official – we live in a world of games. These days gaming has found its way into pretty much every part of our lives, so we’ve dedicated this issue of Access to documenting its ever-expanding influence. Enjoy!
T h e Fa m e Game Our five favourite stars from the glitz of this year’s gaming BAFTAs
he gaming world descended on Moss Bros in March, hurriedly hiring tuxedos to wear for the GAME British Academy Video Games Awards. We were there, suited and booted and gawping at the wonder that is real celebrities, living it up BAFTA-style.
Dara Ó Briain
Adam Buxton
Jane Goldman
Jonathan Ross
Aaron Staton
The host of this year’s event, comedian Ó Briain is a loud proponent of gaming, often incorporating it in his act. He kept the gags coming thick and fast as he entertained the audience and introduced the night’s unique mix of red carpet glamour and gamer nerd culture.
DJ, comedian and YouTube fan Adam Buxton presented the Family BAFTA, flouting the black tie dress code with jeans and boots. It wouldn’t happen at the Oscars, but it went down a storm with the assembled guests, who seemed to appreciate the scruffy, shouty star.
Self-confessed nerd Jane Goldman presented the Story BAFTA with comedian Charlie Higson. She’s best known as the pink-haired femme fatale who helped pen superhero fare such as the film Kick-Ass, but she has also spoken out about her love for violent videogames.
Mr Jane Goldman made an appearance handing out the BAFTA for Best Game to Portal 2. But he wasn’t here just because of his wife – he has pure-bred geek pedigree of his own having worked as a voice actor on titles including the UK-developed Fable 3.
As the night drew to a close we got a glimpse of Mad Men’s Aaron Staton, who starred in last year’s awardwinning L.A. Noire. He’s one of the many TV stars now making the push toward games acting – look out for more of them turning up at next year’s BAFTAs.
Commercial Break We caught up with first-time actor Arif Maruthiyil to find out how the 18-year-old ended up starring in the new PS Vita advert
’ve never acted in anything before, but I was working as a runner for the director Cary Fukunaga on Jane Eyre and one day he told me about this advert he was making for PlayStation. He said he wanted me to audition for it even though I had no experience – apparently he told PlayStation that if they needed attitude, I was it! I got the part and then it all moved really quickly – I found out and I was on a plane to Prague the next day. I loved filming in the football stadium; it’s the Sparta Prague training ground and it’s absolutely huge. FIFA was always my favourite game – I’ve played it since I was really young so it was amazing to be there doing it for real. It’s weird but it really felt like I was in the game because you’re the character and you’ve got somebody telling you what to do, so it’s like they’re pressing R1 to tell you to shoot or something. The army stuff was pretty intense as well – the guns were much heavier than I expected and it was really tiring running around with them. I was surprised at how scared I was too – I knew it was all fake, but when you’re close up those explosions are pretty convincing! It’s been great for me. I’m applying to go to film school now and the whole experience has really set me on my way.
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I game, therefore I am
Foot Down Could you be the next GT Academy
We asked our Facebook
champion?
friends to tell us why they chose gaming above
f you saw the last issue of Access you might remember our interview with Jann Mardenborough, the Welsh teenager who became a real-life racing driver courtesy of the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy. Applications for this year’s competition are now open, so if you reckon you’re a bit special on Gran Turismo, get onto the PlayStation Network and download the free qualification game. It’s based on Gran Turismo 5, but you don’t need a full copy of GT5 to take part – if your racing skills are up to scratch you’ve got all you need to win. Don’t forget you can follow all the latest GT Academy news on Facebook at facebook. com/gtacademy
all else. We got literally hundreds of responses – here are a few of our favourites.
Micah Abel
It’s always got something new and exciting to show me. Rhys Jackson
It’s a world where anything can happen. Gabby Williams
I live on a farm and I have nothing else to do. Matthew Makin
It changes me into an action hero, a puzzle solver, a villain, a king, an assassin, a space warrior and a wizard. That’s why we all choose gaming! Scott Fitzgerald
I was scared of talking to girls.
T h e Ot h e r Magazine
Liam David Hilton
Books didn’t quite cut it. Graham Sharp
Cos I’m a trophy hunter. Fancy being a games writer? Check out The Official PlayStation Community’s new magazine
ongratulations – you’ve found a copy of Access. Twenty-four pages of gaming print goodness await you. But what would happen if a bunch of amateurs got together and decided to make their own PlayStation magazine? It would probably look something like OPC Magazine, an online-only magazine made by volunteers at the Official PlayStation Community. English community manager Chris Owen says that members were inspired to start their own magazine packed with passionate articles, up-to-date reviews and pretty much anything else that spins out of the community. The first issue is due out any time now, and the team is aiming to make four issues a year. Good luck guys – just don’t make it too good, okay? Read issue one at issuu.com/mattsimmo/docs/issue01_opc
Going floppy Unwanted discs get a lick of paint and a new lease of life
Caroline Elizabeth Busst
Because real people suck. Anne Marie Coyle
Because, unlike the real world, there’s the option to reload when you mess up! Ash Lambert
Because it helped me through my bullied childhood; now it’s cool to be a geek #win. Timothy Spilsbury
The police might have something to say when I go racing past them at 200mph. Jason Bassant
Because of the sense of community I feel when playing with others. Tony Crawford
When you get right down to it, I’m just very lazy. Nicky Ayton
Because in real life I am really bad at being stealthy. Roman Zaharov
rtist Nick Gentry says he spent a lot of time as a kid playing on the Amiga, and has fond memories of swapping floppy discs at school. “They disappeared out of my life, but recently I started messing around with them in my studio and I realised they’re quite nice for putting together into a mosaic – they’re almost like pixels or something.” He began by painting over the whole of the discs, but soon realised he preferred it when a bit of the original label showed through. Old game demos and file names remain visible, hinting at the data presumably still contained on the discs. “By painting faces on the discs I sort of humanise the machines underneath,” he explains, “but these faces aren’t really human. I see them more as androids because they’re so machine-like.” nickgentry.co.uk
Life is a game! Natty Gawthrope
Because it’s fun... DUH! Craig McGuinness
I didn’t choose gaming. Gaming chose me! Dale Bruce
Because I’m useless with a real guitar (actually I’ve never tried, but I don’t think I’d be any good).
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World Beaters Wretch32 chooses his three favourite games of all time
Grime artist Wretch32 grew up in Tottenham playing FIFA with his mates. These days his hit ‘Unorthodox’ features on the soundtrack to FIFA Street, but the rapper says he still makes time to beat people
I N T E R V I E W S O P H Y G R I M S H AW grew up very into games, and I’m talking proper into them – playing all day and all night. I was swapping the newest games with friends, trying PlayStation demos out, always playing my mates. I’m 27 now and when I was young, probably about 10 years old, my two older sisters and I were given a Sega Mega Drive. That was how I got started. This was when the Mega Drive was still quite new and very cool. I remember we played a lot of Streets of Rage, Sonic and Taz-Mania. Sonic the Hedgehog – that was a legendary game, man! My sisters and I got on pretty well and we used to play together to try and complete the whole game as a team effort, so whoever was better at a certain stage would play that one and then pass over to the next person. We’d do that rather than 04
01 FIFA 97 I’m into football and I got kind of obsessed with this game at one point, so I’d definitely put it up there in my top three games of all time. If I could choose anyone in the world to play at FIFA I’d choose the guy who created it, whoever that is. Beating him would be my biggest gaming accomplishment ever. Just because he made it, it doesn’t mean he’s good at it!
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02 Golden Axe
03 Dune
This was one of my favourites when I was first getting into playing games. I put a lot of time into playing it, until I’d really mastered it. It’s a beat ’em up and it’s a bit like Streets of Rage, but the characters are historical, kind of Viking characters. What’s its appeal? Basically, you just go around with an axe destroying things. I liked that!
Oh man, I was proper into Dune. It came out at a time when games were really changing and getting more complex and impressive. I remember thinking, “Whoa, this game is mad.” I spent a long time getting to grips with it, and whereas the characters in Golden Axe just had sticks and axes, in Dune you had the kind of serious weaponry that was up to the task of fighting aliens.
“I like to win the game before I start. That’s the story of my life – making people believe I can do it”
battling against each other. When you play like that it can really go on for a long time. Mario Kart was another game that was up my street. Of all my friends, I was one of the best. I was extremely competitive growing up and I still am; I was all about beating people. You could play Mario Kart with four players, so you had more people to beat. Even now I don’t ‘play’ people; I just beat people! Virtua Tennis was also a favourite as a two-player game, but when I got into my teens it was all about FIFA 97 – that was my game. I remember it had Alan Shearer on the front of the case. I’d play that until my mum would have to come into my room and make me turn it off. It had great gameplay and I’m someone who is into football, generally, so it was like it was made for me. I’m from Tottenham, but I don’t support Spurs – I support Arsenal. There’s only been one time when that caused me some friction, when Spurs were playing and a mate and I were out wearing our Arsenal kits, feeling brave. We ended up getting chased by Spurs fans. It was probably our fault if I’m honest, because of how we were acting – swaggering around in our Arsenal kits on a match day. When I was about 18 or 19 I realised that I wanted to make a career out of music, so I started to slow it down a bit with anything that was time-consuming like playing football and computer games. I couldn’t keep it up at that same level of obsession. But I still love games, so it was pretty cool when someone said to me, “Man, do you know your song is in FIFA Street?” They used ‘Unorthodox’ in it, and that’s just one of those cool things that happens out of the blue. When you start making music, you imagine what it would be like if you were walking down the road and someone were to drive past you playing your song. I remember the first time it happened, that was a milestone… “Hang on a minute – that’s my song!” The first time you hear yourself on the radio is another one, and playing FIFA Street and hearing myself has that same effect. Often when I go to an office for a meeting about my music there will be a PlayStation, so if I have a little time before the meeting I might just quickly beat someone. Not play someone, beat someone! The last time was a game of Pro Evolution Soccer. I knew I only had a short time to play, so I made sure I proved my point to the other person. I’ve never lost a mate through beating them at a game. It’s always been cool afterwards, but my trash talk’s good. I like to win the game before we start the game. You know, when you make someone believe that you’re a lot better than you actually are? That’s the story of my whole life; making people believe you can do it. I’d love to think that I could create a game, although I imagine it’s probably a lot of headache, a lot of stress and takes forever. I’d like to try and make one where you can walk around actual streets in England in the game. I don’t know whether or not anyone’s already done that? It would probably be very difficult to do, but I’d love a game where it looks as though you’re really on London streets and you could to go to, say, Camden in the game. That would be cool. It used to be that only a certain type of person was into gaming, but there’s a game for everybody now – whoever you are there’s a game you could be into. Music games like SingStar have brought a different audience to gaming, but I’m not so into them; the games I like are usually sporty. Something like FIFA has changed quite a bit from FIFA 97, but if I could play in an earlier version then usually I can still do it now. When a new Street Fighter comes out I’m normally okay at it, because I was good at earlier versions. They add new elements but you can figure it out quickly and pick it up. I’ve absolutely no idea what I’d be doing if I wasn’t in music, because for me there wasn’t a plan B. The plan was music and the plan was as simple as: make this happen. There isn’t anything else that I’m special at or that I stood out at. To have some underground credibility, and to have been able to remain credible in the mainstream is something that really excites me about what I’m doing with my music. I’m really happy that I’m able to be relevant in this day and age. Music can feel kind of throwaway nowadays, so I’m happy that people are connecting with what I do. I’m going to put a new album out this year with really edgy stuff that I’m excited about. When people like my music… that feels good. Wretch32 is on a UK tour until 19 May. This summer, he plays festivals including Rockness, Ibiza Live and Mallorca Live. His debut album Black and White is out now. 05
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HOT SHOTS Adam Woodward meets the new generation of filmmakers who draw inspiration from videogames I L L U S T R AT I O N FERNANDO VOLKEN TOGNI
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t’s no secret: Hollywood is desperate to tap into the rapidly growing gamer demographic. But its predictable repackaging of popular videogames for the pick ‘n’ mixmunching mass market has long been the bane of the gaming faithful. Take a bow Hitman, BloodRayne, Max Payne, Doom... Now, however, a new era of videogame-inspired cinema is being ushered in. Rather than straight-up adaptations, this new era is built around a more organic coalescence between the two multi-billion pound industries: a mutual pooling of ideas, narrative and aesthetic devices. Just as games such as L.A. Noire and Heavy Rain have borrowed from cinematic language, so today’s next-generation filmmakers are beginning to incorporate gaming vernacular into their big-screen ventures. Take the first-person shooter (FPS) perspective, most notably adopted by Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy, the stuntman-turned-director duo behind macho frontline actioner Act of Valor, set for home release on 30 July. Featuring active service US Navy SEALs and shot across various real-world locations using live ammo to ensure maximum authenticity, Act of Valor is the closest we’ve come to Call of Duty: The Movie. With much of the action unfolding through the laserscopes of the film’s flag-waving squaddies, it’s a staggeringly realistic portrayal of military combat that introduces an element of audience participation that’s clearly lifted straight from first-person shooters. “We chose to use a lot of FPS shots because we felt like it would be great for the audience to really feel what it’s like to be a Navy SEAL for 90 minutes”, Waugh explains. “I personally don’t play videogames, but I think they’re a really incredible platform that’s becoming so realistic, and for sure our film is heavily influenced by that.” First-person shooters have been a mainstay of gaming since the release of Wolfenstein 3D way back in 1992, so why is it that Act of Valor, a relatively low-key Hollywood release, is the first mainstream production to fully embrace this hyper-real POV? The answer is technology.
“My father actually helped develop the helmet camera technology that we use in this movie,” Waugh reveals. “That was back in the ’70s, but we’ve only just caught up with the technology in terms of being able to use it to shoot entire scenes. “Essentially we’re strapping a 20-pound camera to a soldier’s head and a lot of additional planning is needed to ensure the guys are able to act without too much restriction. Right now this is still top-grade stuff and we couldn’t have made this movie without the military’s full support and access to their equipment.” Act of Valor’s brazenly gung-ho doctrine makes it feel more like a glossy recruitment poster than a Hollywood movie aimed at FPS fans. Yet the film’s producers are fully aware of its crossover appeal; the first trailer was unveiled on the official Battlefield 3 website, and included free downloadable dogtags to be used within any version of the game. And Act of Valor is just one example of videogames invading film culture. A quick scan of Hollywood’s young talent reveals an emerging group of filmmakers who are quick to place videogames front and centre in their creative output. For example, British director Ben Wheatley’s delightfully nuts 2011 thriller Kill List features a pulse-quickening FPS sewer sequence, while Welsh writer-director Gareth Evans’ newly released martial arts epic The Raid follows a classic end of level boss structure. “I’m a big fan of Call of Duty and Battlefield,” says Evans, “and they play a little part in terms of how we were trying to figure out the gunplay of the film, but mostly when it came to the style of action – whether it was gunplay or martial arts – it came more from films than videogames. But the general structure – that idea of climbing up through each level – was taken from videogames.” Some directors will choose to be completely transparent about their love of gaming (see, for example, Edgar Wright and his 8-bit blitzkrieg Scott Pilgrim vs. The World). Others will channel their console influences less conspicuously, incorporating subtle references from the games they have grown up with. But whichever way you see it, the future of cinema is starting to look pixelated.
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BRITMAP Access takes pride in presenting the ultimate map of Great British gaming culture
1 Edinburgh Rockstar North
2 Bradford National Video Game Archive
Renowned as the creators of the worldbeating Grand Theft Auto series, the people behind Rockstar’s Scottish outpost were also responsible for bringing Lemmings into the world in the early ’90s. Back then they were known as DMA, but after the release of the wildly popular GTA III, Rockstar Games bought them up and Rockstar North was born. rockstarnorth.com
Take a trip down memory lane at Bradford’s National Media Museum. Their videogame archive attempts to place games hardware and software within its historical, social and cultural context, documenting the role videogames play within our national heritage. nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
3 Liverpool Studio Liverpool
We’re a nation of gamers. Britain has been at the forefront of videogames ever since boffins first started coding for kicks, and the industry’s unmistakable mark is stamped across the country. Now, for the first time (we think), British gaming has been mapped and presented for your cartographical pleasure. Some of the places shown here are old favourites, some are totally new to us; we put the call out on Facebook and you replied with your favourite British gaming sites. But have we missed anything? If so, let us know at facebook.com/playstationaccess – we’ll be waiting to hear from you.
Formerly known as Psygnosis, this northern studio joined Sony Computer Entertainment in 1993 and is best known for its racing titles – both WipEout and the Formula One series originated here. worldwidestudios.net/Liverpool (thanks ATP)
4 Knutsford TT Games If you’ve enjoyed romping around as a bricky little Indiana Jones, Batman or Harry Potter, you’ve seen the work of Cheshire-based TT Games. Started by self-confessed geek Jon Burton in 1989, TT (originally known as Traveller’s Tales) was bought by Warner Brothers in 2007 and has since been entrusted with giving the world’s biggest movie franchises a Lego twist. ttgames.com
5 Nottingham GameCity This annual festival and regular series of events has put Nottingham on the UK gaming map. Anything goes at GameCity, from art exhibitions and early views of games in development, to pub quizzes and music events. Thoroughly recommended. gamecity.org (thanks Catherine Goode)
6 Derby Core Design
7 London SCE UK Headquarters
8 Brighton Develop Conference
9 Falmouth Loading Bar
Lara Croft’s first adventures didn’t take place in jungles, deserts or watery wastes – they went down in the Midlands. Created by Derbybased Core Design, the Lara Croft series was hugely successful but in 2003, parent company Eidos moved production away from Core and the company’s assets were eventually sold off in 2006.
The beating heart of all things PlayStation in the UK, this is the place where decisions are made, tea is drunk and biscuits are eaten. (thanks Michael)
Now in its seventh year, Develop has become the must-attend event for game developers across Europe. This isn’t one for the casual gamer – expect updates on the latest developer tools, proper practical advice and some dedicated networking from 10-12 July. developconference.com
A bar modelled on the gaming cafés of Tokyo, Cornwall’s Loading Bar has built a reputation for quality games in an unlikely location. Visitors can blast away on vintage arcade games like Pac-Man or get right up to date with the latest console releases, all the while knocking back custom cocktails like Deus Ex on the Beach, or the Alice-inspired Tweedle Rum and Tweedle Tea. drinkrelaxplay.co.uk
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Games are taking over our lives. Ben Beaumont-Thomas says that if we play them right, they could make us better people while they make us smile I L L U S T R AT I O N J A C K H U D S O N
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“When we play we set aside consequence – we can try things that we wouldn’t normally do” hen was the last time you played a game? Maybe you had a quick blast on your PS Vita on the bus this morning. Maybe you gave yourself an hour on Mass Effect before bed last night. Or maybe you’re in the middle of a game right now, competing against people you don’t know on a mission to get fitter, smarter or more productive. Welcome to the world of gamification, the allpervasive new buzzword that describes the process of slotting gameplay into our lives. Once you start looking for it, gamification is everywhere. It’s in social gaming consoles like the PS Vita, but it’s also in our classrooms and our boardrooms, promising to make us into better people through the previously untapped power of play. The theory goes that when we’re playing games, our state of mind is highly creative. In his book Everything Bad Is Good For You, author Steven Johnson notes that games force us to ‘telescope’ problems. He gives the example of Zelda – in which the player has to break down their quest into smaller chunks while still considering the whole mission – and argues that this ability to manage tasks has clear value in our everyday lives. Similarly, the academics and gamification fans Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Reid note that games create ‘flow’, a term coined to describe the ultra-satisfying feeling of doing something difficult and doing it well. By being placed into this flow state via gaming, Reeves and Reid argue that we’re enhancing both our happiness and our problem-solving abilities. “One of the aspects of play is we set aside consequence – we can try things out we wouldn’t normally do,” says games designer and educator Ian Bogost. “It’s a safe space where you can make choices. We’re asking, ‘how does this whole thing work?’ That curiosity and wonder is not generally the way we approach the problems of our ordinary lives… it’s a feeling that pays dividends if we embrace it beyond an entertainment context.” 10
One of the most ambitious projects to follow the gamification doctrine is Quest to Learn, a New York school that frames its entire curriculum around gaming. The children learn by ‘becoming’ writers, explorers or mathematicians and fully take on that role, just as they might ‘become’ a Premiership footballer in FIFA. Learning targets are called ‘missions’, leading to a ‘boss level’ where the whole school comes together to solve a major task. The school has caught the attention of education experts around the world, and its founders say their approach is tailored to a generation that has grown up gaming. But gamification doesn’t stop at improving the mind. Want to get in shape? The likes of Nike+ and Weight Watchers are framing fitness and weight loss as games to drive up lap times and drive down waistlines. Want to make your office more productive? Companies like Bunchball and Badgeville deploy the scores, leaderboards, avatars and rewards of online multiplayer gaming in work environments to create competition and positive feedback.
Playing at work Breaking the tedium of a working day normally involves timewasting tea breaks and cats on YouTube, so it’s not surprising that the workplace has eagerly adopted gamification’s unique mix of fun and productivity. Gabe Zichermann, organiser of the Gamification Summit, names Rypple and Due Props as two particularly exciting apps for the workplace because they encourage constant feedback between workers, offering an alternative to the conventional annual review and helping people to feel more valued in their work.
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“There’s a group of people who can plough through anything, but they’re a really small percentage of the population,” he says. “Everybody else is fully prepared to abandon their dreams if there’s not enough positive reinforcement. Gamification is not at risk of suppressing genius because it will persevere, but it helps other people move further down the path to being awesome.” But this model of gamification, with its badges and leaderboards, has its critics. “The whole notion is deeply and fundamentally misguided,” says Bogost. “Gamification is not about games at all.” He explains that rather than forging the creative, problem-solving state we’re in when playing, the worst examples of gamification just deal with the shallowest parts of games like high scores. “Those features are feedback mechanisms. They don’t exist on their own. But there’s this desire [with gamification] to take these incidental properties and sell them as if they’re fundamental ones.”
also has to be a story element that works with that.” Zombies, Run!, the iPhone app Alderman created with Adrian Hon of indie developers Six to Start, does exactly that. While Nike+ records the speed and distance of your runs, Zombies, Run! blends proper narrative gaming with fitness by placing you in a zombie apocalypse and getting you to physically run through it. With virtual items to collect along the way and zombies breathing down your neck via your headphones, the game creates a new and surprisingly frightening reason to run. “That zombie story gets to the heart of the reason why I want to exercise, because if things got really bad you’d want to have your body on your side,” says Alderman. “People like having a story that’s in their real world; it doesn’t bring world into your game, it brings game into your world.” So where is this headed, and how will it affect traditional gaming? PlayStation’s trophy system already makes people want to compete against each other, and the social aspect of the PS Vita will continue to escalate that side of play. Zichermann says that the achievements we gain across videogames will likely be collected in a virtual trophy room and displayed alongside real-life ones, such as educational achievements; we may see a standardised digital format for success. Bogost, meanwhile, suggests that we need to forge better, longerlasting relationships with technology, arguing for something “almost like a slow gaming experience, akin to slow food.” Ultimately, just as in console gaming, there will be good and bad gamification offerings. Some will tell great stories and motivate us to be better people; others will miss the mark and fade into obscurity. But if we gamers stay vigilant and take advantage of the best that gamification has to offer, the world of play will find its way into our everyday lives in a way that was unimaginable even five years ago.
Get your game on Five of the most addictive new toys that want to change your life Zombies, Run!
It first raised $73,000 on Kickstarter (smashing its $12,000 target) and has consistently outsold Nike+ since its launch in the App Store, despite a relatively high price tag of £5.49. By turning your run into an escape from zombies, it injects adrenal excitement and a compelling storyline into what would otherwise be dull exercise. zombiesrungame.com
Whaiwhai
This gamed reinvention of the walking tour mixes up the sights and routes that tourists usually take by giving you a series of riddles to solve, based on clues from around the city. You don’t even need a shiny new smartphone – you can play with a bog-standard phone simply by texting your location to a number. whaiwhai.com/en
Foodzy
Cute-as-buttons app featuring lots of anthropomorphised food, which allows you to keep track of what you eat and gives awards and badges along the way for healthy choices. The game even suggests eating tips if you start reaching for the biscuits too often. foodzy.com
Tate Trumps
Pitch Picassos against Van Goghs by using your smartphone to collect artworks in the Tate Modern, turn them into top trumps cards, and then play against a friend. The skill lays in predicting the attributes of art – as the app makers say, “If this artwork came to life, what would it be like in a fight?” tate.org.uk/tatetrumps
World Peace Game
Conceived back in the ’70s, this is a physical game structure designed to be the opposite of a war game. Featuring arms dealers, environmental policy and economic turmoil, it helps kids learn about morality and geopolitics through play. Creator John Hunter was named ‘most influential’ at TED’s 2011 conference. worldpeacegame.org
Telling the story Some people are quite happy collecting badges for the everyday activities they’re already engaged in – for proof of that you don’t need to look any further than the phenomenal success of Foursquare. But as Bogost suggests, a deeper gaming experience is possible, and for that you need a story. Game writer Naomi Alderman explains: “A lot of what we have to do every day is quite boring. [What we need is] more things that try to bring meaning to our everyday tasks to make them exciting. If you can find some way of giving your washing up epic meaning then it becomes very exciting; there has to be something you genuinely want to do anyway, and then there
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A DECADE OF Football, racing and carjacking: we present Britain’s top games of the last 10 years
BRAINS 2007
2001, 20 2007
I L L U S T R AT I O N J U S T I N M E Z Z E L L The toys on the shelves opposite represent Britain’s favourite subjects for console gaming in the last 10 years. As you can see, the testosterone-fuelled escapism of football, fighting and racing consistently come out on top, but Daniel Wood, Head of Public Affairs and Communications at the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), warns against reading too much into these top-line blockbusters. “Football, war and racing games, although popular, are only a small part of the diverse videogames market,” he says. “Don’t forget the massive popularity of action adventure, RPG, fitness, music, simulation, strategy and online social networking games. And then there are the big titles that don’t look anything like the videogames of even five years ago. Zumba Fitness, for example, spent 12 weeks at the top of the UKIE Games Chart in 2011, while Moshi Monsters now has over 50 million users, just three years after launching.” There’s no doubt that the games market is changing, and as our gaming tastes diversify a huge range of new opportunities are opening up. The PS Vita, for example, has built community and social networking into the very core of what it does, and is just as happy catering to casual gamers as it is the lovers of big-ticket blockbusters. It’s a new vision of gaming that will undoubtedly influence the wider gaming market, but what does Wood see coming next to the gaming charts? Harry Potter was the only movie title to make it into the top games of the last 10 years, but is that likely to change as gaming merges with popular culture? “The videogames industry has a strong history of creating its own intellectual properties, from Mario through Lara Croft to Resident Evil, many of which have crossed over to film. But simple film tie-ins are being replaced by more sophisticated cross-media convergence, for example with the likes of Angry Birds linking up with the film Rio, and Ubisoft starting its own TV and film production company, to maximise the value of its own IP.” And with the government recently announcing a raft of new tax breaks designed to entice big developers over to the UK, Wood reckons the British games industry is well placed for the future. “Overall,” he concludes, “we can say that games will continue to be played by more people, leading to even more types of games on offer.” Sounds like good news to us – bring on the next 10 years. 12
DANCING 2010
SPORTS 2009
The most popular subject matter for videogames in the last 10 years, as judged by the annual top three positions recorded by the UKIE game charts.
Harry Potter Philosopher’s Stone
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
FIFA Football 2004
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto 3
FIFA Football 2003
Need For Speed: Underground
FIFA Football 200
FIFA Football 2002
Grand Theft Auto 3
Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun
Need For Speed: Underground 2
FOOTBALL
RACING
002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 7, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
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2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008
WIZARDS 2001
FIFA 06
WAR
2003, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011
CARJACKING
2001, 2002, 2004, 2008
FIFA 07
FIFA 2008
FIFA 09
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Call Of Duty: Black Ops
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
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Pro Evolution Soccer 5
Pro Evolution Soccer 6
Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training
Mario Kart Wii
FIFA 10
FIFA 11
FIFA 12
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Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Need For Speed: Carbon
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Grand Theft Auto IV
Wii Sports Resort
Just Dance
Battlefield 3
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PLAYMAKERS Steve Boxer goes behind the scenes of the global games industry to find out how gaming took over the world, and asks what it’s like to be a master of the modern gaming universe
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David Rutter, Canada Executive Producer, FIFA Football, EA Sports Vancouver What I do
I’m ultimately responsible for the FIFA videogame product – the creative vision and direction, quality of execution, the health and growth of the business, and travelling all over the world to spread the news about it. My job is a mix of tactical, strategic and ‘production’ work as well as ‘social’ work. We have quite a large, culturally diverse and talented team, so keeping the cats herded, plates spinning and planes in the air is kinda good fun.
What goes into making FIFA
We have the usual spread of programming, art, production, marketing, PR, Quality Assurance (QA), and a heap of internal partner teams involved in all those disciplines. The development team can be broken down into some fairly broad domains – Gameplay, Systems, Rendering, Game Modes, Online and Server Development. Within all of those we have a mix of producers, designers, engineers, artists, animators and project managers. Authenticity has always been a key foundation of EA Sports, so we employ a threepronged attack each year – REFINE the game where we need improvements, RESPOND to feedback from our fans, and INNOVATE with things our fans didn’t envisage or even know they wanted yet.
What it’s like being a Brit developer in Canada
P H OTO G R A P H Y R A FA L G E R S Z A K
I remember in the late ‘90s and early 2000s losing staff to 3DO and EA as the North American companies wanted to scoop up the best UK talent. I think the difference is complex. Our team is nearly 20 nationalities strong and many of them have been relocated to Vancouver because they were the best in the business at what they do. It’s almost like a global distillation process – reverse outsourcing. But I think you need a location that appeals to people who move many thousand miles from their homelands and their families. I now live in a place where I can snowboard in the morning, have a BBQ on the beach in the evening, get an excellent education for my kids, and work on the biggest videogame franchise with the best team of people from all over the world.
How I got started in games
I ditched a PhD in plant molecular biology in 1995 to join a small independent developer as a videogames tester and production assistant. Basically, I did everything from building desks for the office, to repairing PCs and testing the game. The head of the studio was kind enough to mentor me in project management – and then off I went. I’ve been lucky, but it’s been very hard work.
Nowadays we’re thoroughly used to the idea of the games industry as a well-oiled machine, splashing out tens of millions of pounds on digital epics that generate more cash than even the biggest Hollywood blockbusters. Games are everywhere – on mobile phones, tablets and Facebook, not to mention next generation consoles like the PS Vita. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the games industry is by far the youngest branch of modern pop culture. It didn’t crystallise as
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a recognisable entity until the early ’80s, and it has evolved beyond all recognition since those free-for-all gold rush days. So how exactly did we get from Pong to Grand Theft Auto V?
The early days
The first object that can claim to be a videogame emerged as long ago as 1958. Called Tennis for Two, it was made by an American physicist called William Higinbotham, who used a missile-tracking
system to run a game displayed on an oscilloscope. The world had to wait another few years before the first recognisable computer game emerged – Spacewar! was created in 1961 by MIT student Steve Russell for the research institute’s brand new (room-sized) DEC PDP-1 computer. It was a two-player space-shooter that created a massive stir at the geekiest end of academia, but didn’t register much interest among the general public.
The ’70s: Birth of an industry
The transformation of videogames from academic curiosity to operational industry was brought about by one man, who, by a quirk of fate, possessed a unique combination of entrepreneurialism and nerdiness. Nolan Bushnell, an electrical engineering student at the University of Utah in the late ’60s, became obsessed with Spacewar!. He’d managed an amusement arcade as a holiday job while
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Nina Kristensen, UK Founder and chief ninja of Ninja Theory, Cambridge What I do
My job has evolved over the years. I started out as a junior artist and was art manager by the time we decided to split and set up on our own. In the early days of the startup I wore a lot of different hats. On any given day I could be an artist, producer, receptionist or the business development person. I now focus on business and oversee production and HR.
How I became a developer
It can only be called a happy accident. After university I decided to take a year out and bum around Europe. What I didn’t realise was how expensive London was on the Aussie dollar (at least it was back then) and I found myself requiring a job as a matter of urgency after just two months. I’d studied industrial design and one of my specialisations was in Softimage, the visual effects software. The games industry hadn’t really occurred to me – 15 years ago it was pretty non-existent in Australia – but when the recruitment agent said ‘videogame artist’ I thought it sounded pretty cool. Turned out it was, and I loved it!
What sets Ninja Theory apart
I would say our core strengths are art, cinematics, narrative and audio. We like to make games that leave a lasting impression on the player, which is something that I think we achieved for many people in Heavenly Sword and Enslaved.
On being a woman in a maledominated industry
P H OTO G R A P H Y R O B I N M E L LO R
It continues to be a male-dominated industry, but as it matures it’s slowly becoming more balanced. My experience is that although it’s male-dominated, it’s not an old-boys club. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When you have a very diverse team all focused on one creative goal, it has to be a friendly and supportive environment. Gender doesn’t really come into it – talent and hard work is what gets you ahead in this industry.
On being picked to make the next Devil May Cry
Capcom were looking to take Devil May Cry in a new direction and asked us if that is something that we’d like to do. We of course said yes! We’re taking it in a new direction whilst maintaining the DNA that has made the series such a success so far.
On the future of videogames
Mobile, tablet and social games have opened up gaming to new audiences, and that can only be a good thing. New devices offer new ways to interact with games, as well as the ability to play more than ever, particularly in those bite-sized moments. I don’t think that one will oust the other, I think these experiences will complement each other and bring games increasingly into everyday life. These are exciting times!
at school and college, and was inspired to develop the first-ever arcade videogame. The result was Computer Space, which debuted in 1971. It had much in common with Spacewar!, but just like that first game, Computer Space failed to excite the interest of the average man or woman in the street (or arcade). Met with overwhelming indifference, the world’s first arcade machine was a horrendous flop. Undaunted, Bushnell ploughed on, and in 1972 he formed a company called Atari and met
Ralph Baer, who was working on prototypes of the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first games console. The Odyssey launched later that year and proved to be yet another early failure, but among Baer’s games was something reminiscent of Tennis for Two. Bushnell felt it wasn’t much fun to play, so as a training exercise he set his whizz-kid programmer Al Alcorn the task of making it more playable. Alcorn added the crucial mechanic of varying the bounce-angle depending on what part of
the bat you hit the blocky ball with and, within the same year, Pong was born. Its ridiculously simple yet fearsomely addictive gameplay captured the public’s imagination and Pong became a massive success in the arcades – the world’s first videogaming breakout hit. Other American and Japanese companies swiftly jumped on the games bandwagon, but again it was Bushnell who brought out the first successful home console: 1977’s Atari VCS (subsequently renamed the 2600). The games
industry had been created and Atari was its biggest player, though Bushnell wasn’t able to enjoy it for long – in 1978 he was forced out of his own company by boardroom machinations.
The ’80s: Sir Clive, Nintendo and Sega
As the ’80s rolled in arcades boomed, becoming a hub of youth culture around the world. Meanwhile, a British boffin called Clive Sinclair started selling his incredibly cheap
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Takuma Endo, Japan President of Acquire Corp, Tokyo What I do
These days I’m primarily overseeing the quality of our projects. I look at our games in progress and ensure that they meet a standard of quality that we need to maintain. So I give my opinions and OK or reject parts of games as needs be. I started when I was 18 years old as a hobbyist, and was lucky enough to get my break in 1994 creating the PlayStation stealth action game, Tenchu: Stealth Assassins with the help of Sony Music Communications.
Why Japan is a major force in videogames
I really believe that the key to Japan’s success in the games market is not specifically due to a cultural difference in work ethic or anything like that, but more that this is where the hardware is being made. All of the licensors were making their consoles in Japan, so more Japanese developers popped up around them to develop on those. That said, I do think that Japanese developers can only emulate Western sensibilities so far – we need to focus on working to our strengths if we’re going to hold on to our place in the global market.
How making games has changed over the years
When I started, it was a real struggle. Windows was still a 16-bit operating system, which led to a lot of crashes and lost data. I was primarily doing direction, writing, sound and so on. The consoles have opened up a whole new world of possibilities in game creation – but with so much more that you can do, there’s so much more that you have to do to keep up. The amount of time from concept to roll-out of a project hasn’t really changed for us, but we’re basically obligated to put three times as many people into development of a single game as when we were developing on the first PlayStation.
Why Japanese games are going social and mobile
ZX80 home computer, and a generation of British school kids – often siblings, like the Oliver twins at Blitz Games, the Darling brothers at Codemasters and the Stamper Brothers at Rare – started making games for it and its successors. A whole British development scene came into existence and its poster boy was Matthew Smith, who had made Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy with a tiny team before he was 21. Like Bushnell before him, however, Smith wasn’t able to
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P H OTO G R A P H Y O S A M U YO KO N A M I
We’re honestly still getting a feel for social gaming. Eighty percent of elementary schoolage children in Japan play games, but once they graduate university and start working as adults, it’s a given that they stop gaming. It’s expected culturally, and the Japanese tendency to not go against the grain leads a lot of us to just do what’s expected. I think one of the reasons that social games are so popular here is that people still do want to play games, but aren’t in a position to buy a full-sized console. Being able to play games on your cellphone, which is also a business tool that you are expected to carry, makes it much easier to justify.
enjoy his success for long and dropped out of the games world to live in a Dutch commune. In 1983, the frontier-like nature of the emerging games industry was exposed when it experienced a crash. The arcades were oversaturated and Atari was forced to trash countless unsold copies of the awful ET game. Such traumatic change caused a shift in the balance of power towards Japan – as Atari’s star waned, Nintendo and Sega entered the console market.
The ’90s: Games grow up
By now a generation of teenagers had grown up obsessed with videogames, and the industry’s first serious rivalry blew up. Sega unveiled its Mega Drive in 1990 and Nintendo brought out its Super NES in 1992, and the two companies’ respective mascots Sonic and Mario went head to head for the world’s affections. Evenly matched in creativity and innovation, the
pair battled it out alone for two years until Sony released its PlayStation in 1994 and the gaming world changed once again. Games had previously been considered the exclusive province of teenage boys, but Sony took the clever tactic of marketing the PlayStation to twenty-something clubbers. All of a sudden, games became cool rather than geeky, and new icons like the kick-ass Lara Croft emerged – gaming had officially grown up.
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Nolan Bushnell, USA Founder of Atari and cofounder of Anti-Aging Games,
Los Angeles
What the first videogames meant to me
I knew even before I did Computer Space that this was just the start: computers and screens were just too compelling a game platform. I thought Computer Space was successful at the time: my first big product doing almost three million was cool to me, and I was very proud of the game. The success of Pong, though, was a surprise, because it was so simple.
On the birth of the games industry
We were all technical gunslingers at the time. But the viability of the industry was established long before: the coin-op world was very large and worldwide, and the dedicated games were highly successful. The software for the Atari VCS just added a revenue stream.
On being approached by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the early days of Atari We actually helped them with parts and assemblies. Steve asked me to invest, which I declined. We were friends and kept in touch, except for the last year of his life.
On the disappearance of the arcade scene
The entertainment world rewards innovation, but the arcade world has not innovated to any important step. There will be a new arcade paradigm, and they will come alive again. I have some ideas of how to do it and will get the time to do it.
On the popularity of retro games for mobiles, and where games will go in the future
P H OTO G R A P H Y A N DY J S C OT T
Simple, straightforward games always have an important place: I think we produced some classic winners that will outlast all of us. Games will continue to get closer to artificial reality – the motion-sickness problem will be solved, and the hardware will drop in price. I think that games will penetrate many other activities like shopping and education. There are signs that point to being able to learn everything from playing games: so they might end up being better than school!
The 21st century: Games everywhere
The futuristic promise of the new millennium was enthusiastically mirrored by the games industry. Microsoft entered the console fray with the Xbox in 2002, bringing online gaming to consoles with Xbox Live. 2002’s Grand Theft Auto III, for the PlayStation 2 and subsequently the Xbox, struck a populist chord along the lines of a Hollywood blockbuster. In 2006, Nintendo’s clever Wii, with its family-
friendly remote-like controller, moved games further into the mainstream. And 2008’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare established the trend by which the biggest games now routinely break revenue records previously held by Hollywood blockbuster films. In the last few years the games industry, in keeping with the rest of our web-obsessed world, has mutated at a furious, often bewildering rate. It’s hard to believe that Apple only launched its App Store in 2008: since
then mobile phone games have become so well established that they’re now seen as a threat to conventional games. Facebook started hosting casual games in 2009 and they, too, have seen an exponential rise in popularity, creating a whole new type of gamer in the process. The games industry has also become more global in recent years. Until 2000, gaming was dominated by American, Japanese and British companies, with the French a notable rising development force. But a programme of tax-
breaks has seen Canada, for example, emerge as a games development powerhouse, recently overtaking the UK. Ironically, the meteoric rise of mobile phone games has seen a return to the tiny development teams of the industry’s earliest, cottage-industry fumblings. But while the pioneering, haphazard vibe of those days may have been replaced by cool professionalism, at least the games industry has now been afforded its rightful place at centre-stage in mainstream pop culture.
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ACCESS
hen it comes to expanding the universe of a videogame, comics have established themselves as the undisputed medium of choice. Whereas movies based on games have traditionally struggled to lift themselves above the mundane, comics like Arkham Unhinged and the Mass Effect series have emerged as topselling titles in their own right, building upon and enriching the action of their source material. But it wasn’t always like that. DC’s Atari Force comics were first published in 1982, and came bundled with a selection of the 8-bit console’s games. Featuring the exploits of Commander Martin Champion and his crew of space travellers as they blasted their way through waves of alien attackers and dodged across asteroid fields, the comics were a thinly-veiled attempt to add a sense of character and story to early Atari games inspired by arcade hits like Space Invaders and Asteroids. As games became more sophisticated, however, so too did the comics built around them, and in the last decade videogame comics really hit their stride. Jim Chadwick, one of the editors in charge of DC’s current crop of game-inspired comics, remembers the transition they have been through: “In the past, if you were making a comic based on a fighting game it would be kind of up to whoever’s writing the comics to make some kind of story out of that,” he recalls. “Now the stories are created by the game developers – they come with a full back-story, which means you know the characters are outlined, the world is outlined, so in a way it gives you more to explore with comics than there was in the past.” That can mean fleshing out incidental characters that appear only briefly in games; it can mean filling in the gaps between games to create a fully cohesive universe; it can even mean sending characters off on a whole new adventure that cues up the action to come in a future version of the game. And comics can do all this relatively cheaply, affording the creators of games a welcome break from the usual limits of budget. A relatively simple piece of in-game animated exposition can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to create, but comics are able to tell a complex story for a fraction of that cost. Dark Horse Comics has built a reputation for doing exactly that, publishing big-name licensed titles like Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which specialise in taking familiar characters in unexpected directions. Dave Marshall is an editor of Dark Horse’s videogame comics, and explains that comics and games make for a natural fit. “The games we work with are about emotionally engaging narrative and developing relationships with characters, which fits nicely with comic book storytelling and the kind of genrebased experience that we try to give our comics readers,” he says. “We really want our comics to be canon in the game universe. That comes down to us working directly with the developers in the same way that we work directly with Joss Whedon on Buffy the Vamire Slayer. So, for example, David Gaider is the lead writer of Dragon Age and he writes our Dragon Age comic; Mac Walters is the lead writer of the Mass Effect games and he writes our Mass Effect comics… We try to get right to the source so that we avoid appearing as tangential and something that’s easily ignored by the fans – or worse, something that offends their taste for the game or that isn’t accurate to what they like about the game.” Staying close to the game is essential for any game adaptation, but when DC set out to make Arkham Unhinged, it was even more important than usual. With so many versions of Batman already at large, writer Derek Fridolfs says he immersed himself in the games, studying fighting techniques, equipment and locations to ensure that the ‘Arkham-verse’ created by DC and Rocksteady remains its own separate universe dedicated to Batman. “I’m writing these stories for fans playing the game,” he explains, “because I am one of those fans… It’s a lot of fun – Batman has a huge rogues’ gallery of villains so I’m never at a loss for ideas. I often find myself jotting down notes while I’m playing the game.” A mixture of fandom and professional storytelling, games comics resonate with both gamers and comic readers, and make for a potentially lucrative mix. Arkham Unhinged is regularly in DC’s top 10 digital titles and received its first outing in print this April, taking the Arkham-verse to an even wider audience. With such a successful precedent to follow and a huge range of games properties to explore, it looks like gaming’s 20-year-old adventure into comic books has only just begun.
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Top and top right: Arkham Unhinged, above and right: Uncharted
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UNCHARTED Hold onto your hat… Josh Williamson, writer of the Uncharted comic, runs through Nathan Drake’s adventures on the page The comic itself is sort of ambiguous as to when it actually takes place. I can say for sure that it takes place before the second Uncharted game, but it could take place before the first game as well. Just like in all the Uncharted games, the MacGuffin is a real thing – in this case it’s The Amber Room, a priceless possession of the Russian Empire that was stolen by the Nazis during World War II. It was a complete chamber made from wall-to-wall amber and gold, and was so beautiful it was sometimes considered to be the eighth wonder of the world. The Amber Room was never recovered after the war; it’s one of those great lost mysteries that has baffled historians and treasure hunters over the years. In our story we explain what happened to it, and Nathan Drake’s attempts to find it take him on an insane journey to the centre of the earth… But one of the coolest things I got to do with the Uncharted comic was tell the story of how Drake and Chloe Frazer met for the first time.
BATMAN Arkham Unhinged writer Derek Fridolfs catches us up on Arkham’s comic book crossover Arkham Unhinged deals with stories that happen both before Arkham Asylum and during the action of Arkham City. It’s a way to trace back events that happened leading up to both the games, and a way to flesh out backstories or side stories with characters that might not have been explored fully in the game. For example stories have included how Catwoman and Two-Face arrived inside Arkham City before the game started; Hugo Strange’s ties to Arkham Asylum dating back before both games; and where the feud between Penguin and Joker first started. Also, my favourite, a story to explain how all the different versions of Batman (the various skins) have been seen inside Arkham City. There are more stories to come, which will focus on Mad Hatter, Deadshot, Azrael, Black Mask, Talia, and others.
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RISE OF THE MACHINE
Games might be taking over the world, but they still need us to create them, right? Not for much longer, says Andy Dows I L L U S T R AT I O N G E O R G E M Y E R S
t seems that Michael Cook has never watched Terminator. If he had, he might have had second thoughts about creating Angelina, a piece of software that uses its own artificial intelligence to design videogames that humans find addictive. Beginning with a selection of characters, enemies and obstacles, Angelina combines the elements at random to create a ‘population’ of games that she tests for playability. Games deemed too easy or too difficult are killed off and the surviving games are cross-bred, carrying their good features forward to the next generation. Cook calls the process ‘evolutionary computation’, and by repeating it over hundreds of generations, Angelina is able to refine games until she’s left with a single, finished version. This evolutionary approach to creativity has already produced a whole host of fun, highly playable games – so is Angelina the Skynet of videogame production? Could this be the beginning of the end for human game developers? Cook doesn’t think so. “Even if systems like Angelina became so amazing that they’re able to produce Modern Warfare 3 on a monthly basis, I’d still want to buy a game that I had a human connection to,” he explains. “For example, The Binding of Isaac is a game by a guy called Edmund McMillen, and there’s something that’s uniquely him in the games he designs. I will always want to buy his games because I feel a connection to the designer when I play them, and I think that even if a software could replicate that I’d still want to buy games made by him… [Software like Angelina] might well be the start of a different type of game development, but I couldn’t see it as the end... game design has too much humanity for that.” But if game design will always have an inherently human element, what’s the point in a piece of software that takes people out of the equation? Cook’s answer imagines Angelina as a sort of Photoshop or Final Cut Pro of the future; a computer program that takes what a human has done and helps to improve it. If a designer produced a character with a certain set of powers and abilities, for example, a program like Angelina could automatically create a selection of enemies with characteristics that made them interesting for the new character to do battle with. Or Angelina could be built into games, so that if gamers find an element of the game they’re not enjoying, they could have Angelina rework the game to remove that element. It’s a more fluid, more interactive approach to making and playing games, in line with the media’s general move away from the old model of all-powerful producers making and controlling products that are passively consumed by a mass-market audience. But Cook warns that we’ll only reach this future if Angelina can break out of the research lab. “The really high-level stuff will only happen once the games industry gets involved with research and development,” he admits. “You have to remember that people like me are researchers; at the end of the day we’re here to produce scientific knowledge, so there may come a point where I have to say that I could take things a step further and produce something that’s commercially viable, but it probably isn’t going to contribute anything to the community. At that point we have to let the industry take over and that’s why I’m doing my best to really inspire the industry to use this stuff, because eventually we’ll have to step back and hand the technology over to the guys who are actually doing it for a living.” Until then Cook will continue his work with Angelina, and he’ll keep on posting new games online. A keen gamer himself, he says that it’s been important from the start for him to produce games people can actually play. He concedes that computer scientists and game makers haven’t enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship in the past – with so much money at stake on AAA releases, it’s hardly surprising that developers don’t want a bunch of boffins poking around in the guts of their games – but he is also determined not to end up with “a nice paper and a game stuck on a research machine somewhere.” “The gamer part of me wanted to make sure that from day one, whatever came out, people could play it. I think that’s part of the reason why people really got into Angelina when it first hit the internet a few months ago, because they could see what Angelina had done and they could tell me what they thought was good and what they thought was bad about it. And that really made me very happy.” gamesbyangelina.org 22
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COVER STARS
Winning Words Competition winner Josiah Allen-Litchmore talks us through the creative process On his design I wanted to play with negative space and typography – I’ve been really interested in that recently. I started by drawing the continents using the PlayStation symbols, but that didn’t look too good because there was a lot of blank space and it was kind of hard to see the shape of the main image. So I added the text to build the globe up and that made it a lot easier to see what the whole thing was.
What would Access look like if we turned it over to the readers? There was only one way to find out…
On getting the word out I shared it on Facebook, told my friends about it and got them to tell their friends as well. And I posted it on Twitter a few times during the competition to make sure people actually saw it and voted for it if they liked it.
This issue of Access is all about gaming taking over the world, and we’ve interpreted the theme in lots of different ways. But we wanted to see what a world ruled by gaming meant to our readers, so at the end of February we launched a competition to design the front cover of the magazine. The brief was simple – come up with a strong, striking image that conveys the idea of gaming taking over the world. We were hoping for a good response, but we were amazed by the hundreds of entries that flooded in – so many that we decided to use a selection of them on our cover. The entries featured everything from re-imagined cities to gaming lab rats, and we were completely blown away by the sheer amount of hard work, ideas and skill that had obviously gone into them. The entries were all posted on the Access Facebook page and the community was asked to vote for their favourite. Several weeks of intensive voting later, the top 10 most popular designs were delivered to our expert panel of judges from PlayStation and The Church of London, the publisher of Access. After much deliberation they named 22-year-old Josiah Allen-Litchmore, a student from Lewisham, as the overall winner and the recipient of a prize that includes top of the range Sony photography equipment, a PS Vita and games. The judges praised Josiah’s use of strong, simple imagery to clearly convey the message of gaming taking over the world, with favourite games and PlayStation’s consoles subtly represented in the background texture.
On the time it took Beginning to end I probably spent about a week and a bit on it – I spent a day or two thinking about the design and doing some basic layout stuff, then a day or two making it, and then I showed it to some friends to get their opinion. From that I refined the design again, which was another couple of days. After that I knew I had my final entry.
Best of the rest With so many brilliant and bizarre entries to choose from it would be wrong to only praise one cover. So here are just a few of our judges’ favourites – enjoy the madness!
Alexander Cross Cross Game characters literally take over the world in this simple cover.
George Rowson A squadron of controllers looms over city streets in this moody entry.
Imbue UK A PS3 invades the city skyline in this monochrome flight of fancy.
Gonzalo Aspée Slightly sinister? Perhaps, but we loved Gonzalo’s idea of lab rats testing the PS Vita.
Ilana Exelby Bold lettering and some favourite game characters make for a strong entry.
Harry Lee Similar in concept to our winning design, we also liked Harry’s simple globe.
Hass Loukal A map of the world coloured, jumbled and crammed into a PS Vita by Hass. 23
Beatdowns New Hollywood Mapped out Gamification I played that... From the frontline Kapow! Artificial intelligence Cover stars 04 | Wre tc h3 2 o n why it’s no t al l ab ou t the taki ng pa rt
06 | T he mov ie d ire c to rs tu r n ing to game s fo r insp i ra t i on
0 7 | Take ou r tou r o f B r itish gam ing cu l t u re
0 8 | We l co me to a who l e new wo r l d o f gami ng
12 | B r itain ’s to p game s o f the last 1 0 yea rs
14 | Ind u str y insid e rs o n the mo d e r n game s bu s i ne s s
20 | Co m ics and v id e o game s – the new d ynami c du o
2 2 | T he mac hine that has l ear ne d to make ga me s
23 | Ou r f avou r ite d e sig ns f ro m the Ac c ess cove r comp e t i t i on
About us Access is published for Sony Computer Entertainment UK Ltd by The Church of London 71A Leonard Street London EC2A 4QS
Creative Director Rob Longworth
Editor Steven Watson
Publisher Danny Miller
Art Director Anna Dunn
For SCEE Project Manager Carl Christopher-Ansari PlayStation Access Community Manager Michael Shillingford Executive Sub Editor David Wilson Legal Alessandro Cimashi and Jill Levene
Sub Editor Liz Haycroft
Editorial Director Matt Bochenski
Thanks to Sam Adams, Lucy Armstrong, ATP (Addicted to PlayStation), Michael Crockett, Catherine Goode, Adam Grant, Jamie Mancini, David Smith, Dab Van Leewen, Ian Vinten Printed by Polestar Group Distribution by Don’t Panic Ltd
The next issue of Access will be out later this summer. Until then, keep up with all the latest Access news and events at facebook.com/playstationaccess, or on Access TV, available to download every Wednesday from the PlayStation Store, and every Friday on YouTube and iTunes