Online Storage

Having been looking for a cheap (preferably free!) online backup solution, the best of the lot at the moment seems to be… somewhat unavailable, sadly! Dropbox looks really nice in their little video, but is one of those invitation-only exclusive beta type deals. There have been quite a few web-based apps recently which have gone down this route, and I just get tired waiting for them. Impatience is not a virtue, and I should just bide my time, but why can’t they just hurry up!

Games Industry Links

A handy post, cribbed from Mister Games Marketing, Bruce Everiss. It’s a veritable linkgasm of stuff that’ll be either interesting or handy or both (or neither, possibly) to my fellow industry compadres.

Some of them might even be useful to those of you who don’t work in the little box of insanity that we do!

Here I will list a whole pile of websites that are useful to the game industry professional. Some I have mentioned before, but putting them all in one place is pretty convenient. This is information overload.

• N4G is a game news aggregator. The stories can be submitted by anyone but are vetted for relevance, commented on and scored for popularity. This gives an excellent news snapshot with the added advantage of measuring the level of public interest.

• MCV is the website of the British video game trade newspaper. Lots of information relevant to everyone in the trade. They will send you a daily digest.

• Gameindustry.biz is the online only competitor to MCV. They will send you a daily newsletter.

• Gamasutra is the American game industry website.

• Gamerankings, like the title says, is an amazing compendium of game information centred around their reviews. An essential tool.

• Metacritic is a more sophisticated game ranking with the individual scores weighted according to their credibility.

• VG Chartz, lots of useful guestimated facts and figures. The site is dragged down by a puerile fanboy forum.

• Some great development blogs. Find out what the people who actually make the games have to say. This is the gold standard for informed industry comment.

• ELSPA is the main UK trade industry organisation. Their main concern is political lobbying which is why the UK government is so good towards the game industry.

• How to get lots of money given to you for moving your video game business to Quebec. This site is much visited by European companies!!

• Popurls is a metasite of metasites so gives you a breathtaking overview of the internet on one page. So informative that it is addictive.

• Geekipedia is Wired magazines’ brilliant guide to our technology age. Essential education for many.

• Develop, the online site for the game development community magazine.

• Improving Game Marketing: The Game Purchase Process From A Consumer’s Point Of View. An interesting paper.

• Fascinating article on game marketing and the press.

• Some incredibly incisive commentary on game marketing and game quality.

• David Perry’s game industry map gives a geographical perspective to the whole industry.

• MMOGCHART is the standard industry reference for what is happening in the MMO world.

• The Chaos Engine, the private forum for game industry development professionals. Absolutely essential reading if you want to know what is going on.

• Videogame journos network. Does exactly what the name says.

• SoftPressRelease.com. Blast your press release out to the waiting press at low cost.

• Games Press, the resource for games journalists.

• A good list of game developers and publishers with links to their websites and product lists.

• Bruceongames. The game industry blog from a marketing and publishing perspective.

There is enough information there for even the keenest budding game industry professional. Please add any great industry sites you may know using comments. Bloggers and journalists feel free to copy this anywhere you want.

Can we do moral greyscale…?

It doesn’t happen very often, but I do sometimes consider some of the moral possibilites inherent in games. Having worked on a wide range of games now (from simmy driving game to head-popping FPS) I have some thoughts about what games might and might not tackle now, and how that might change.

With that in mind, I was intrigued to see the recent fuss about an upcoming game involving the Holocaust possibly being banned or censored by Nintendo. As it turns out, the game is at such an early stage of development that censorship isn’t even an issue yet. But that then prompted an interesting debate on an industry forum I take part in - was this just a by-the-numbers vilification of the Nazis? Or was this game potentially a useful educational tool to help children learn something about the horrors of the Holocaust?

I felt that there was at least a chance that this game might prove to be a decent start, something to prompt kids and young adults to investigate further on their own, or with parents or teachers. But that did get me thinking further. I started to wonder if there is scope for games today to cover these complex moral issues in a suitable way even for adults.

We’re now firmly in the personal opinion bit of this post!

I think games have started reaching the point where they can start dealing with emotional issues in a subtle enough way to be meaningful. I’m not sure that many games have done this yet. Plenty of people will tell you they’ve invested plenty of emotion into their gaming, and I will agree with that, but when games try to tweak those emotional strings it has mostly been fairly ham-handed, with a few exceptions - maybe my favourite recent example were the G-Man/Alyx scenes in Half Life 2. But compare that to the kind of emotion that my favourite films can instil (try watching Before Sunrise, following it up with Before Sunset, there’s a full spectrum of feelings I run through when I watch those).

Unfortunately, I think the technical hurdles that would allow us to deal with moral issues are yet to be cleared, and even once we’re there I suspect the design problems are going to be just as tricky. To return to the Holocaust as a moral concept for an educational game, we can see some of the problems:

• We need to have a system flexible enough to allow the player to express themselves in terms of their moral outlook. In GTA for example, you can steal taxis and ambulances to lead a fairly nonviolent game life. However, you still need to steal them. Framing this in the Holocaust, how would this work? A civilian having to choose between demonstrating against the Nazis or keeping silent, between helping Jews escape or turning them in to save your own skin? This leads directly to the next point…
• We need to have a system powerful enough to allow the player’s expression of morals to be dealt with by the game world. One of the biggest things to convey in this sort of game would have to be the personal resuls of moral choices.
• Finally, as an extension of the previous point, an ideal educational game might provide the possibility of showing how a different moral or ethical framework would have changed the game experience. What might have happened if more people had spoken out about the concentration camps, or if the Nazis had realised how wrong their actions were at different points in the timeline.

Obviously not all of these things need to be fully perfected before we can start making morally educational games, but I think that at least some of each point would be needed to make them truly worthwhile. My real fear is that in the push for retail glory, this area of gaming might remain unexplored for a long time to come. After all, how popular is a Holocaust game really going to be, no matter how tasteful and worthwhile, if the platform holder really did decide to censor it or prevent its release?

Hello world!

Yes, it’s another blog!

Some background: I’ve been working in the games industry since 2001 - seems a long time, but in a way it has flown past. I’ve worked in five cities, across three countries, helping to produce six released titles on five hardware platforms. It’s actually a little scary, when I write it out like that! But scary in a good way…

For far longer, I’ve been lucky enough to play a bunch of musical instruments in various bands, ensembles, and in the privacy of my own home. Having a creative outlet outside of work helps keep me mostly sane, and I think I’ve picked up a lot in the 20+ years I’ve been doing it.

So, the blog is really just a way of thinking out loud about these two major things in my life. Hopefully I’ll do so in an interesting enough way to entertain you, or make you think, or even drive you to rage at me in proper Internet flaming style. Fingers crossed!