Oh sure, I could
cover the 15 student games that were free to play at Dundee but, sadly after
spending money and sleepless nights travelling and getting lectured, I cannot
sum up much energy to cover anything beyond the exhibition talks. I’m sure one
of my compatriots at Amber Glass will help me out on that one…
This year, the presentations covered the concept
of convergence in media. This is where two or more mediums merge to create a
product: be it utilising both principles in order to craft an intriguing product
as demonstrated by Quartic Llama’s Other (an iPhone Alternate-Reality Sound Game that immerses
the player in a supposed dramatic, gothic underbelly in Dundee) or through the
utilising of one medium’s intellectual property to create something new to add
to the universe without essentially being a re-tread of the original medium’s
work (like the Halo novels). |
Another popular example of media convergence that was covered at Indie
Fest thanks to Playdemic Limited’s very own Ian Livingstone, was the Lucozade
adverts with Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft, leading to the infamous “Larazade”.
|
‘Media Convergence’ (also coined were terms such as ‘transmedia’
and ‘crossmedia’) received some major coverage concerning its relevance in the
games industry from the aforementioned Ian Livingstone, the Chief Executive of
Edinburgh International Festival, Filmhouse’s Ken Hay, and even a former Rare
employee and current Director of Microsoft Studios’ new incubation studio Lift
London, Salvatore Fileccia.
 |
And reboots don’t count either!
|
The convergence of gaming and other mediums was paralleled
to comic books and their convergence with movies resulting in a boom in
superhero movies and helping further the stories of legacy characters such as
Superman and Iron Ma. As a comic geek, to put it colloquially, one couldn’t
help but fear the possibility of fans’ backlash at unfairly-disliked projects
with their beloved characters feeding into companies, resulting in said
companies taking their characters away from these creative people like a child
with sweets. I questioned Imre Jele, Creator-In-Chief of Bossa Studios (best
known for Surgeon Simulator 2013) on whether convergence would most
likely lead to successes like the cult classic TV shows of Batman or panned and
denied existence like Spider-Man 3. His response: “It’s going to be both,
unfortunately…”.
I should also note that there was coverage on Women in
Games, which was headed by Sophia George, the co-creator of Swallowtail Games and
the first Game Designer in Residence at London’s V&A Museum.
Ms George was accompanied by Quartic Llama’s co-founder and developer Erin Michno
for this particular panel. While I personally couldn’t attend the Q&A
session itself, the discussion managed to arise at the BAFTA Question Time here
at Indie Fest.
The opinion of the committee questioned was split between
two core thoughts. One was that it was the fault of early educators (not
teachers alone, parents were included into this) for enforcing these roles of
girl and boy upon children, leading to girls straying away from games development
and seeing it as a boy thing. The other side felt that the games development community
was not open enough to women and that the fact that discussions concerning this
in some cases devolve into spats with sexist remarks being thrown at all sides.
There was also discussion presented by The Story Mechanics’
Creative Director Simon Meek, concerning the conflict between player and player
character (‘PvPC’ as he coined it) whenever players play games that give them
choices of relevance to the story. Expect an article later in the day to be
posted concerning this intriguing little piece.
I encourage anyone and everyone who has their own opinions
on the subjects above to use our below comments section to throw your two pence
in the mix, we would love to get some opinions from yourselves.
Greg Baxter
Amber Glass Broadcast
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