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Games for Grown-Ups

Alex Mayhew and Emma Westecott discuss the challenges of developing grown-up, culturally sophisticated computer games.

At this NMK event in June 2002, designer Alex Mayhew and producer Emma Westecott provided an in-depth insight into their personal experience of the creative, technical and commercial challenges involved in developing a new genre of entertainment combining online gaming, art and drama: Dreamer and sister project, The Hive. The event was introduced and chaired by Jett Loe, Senior Commissioning Editor for Broadband at Flextech.

Jett Loe began the evening by saying that although he enjoyed playing games, he often found himself longing for a more compelling and emotionally complex experience – something intended for adults rather than solely adolescent males. In introducing the speakers, he urged those present not to accept the poor levels of storytelling common in so many games – after all, we wouldn’t from media such as TV and film.

Emma continued this theme, and described how playing a video game is too much like consuming a hamburger – tasty and fun up to a point, but ultimately an insubstantial and unfulfilling experience, which left the consumer wanting something more almost immediately afterwards. For Emma, this fast-food culture of mainstream gaming is a consequence of the industry’s over-commercialised and unimaginative values. Unlike sectors such as music or publishing, there is a lack of a strong independent sector, and the importance of games in the youth market has meant that the industry has got ‘too Hollywood, too quickly’. Emma observed that all too often great games, such as The Sims, are great in spite of their publishers, and within the industry there needs to be more allowances to play with form, and develop complex emotional experiences.

Alex followed Emma with demonstrations of this more demanding kind work, taken from his ten years experience as an interactive designer. For Alex, challenging interactive work should address such creative concepts as the joy of discovery, textured design, non-realistic representation and emotional engagement. Some of these qualities could be found in work from as long as ten years ago – a simple interactive Christmas animation which still holds up by virtue of its emotional quality rather than any technological splendour.

This was followed by a demonstration of Ceremony of Innocence, an interactive CD-ROM based on the much-loved Griffin and Sabine books. Although Alex admitted it was a struggle having to re-purpose traditional media in order to create an interactive product, he had attempted to imbue the story with a rich sense of tactile interaction and discovery, thereby providing the user with a genuinely new experience, and something quite distinct from the books. Alex then showed the audience extracts from their work in progress – Dreamer, an entirely original project which freely plays with abstract and figurative forms of representation, emotional interactions, moral decision-making and imaginative discovery.

Alex and Emma admitted that in the current climate their work is non-commercial, and that they make games which they would like to play themselves rather than being intended for a particular audience. This creative interest has taken their design away from a technological bias, which all too often can be a distraction from the emotional experience, and towards an emphasis on characterisation and intra-character communication. For these reasons, it has been difficult for their work to be commissioned, marketed or distributed, and Jett drew on similarities in the US film industry, in which the importance of special effects and marketing spends is critical in determining which films are getting made by the major studios.

The discussion ended with a plea for more playfulness in game design. As with the film industry, there was a danger that increased production and marketing costs have inhibited innovation and imagination, and there is a need for development to flourish outside of a purely commercial imperative. Emma declared that both making and playing games should be perceived as a more positive cultural force in our society, something to be explored as a cultural pursuit and learning activity.

This event was presented in association with Business Link for London: www.bl4london.com

Interested in the original event? Click here.