It was another rewarding, inclusive and entertaining week of gaming fun in Nottingham ? and here are my personal favourite bits...
There is no other game festival in the world like GameCity ? I know, I have been to a lot of them. SXSW beats it for cross-cultural cool, the Independent Games Festival is more important, and the London festival is growing in stature and diversity. But GameCity is about the right size with about the right mix of events and attracts just about the right audience. It is mostly free, and you can go up and talk to anyone from Keita Takahashi to Goldeneye creator Martin Hollis ? I know, because I went up and talked to them.
Anyway, I just wanted to cobble together a list of things from the fest. We have some more video going online soon, including some very lengthy interviews, so this is just a quick taster.
Jonathan Blow on Braid and The Witness.
The world-renowned indie game developer presented a two-hour walkthrough of Braid, showing the original prototype before explaining the intricate design and metaphysical thinking behind every time-warping puzzle. He talked about exploring the consequences of rule changes, about how special and general relativity don't 'fold' in the game, and how he was reading Gravity's Rainbow when he started the project. He also talked about his forthcoming game, The Witness, a 3D adventure about epiphany. It was hugely refreshing to hear someone talk about a game in terms of themes and philosophies rather than lighting effects and intuitive controls.
Adam Saltsman and the ideas bucket
On Friday, the developer of Canabalt and Gravity Hook sat in the GameCity tent in the Old Market square and surrounded by pictures and ideas drawn by younger visitors, started to write a game. Eight hours later he had a working project up and running, accompanied by music from Rebecca Mayes. It's raw stuff at the moment, but we'll see what develops. And he's a really charming man as well.
Chris Hecker on Spy Party
The veteran of the US indie scene brought his new project to the event ? and it's enormously intriguing. Hecker bills Spy Party as an asymmetrical two-player game about perception and deception: one participant is a spy, loafing about at a high society party attempting to carry out a series of covert missions; the other is a sniper trying to identify and then assassinate the spy. It's a tense and amusing set-up, rich in strategy, and it's all about watching and reading other human beings. Importantly, it's really, really hard and requires masses of skill and experience. Hecker says he came up with the idea wondering what you'd get if you crossed the Sims with Counter Strike...
All the great games in the GameCity tent
Over the space of four days the public were exposed to a range of independently developed titles that many of them would normally never get the chance to experience. Game design students from the University of Wales, Newport, were there in force showing off titles like first-person art shooter, Colour Runners and Dare to Be Digital winner, Mush, by Angry Mango ? a rather beautiful Windows Phone 7 platformer which emerged from the X48 Game Jam earlier this year. I also loved Projector Games' remakes of titles like Bubble Bobble and Bomberman, designed to run on huge screens with hundreds of competitors.
The Gamesblog breakfasts
I 'oversaw' four debates at the excellent Broadway cinema, covering everything from the imminent launch of Kinect to whether games are capable of exploring serious issues, the five most important games ever made, and finally, the future of gaming. I'm hoping everyone present discovered a few titles they'd never heard of, and that they enjoyed the daily expert panelists. Ste Curran from One Life Left's story about drowning a duchess in Dwarf Fortress will certainly not be forgotten (however hard we try), while the likes of Hecker and Richard Brooksby attempted to de-rail my every argument, much to the amusement of everyone else. Terrifying stuff for me, but hopefully reasonably interesting for everyone else. Oh and a massive thank you to Electronic Arts for kindly donating several copies of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit as prizes for those who guessed my ludicrously subjective 'five most important games' choices. They were MUD, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, GTA III: Vice City and The Sims.
I'll be back next year.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/nov/01/gamecity-highlights
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