January 28th, 2009 §
Someone asked for the contact address of a friend yesterday as they wanted to talk to him about his new company. After a few minutes searching I realised that I knew where his office was, and his phone number – but the only other ways I’d talked to him were in person, on Twitter and inside Facebook.
Happily, his fb chat popped up on Adium which I had on in the background, so I requisitioned his email address and forwarded it to the gentlemen in question – who had no interest in Twitter, although he might well have a Facebook profile. It simply didn’t occur to me to ask.
After I’d done that, I had some lunch.
I might email the bloke and ask how they got on. I have all his contact details on the card he gave me when we first met at an event I was talking at. I hope they manage to talk to each other.
January 28th, 2009 §
I’m always surprised when anyone ever asks me for advice or directions.
Anyway – last week a nice bloke very politely asked me for some thoughts about a book they were working on, which sounded like a brilliant project and clearly something which should be published – the problem of course, is that the subject matter is videogames. There’s a popularly held idea that videogames are in some way ‘mainstream’. This is a popularly held myth, mostly perpetuated by my colleagues in the videogame selling industry. In wider consumer culture however, whilst the collective term of ‘videogames’ is recognised as just that – a collective term – any deeper analysis or critical interest is severely limited. I don’t mean that to sound as sniffy as that – this isn’t just about the absence of some kind of developed literacy as an academic college-boy cultural studies problem, but the barriers to participation at a domestic level that such an absence creates.
Thinking back through my conversations with various commissioning editors over the last few years, I wince remembering some of the pitches I’ve made as the editor perfectly reasonably asks who would buy such a book? The fact remains that whilst the consumption of videogames is on the rise, the public understanding around them – and appetite for content about them is still lagging behind. It’s growing – and that’s brilliant, but just because scenes featuring people playing Wii have started appearing in TV shows that doesn’t mean people want to read about them, or think about them when they’re not playing. I’m still convinced that a lot of this is being driven by the absence of any discernible humanity being shown by the games industry. Until it begins exposing its artists to the world it’s going to remain in a state of cultural participation which is alarmingly retarded considering its age.
At the Save the Videogame show last week (more about this later) this topic came up again – not just are ‘they’ ‘mainstream’, but more importantly, how we will tell? It was a short discussion and the only hallmark we could agree on was that you would know where to go in the book store to find titles about games. Selfishly, this would also really help next time I’m pitching a book.
January 17th, 2009 §
Every year, I forget to make any note at all of the GameCity development process, then we get caught up in the mania of the show and all of the amazing things that happen simply fly by. I can’t remember anything anymore on account of my brain being sub-optimal, so this year I’m resolved to start making some notes on here. It’s wholly likely that when the re-tooled online affairs of the festival and associated projects get sorted out (a process which is just beginning), and something not dissimilar to this will get moved onto there, but in lieu of that happening I wanted to make a start.
We’re in the middle of a major rethink of a lot of the GameCity activities from last year, which was something of a watershed for us. It’s always been a tricky project, not so much walking a line between niche and mainstream – but rather straddling an insanely wide set of possible audiences. GC3 was largely constructed to tease some of the more obvious audiences apart, and was wholly successful in doing so. That wasn’t however, necessarily desirable – turns out everyone wants to play together.
This year, it’s going to be a lot more playful – which seems appropriate.
It’s becoming ever more apparent that GameCity works best when it frees itself form its own expectations and concentrates on being a happening, in the participatory art sense of the word. Certainly a lot of the events that have worked best have hopefully had something of the interventionalist about them. It really feels like the whole event can start to shape up after some of the strategic misfires of last year.
Speaking of happenings – don’t forget to come along to Save the Videogame if you’re in Manchester on Thursday night. We’re quite literally working quite hard on it.
More dates to be announced veeeeery soon.
January 15th, 2009 §
January 13th, 2009 §
January 11th, 2009 §
Sat writing up some answers for an interview about archiving, and the issue of documenting process came up. It occurred to me that I couldn’t think of a documentary about videogames that came close to the candor of ‘Hearts of Darkness‘* (or that Metallica film I don’t know the name of…)
Jesus, this industry needs to start showing some humanity…
*The possible exception to this is the 80′s BBC 2 Documentary in the Commercial Breaks season, which – incase you haven’t seen it…
Commercial Breaks
January 11th, 2009 §
Apparently…
Gamecity is an independent, annual videogame festival launched in Nottingham, UK in 2006. It is notable in being aimed at the general public to a far greater extent than many gaming events – with many events held free in the market square where any members of the public may join in. The festival receives little funding from the videogame industry and is concerned with experiments in how videogame culture can be made accessible.
However…
- The notability of this article’s subject is in question. If notability cannot be established, it may be listed for deletion or removed. Tagged since December 2008.
- It needs to be expanded. Tagged since December 2008.
I’m genuinely excited that we made wikipedia, but I can’t decide if it’s impolite to edit topics you’re involved in or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamecity
January 11th, 2009 §
January 9th, 2009 §
January 9th, 2009 §
…because you needed another aggregation of links from the week.