Cross Platform Persistence

Over the past few weeks I've been setting up and using iCloud, and it got me thinking about how great it's going to be when iOS game saves are stored in the cloud as standard, so I can be playing Hardlines or Jetpack Joyride on my iPad at home, and later be sat on a bus somewhere and pick up the game on my iPhone and carry on from where I left off, just like I do when reading books on my kindle app.

In fact kindle takes this a step further and you can read on your iPad, Mac, PC, iPhone or Kindle and it will always keep track of where you are in the book and start you on one platform from where you left off on the other

It's a persistent experience across multiple platforms…

Which got me thinking about the possibilities for cross platform persistance in Videogames.

But you couldn't do that with Videogames, you couldn't start, say Uncharted 3, or Gears of War 3, on your console in the morning and that afternoon at work carry on playing on the iPad.. you have platform limitations for a start…

Yet technically you could share the save data itself across multiple platforms, or allow access to stats, GTA 4 allowed me to see my progress in a PS3 game, in realtime on the web...

So why not create a set of cross platform experiences suited to the individual devices, but that use the same save data, create a sort of metagame, or Videogame ecosystem surrounding a title, why not allow;

Persistence of content across multiple platforms 

So let's take a straight forward example;

You're playing Resident Evil 7 and you've just discovered a wannabe evil scientists lair, as our burly hero Chris leaves, he looks back and get's out his radio. 

"KC, you should check this place out, I'm sure we could use some of this stuff to upgrade our equipment"

At which point a notification pops up on the screen

"Jacob's Laboratory unlocked" 

And, a few seconds later the same notification appears on your iPhone (in real life) notifying you that by clicking a link you can download Resident Evil 7 Assist, an iOS/Android game, and help Chris in his struggle against Umbrella.

You download the game, it syncs to your Playstation, Xbox and iOS accounts, gives you a trophy or achievement, and you're playing a side game on your mobile. 

It's more of a puzzle game, you take the role of KC, working in the lab to upgrade equipment and create weapons, and you can trade gold and equipment in realtime with the ps3 version of the game, or offline, so you can take KC to work and carry on the experience…

You could have a;  

• Garage experience for Grand Turismo, allowing you to tune the cars and hand paint them with your iPads touch screen
• Backstory for an inconsequential character that gets killed in Gears of War, as soon as they're dispatched you can play their final 60 minutes in an iOS game that reveals a twist and alters the ending of the game
• If you wanted to get really clever you'd take a leaf from Ian Banks and have multiple story lines that merge together, so you have two exclusives on different platforms one tells a story, the other looks at the story from a different perspective, both using the same save data, so the two frequently collide and your actions on one platform alter the other.

I could go on for hours about the possibilities, but I'm sure you can take it from here :)

Just a thought :)

Studios don't make games, people do

So,

many people in the videogames industry talk about the maturing of the medium. In his fantastic Indecade / Gamecity talk "Beauty and Risk" Richard Lemarchand from Naughty Dog, famous for the "Jak & Daxter" & "Uncharted" Series of videogames showed this rather astute representation of the history of the media by Chelsea Howe, ending with the bubble, "Medium Coming of Age"

But are we there yet?

Well we're on the way, but not quite, and a few of the things I feel are holding us back are some of the conventions that other mainstream media enjoy but that seem bizzarely absent from the videogames industry.

I want to talk about a few of these conventions on this blog over the next few weeks, and the first is all about people.

I'd like to take a look at the profile and positioning of people within the film, book, music and game industry, as opposed to the profile and positioning of the product. In this case the people I'm reffering to are the creators of all of this wonderful content.

let's do a little experiment...

Name 5 authors.

Now name 5 actors.

5 musicians.

5 film directors.

5 artists....

Easy eh.

OK, so now can you name 5 videogame designers?

5 videogame developers or programmers?

5 actors from videogames?

Much harder?

The videogame industry is currently suffering from a distinct lack of personality...

...or more to the point, personalities.

I find this quite intriguing, in other burgeoning new industries, people have always stayed front and centre, authors, playwrights, artists have always been known and strongly associated with their work, how can you mention "the African Queen" without mentioning Bogart, or ET without Speilberg, the Hobbit without Tolkein, or Sunflowers without Van Gogh.

Yet we (well most of us) don't know who designed space invaders, or who created the storyline or the script for Final Fantasy VII. or who created Sonic. There are exceptions of course, if you're really into your videogames you'll make a point of finding out the people responsible and the likes of Peter Molenux, Will Wright or Sid Meier are even known to a few non gamers! but as a general rule, the people are hidden behind the product.

Yet the product is well known, Sonic, Mario, the Sims, these are household names...

So who created this disconnect, and why isn't it present in film, music, books or art?

I have some ideas on this, so let's explore it... Apologies if these aren't really well formed, but please chime in through the comments, consider these "ideas in progress"

Firstly, many books, songs and works of art are created by one person, so it's easy to attribute them to their author, in fact many books have the authors name on the front in larger type than the title of the book itself, and many songs are referred to by their artist "Have you heard Kate Bush's new song, can't remember the name, but it's amazing"

In theory it should be easy to attribute games in the same way, but seldom is a game a single person's effort. Even those created from a single person's creative vision, Johnathan Blow's epic "Braid" for example, often have many people involved, artists, musicians, etc.

Videogames are more of a joint effort, more akin to the creations of an orchestra, a rock band, or more like a film.

So in film, where many people are involved, we see certain people singled out for praise, almost always the director and the actors, with occasional reference being made to the producer and screenwriter.

Could we replicate this in videogames? well the actors in videogames are digital, and while often have real names and faces (like Nolan North) working behind the scenes in motion capture studios, it's difficult to get attached, or empathise with someone who's impossible to recognise from game to game. In animated films we have the same issue, but this is often countered by using film actors who's voices we can associate with through their film roles, maybe videogames should take a lead from this?

As for the analogy of the director, this is a difficult one, Within the development of a game the traditional role of director is broken up into multiple facets, creative directors, lead designers, developers all play a massive role making it harder to pin down to one person.

Bands get around all these issues by creating a name for the group, so we attach to the "Foo Fighters" but we still know Dave Grohl is the frontman... We have studios in the game industry, so Insomniac, Infinity Ward, Naughty Dog, and in some cases (Naughty Dog and their behind the scenes extras being a good example) we get to know a few of the names behind the studio, but maybe we need more frontmen...

But in this regard, games aren't helping themselves...

Take a look through your DVD collection and see how many times peoples names are mentioned. My collection averages at 30 names on each DVD case and in many cases the directors and lead actors names are also on the front of the case.

In my entire game collection the only game that mentioned a human being was a game called "Child of Eden" it quoted its designers name "Tetsuya Mizuguchi" every other game in my collection failed to mention the names of any of the people involved in their creation.

In fact, is this the big issue? Are people in the games industry to humble? Is the game industry less impressed with celebrity, with the Hollywood star system?

And is that such a bad thing?

Why everyone should care about video games

I've primarily been blogging about social media and technology, but I'm going to start to blog about videogames as well. Bizzarely I'm slightly concerned about this, part of me feels I should apologise to those people who have ended up on the site to hear me talk about other things, that you won't care about videogames, and you'll tune out, that you'll roll your eyes and sigh "videogames" and close the browser.

I think what I'm actually doing with these thoughts is internalising the stigma that still remains around videogames, but I don't want to do that, in fact I want to remove the stigma…

This week I had the privilege to attend the GameCity festival in Nottingham, and found myself surrounded by some of the most insightful, passionate and intelligent gamers, developers and game industry professionals I have hever had the pleasure to meet. It must have been about halfway through the festival when it struck me that maybe I shouldn't really get too hung up about this stigma anymore, because videogames are becoming more and more a cornerstone of human culture, and in my lifetime there will come a time where we will all realise this.

But that feels a little too much like sitting on the fence and letting other people fight my battles.

The next day I was sat listening to a panel of respected game developers and one of them said something that astounded me.

"we need to stop worrying about the stigma surrounding videogames, there isn't one, they are displayed in galleries and museums, they are accepted as having cultural value, people realise that they are culturally significant, it's just the gamers that have an issue"

I thought long and hard about this, was it just me, is there actually no stigma? Do most people actually realise the importance and influence of videogames?

Feel free to correct me, but I don't think they do, and I feel this was an extremely naive comment, in my experience almost every non gamer over 30 I talk to has no conception of the cultural significance of videogames.

In fact most of them think that videogames are for kids, and most of them think videogames consist of football simulations or games that involve shooting people.

So bear with me for a post, and I'll see if I can explain why everyone should care about video games.

First let's try and define what this stigma is all about…

Common perceptions I encounter from people

videogames are...

...for children
...all about shooting people / are violent / encourage violence
...devoid of cultural value
...not for me
...addictive
...time wasters

So for the purposes of this post, these are the perceptions that I will class as the "stigma of videogames".

Of course, we've been here before, as Richard Lemarchand mentioned at GameCity if we look at the introduction of the written novel to society we find the stigma surrounding it somewhat familiar, here's a passage from "the American Annals of Education" in 1835

"Perpetual reading inevitably operates to exclude thought, and in the youthful mind to stint the opening mental faculties, by favoring unequal development. It is apt either to exclude social enjoyment, or render the conversation frivolous and unimportant; for to make any useful reflections, while the mind is on the gallop, is nearly out of the question; and if no useful reflections are made during the hours of reading, they cannot of course be retailed in the social circle. Besides, it leads to a neglect of domestic and other labours."

Or try this from M. M. Backus in 1844

The habitual use of the stimulus of fiction is always enervating to the intellect, as that of alcohol is to the physical system. "

"A propensity to novel reading is a state of intellectual debility and megrim. It is dissipating, also, to the moral principles and character, introducing confusion into any system of ethics, and discrepancies into any course of conduct. It blunts the sensibilities, and deceives the votary with the substitution of a false edge, which will endure no service."

And with the introduction of cinema

In 1907, the Chicago Tribune threw its editorial weight against the movies, declaring that they were "without a redeeming feature to warrant their existence…"

So the stigma surrounding video games is nothing new

But why care?

Well the media of Videogames encompasses a staggeringly large range of titles, and is immensly influential, we're looking at an industry that's making more money every year than the film industry, or the music industry, and yet it's still finding it's feet.

Its such a young industry and you should care about it because it's an industry that can be shaped by us all, it's an industry you, personally, could have an impact on, one that you could mould.

And the perceptions people have are actually misconceptions, so you dont want to be ignorant, do you? do you know for sure that most videogames are for children, that videogames are the stomping ground of 17 year old boys who like shooting things?

In fact, according to research carried out by the Entertainment Software Association in 2011 the average age for a gamer is 37, that's a far cry from a teenager, and 42% of gamers are female...

And those army games you see on the tv, well the first person shooter genre so often percieved as the largest segment of computer games accounts for just 21% of sales.

So you ought to be informed about these things, you ought not to take the largest of the entertainment industries for granted, and you ought to get involved.

Look at the images on this page, click them to take a better look, do they fit with your ideas of videogames, do you really know what's out there, or are you only aware of the top few percent that are advertised on TV or sold in the one or two chains of Videogame shops? Would you ever state, "I dont like films" or "I never want to read a book"

Did you know games have narrative, emotional impact, storys that can last hours and hours, fleshed out characters, political messages, educational content.

Make sure you're in on the party, because they're going to change the world.