12 October 2012
Posted in General

Jayne Kirkham reports from the Conservative Party Conference 2012

Three conferences in three weeks and I’ve reached the point where I feel like writing, ‘Tories, Birmingham: went’. Partly because I’m tired but mostly because there really isn’t an awful lot to write about. I arranged my stay around any Culture, Media and Sport speeches and activities both within the main conference agenda and the fringe. They were, however, far and few between and then mainly concerned with the OIympics Legacy with celebratory cheering scheduled as a warm up for the Prime Minister’s speech.

It was all rousing stuff: I cried. However, I think the tears were justified when, having told us that jobs, influence and investment are the real legacy of the Olympics and rolling out two wide-eyed medallists to prove the point, sports minister Hugh Robinson said, ‘The message is clear: please go out and buy your lottery tickets.’ It was a stark reminder that no matter how much culture, media and sport bring communities together, or enrich our understanding of who we are or who we can be; there is no real government support. Lord Coe may highlight the “nourishing and sustaining role of laughter”, but we have to pay for it ourselves through the Lottery. We could spend hours in the pub debating the merits of the Lottery but here, all I’m saying is Mr Robinson neatly summed up how the Conservatives view themselves as the party that helps people who help themselves.

Most over used word of the conference? ‘Strivers.’ I think everyone had been schooled to use it, including the barista in the coffee bar. Although, blessings upon him: he used it with delicious amounts of froth and irony.

03 October 2012
Posted in Video Games

A keynote speech by Steve Ince for the 11th International Conference on Entertainment Computing 2012 in Bremen

Whenever I prepare for an event of this nature I’m reminded of the huge diversity of gaming in particular and computer related entertainment in general. It’s bewildering in its range and scope and simply keeping abreast of the constant assault of news and developments is somewhat daunting.

But this broad scope also gives such incredible creative freedom to those of us who want to explore new ways of delivering entertainment to a worldwide audience. This talk, then, is me scratching the surface of writing for games and how the whole idea of entertainment can affect how writers approach the task.

Entertainment

David Cage, the creative mind behind the game, Heavy Rain, recently said this about players: ‘I am not interested in giving them “fun”, I want to give them meaning.’ Many of us might think that one of the main points of games is that they should be fun, but I understand why Cage would make a statement like that. The word ‘fun’ has a certain amount of baggage that could trivialise the emphasis of the product. Super Mario is fun, for instance, and Cage may feel he needs to distance his games from this kind of association. If we substitute ‘fun’ with ‘entertainment’, surely Cage would want his games to be meaningful and entertaining? If they are not, why would we want to play them? And if we want games to be entertainment, we must see them as such throughout the development process.