BETA | ROUNDTABLE // DEVELOP LEGENDS
where you can give lots of people a great time, and they might put a few quid in the tip jar.” Braben suggests the industry could devise a way of perhaps warning consumers where titles fit on Jeffery’s scale – or, as Smith calls it, the David Braben Seal of Non-Evilness. But Kristensen is far less concerned with the supposed threat of this market. “I don’t think the ‘evil’ companies are going to last long because consumers are getting more intelligent,” she says. “The free-to-play companies that are struggling aren’t going to improve until they have much better design and better engagement with players. They’re going to disappear, so I’m not super worried about them at all.” Smith agrees: “There are vulnerable groups – children are one, but there are others – and I do think we have an obligation collectively to think and care about this. Because if we don’t, other people will for us.”
DEVELOPER PRIDE
Above: Braben and Holmwood discuss the attitude towards video games from the wider media and mainstream audiences
Below right: Minecraft was held up as a great example of the good influence games can have on children compared to other forms of media
towards digital distribution: “With boxes on shelves, someone controls that physical space. Now, it’s about controlling mindshare. Flappy Bird is a good example – if something grabs the imagination of the public, there’s no sort of traditional marketing as such. It’s word of mouth, it’s social media, it just flows. Whether you can engineer that, I don’t know.” But Smith surmises that fan conversations is actually a form of marketing: “I don’t want to talk to Bryan Cranston to enjoy Breaking Bad – I want to find other people watching Breaking Bad who I can have a conversation with that is relevant culturally. The creators aren’t part of that message, and I think there’s a bigger marketing performance that still has to take place, something that developers can direct, control and lead.”
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE Increased consumer interaction with developers highlights another major change: a dramatic expansion of the overall number of people playing games. This has been driven by successes like the Wii and DS, and the rapid growth of the smartphone market. The result, says Holmwood, is that while developers in 2000 were largely targeting one hardcore audience, today’s studios are faced with two separate demographics. “One audience cares about games,” he explains. “The other sometimes plays games but actually doesn’t care about them at all. These are the people that make up the 2bn smartphone owners we’re all really excited about targeting. They’re not the people that read Destructoid, download Gone Home and Stanley Parable – even those big breakout successes are relatively small numbers and they mainly appeal to people like us.” But Braben warns: “That’s a dangerous assumption. True, there is a differentiation between those audiences, but people who read Destructoid and the like so avidly then evangelise the games to their friends, a lot of which are in the other audience.” Holmwood claims that there is still some lingering arrogance among established developers when it comes to newer platforms and markets: “The mistake that many of us have made is thinking that we know the most about games. There was an attitude a few years ago among console devs that as soon
18 | JUNE 2014
as we start making web games or ‘proper’ mobile games, everyone’s going to prefer those because the others are not real games. And I think we were wrong. “There’s an unlearning we must go through.
As soon as you’re dealing with free-to-play and touch screens, it’s actually a disadvantage to have expertise in building core games.” Kristensen agrees, although adds: “We can bring our knowledge and our values to that space, and I think there’s real value there.”
We should be much more positive about the entertainment hours we bring to the wider population. Ian Baverstock, Tenshi Partners
Inevitably, the conversation turns to free-to-play; a business model that was nowhere near as prevalent at the turn of the millennium as it is now. And all our experts agree that the sector still holds promise. “Games work well when they’re a hobby,” says Holmwood. “You can play golf for nothing, or spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on it. But everyone is still playing the same game – that’s when free-to-play works well and gets away from that paywall cynicism that we see so much in Western free-to-play.” Jeffery adds: “For me it boils down to ‘evil free-to-play’, ‘ethical free-to-play’ and what’s in-between. There are ways to do free-to-play
Holmwood describes free-to-play as “an inevitability”, rather than a new invention that has “made the industry evil”. “As soon as something is digitally available, of course prices will come down to the point where zero is the optimal price point,” he says. But Braben says: “Whether we like it or not, there is a current image in media that games can be very evil and, if you read some publications, are always evil.”
Fortunately, there are examples developers can be proud of – and perhaps they aren’t sharing this as much as they could. “It’s fantastic that things like Minecraft have become so popular,” says Holmwood. “I love seeing my daughter playing that because I know she’s getting more from it than if she was watching YouTube or TV, or even playing a lot of games. She’s creating something and that’s a really positive thing.” Baverstock adds: “We should be much more positive about the entertainment hours we bring to the wider population, and let that squash the occasional rant by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. There’s inappropriate content that gets in the wrong hands across entertainment – and that’s true even of books. But it doesn’t stop people talking about how great movies, books or music can be. And we shouldn’t let it stop us from talking about how great games can be. “We should be talking about that positive message rather being defensive, worrying about kids playing Call of Duty because their parents have let them. It’s not as if we as an industry have encouraged that.”
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