Develop:Five - Mark Sorrell, Rovio

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Mark Sorrell from Rovio answers our five question blog feature.

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

Playing Superman on the Atari VCS when I was about four in 1980ish. It was the first game I played where you could walk off the side of the screen and it didn't loop or block you, there was actually another part of the world to explore. Which at the time was basically witchcraft.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I'm mostly excited about the incredible breadth of experiences and possibilities in the panoply of things that we call videogames and mostly annoyed about the lack of words to describe them. Having spent considerable time in Finland, Finnish has different words for playing a musical instrument, playing without explicit purpose, like a child does, or playing a competitive game, along with others. In English we have none of that subtlety, which leads to a lot of needless arguments and slows down the progress of the medium(s).

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past? 

In truth, there is no one stand out moment. Develop has been more like a clock, parcelling out my time in the industry, allowing me to see how things have changed, how I've changed, how the industry has changed, and how it hasn't, catch up with old acquaintances and meet new ones. For me it's less an instrument of change and more a device to measure it.

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

I know you want me to say Tetsuya Mizuguchi but the real answer is the ten minutes directly after I've finished my talk. The buzz when you come off stage is _the_100_emoji_

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

I have no idea what his English is like because my Japanese is non-existent, but presuming we could actually communicate, Yasumi Matsuno, the game director of Final Fantasy 12, which for me is the most forward thinking and visionary game ever made. I want to know how he managed to believe in his vision so completely.

Mark Sorrell is Head of Studio at Rovio's London Studio, a new venture set-up to build mobile F2P MMO games. Over the last two years, Mark has helped Rovio complete the transition to a true F2P company, as Vice President, Product. This comes after a career spent making games for unusual platforms, customers and business models. 

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton and Mark's talk here

Develop:Five - Leanne Bayley, We Heart Dragons

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Leanne Bayley from We Heart Dragons answers our five question blog feature.

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

I spent a lot of time as a kid watching my mom play games on a ZX Spectrum (that apparently only worked in thunder storms when I wanted a go!), but I think I got into games with either Alex Kidd or Sonic the Hedgehog on the SEGA Master System.  I honestly can't remember which I played first, but these were the two games that cemented gaming as a hobby for me.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

It still really annoys me that mobile games are judged as not being 'real games' by so many people.  We all know not to judge a book by its cover yet so many people will dismiss a game because of the platform it's released on.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past?

Develop:Brighton 2015 was a pretty special year for me.  My team won the Develop Game Jam with our pebble themed game Tiny Golem and my soap box rant about why hiring parents is good for your studio won me a talk slot for the following year!

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

Catching up with and making new industry friends is always a highlight of Develop:Brighton!  This year I'm also looking forward to my talk on how we have done F2P with Glyph Quest Chronicles and showing off our newest project Space Krieg.

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

Hidetaka Miyazaki, because Dark Souls! 

Leanne Bayley is co founder of award winning micro indie games studio, We Heart Dragons.

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton here

Develop:Five - Tanguy Dewavrin, Atom Republic

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Tanguy Dewavrin from Atom Republic answers our five question blog feature.

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

That would be a Space Invaders arcade cabinet in a Café in Evian, where I spent my summer holidays, in the early eighties. I was too little to have pocket money so I kept going back to my mum to ask for more coins to play!

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I am really excited about the possibilites of VR and the technical and creative possibilites it offers. It's mind blowing, but it just needs 1 game to capture everyone's imagination and really take off. Like Mario 64 sold the N64, or Wii Sports for the Wii: I can't wait to play the Mario 64 of VR!

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past?

I like going back to Develop:Brighton every year to catch up with my peers and old friends from the industry. It's a nice break form the daily grind, and lets me step back and look at the bigger picture, by taking in others' perspective on our industry.

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

I'm really looking forward to the indie sessions: indie developers are the lifeblood of the industry, indie devs are so creative and it's vital that good indie games should manage to find their audience.

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

I'd like a chance to bump into John Romero to tell him how much his work inspired me to work in this industry! 

Tanguy Dewavrin has been a videogame developer for the last 24 years. He worked for Kuju, Argonaut, EA, Sony, on games like Geometry wars, Harry Potter, Catwoman, South Park... Started as an Artist, he then became Lead Artist and Art Director; he managed teams of up to 15 people. Founded Atom Republic Ltd in 2012 to specialize on virtual worlds content, and later co-founded Atom Universe in 2014 to make the world's first and only cross-platform virtual world.

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton and Tanguy's session here

Develop:Five - John Campbell, Triangular Pixels

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, John Campbell from Triangular Pixels answers our five question blog feature.

1. The earliest game I have a clear memory of playing was Lord Of The Orb, a game for the Atari 800. Looking back it borrows a lot from pacman as you avoid monsters in a maze, but what makes it really stand out for me is the haunting music and sounds. It's a great example of how even primitive music can completely change the tone and feel of a game.

2. I'm concerned we're seeing the negative aspects of startup culture creeping into the games industry, particularly within VR. A culture of spending big, growing fast and flipping investors is harmful for the industry as a whole, and puts too much focus on marketing over results.

3. My favourite talk is one that I wasn't even intending to go to! I had a gap between talks and ended up listening to a wonderful programming talk about the simulation and rendering of ocean waves for a mobile surfing game. I do think more games would benefit if they started from a simulation approach and then worked the fun in on top of that.

4. I'm really looking forward to catching up with a whole bunch of friends and former colleagues over drinks and finding out what they're up to!

5. I don't really have a list of developers I'd really like to meet - but I do keep bumping into people I didn't realise I wanted to talk to. Recently I had a great chat with the music composer for Rez Infinite, one of my favourite games, and hearing his take on London was fascinating.

John Campbell is the Technical Director of award winning VR games studio, Triangular Pixels. With over eleven years of development experience on a variety of PlayStation hardware and VR devices, John works at the bleeding edge new platforms solving the tough technical challenges VR brings. With a background in gameplay, systems and networking he specialises in new user experiences and interactions, never more clear than in his innovative, BAFTA nominated game 'Unseen Diplomacy'. 

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton and John's session here

Develop:Five - Alex Moyet, Amcade Games

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Alex Moyet from Amcade Games answers our five question blog feature. 

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

Playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my brother Joe’s Game Gear aged 4. If I was extremely lucky, he would let me have a go here and there. It was so magical.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I’m quite curious as to how the industry is going to support VR in the next couple of years and whether instead we’ll see a solid resurgence of AR/MR games. Is it wrong that what I’m most excited about is the release of South Park: The Fractured But Whole?

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past - it could be an inspiring talk, someone you met or something that happened to change your career or business? Or something else completely! 

I met some amazing people at Develop:Brighton in 2016 who gave me the final push I needed to go freelance and set up my own consultancy, Amcade. It’s hard not to be inspired when you’re hanging out with some of the biggest industry players in the sunshine!

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

Catching up with industry friends and trying to catch wind of any new development talent or IPs

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

Jessica Curry – Every time I’ve seen her talk I’ve thought she seems like one of the most awesome, bubbly, sweary, intelligent, badass women in the biz. I think we’d get on!

Alex Moyet is Founder & Director of Amcade Games - @amcadegames - and will be speaking at Develop:Brighton with her session entitled 'No Budget? No Problem/ Free Strategies to Effectively Promote Your Game'

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton and Alex session here

Develop:Five - Rhianna Pratchett

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Rhianna Pratchett answers our five question blog feature. 

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

Playing Mazeogs on the Sinclair ZX81. I was six. Dad said I was frightened of the monsters at first, but once I realised you could pick up a sword and fight them, it started a long-term love affair with games.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I think there's too much hand holding that goes on with players these days. Developers get so worried that player won't know where to go for 10 seconds and pepper games with aggressive hinting. But getting lost and working out what to do is all part of playing games.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past

It’s been a great place for the game writers of the UK to meet up. We’re still quite a small group, but we’re always supporting one another and sharing war stories!

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

More meet-ups with industry friends.

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

I've met a lot of them over the years. I'd love to meet Roberta Williams (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberta_Williams). I'm a great fan of her games and I'm sure she'd have some good stories about being one of the earliest high profile women in the industry.

Rhianna Pratchett is an award-winning, eighteen-year veteran of the games industry. She has wrestled the wild beasts of narrative on titles such as: Heavenly Sword, Mirror's Edge, the entire Overlord series, Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider. Rhianna is regularly named as one of the most influential and recognised women in games. 

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton here

Develop:Five - Dan Marshall, Size Five Games

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Dan Marshall from Size Five Games answers our five question blog feature. 

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

I remember seeing Pong being played and being fascinated by it, but my earliest memories are probably the likes of Chuckie Egg and FRAK on the BBC Micro. I also have fond memories of plying Monkey Island on a preposterous, hulking great big black and white laptop, but I suspect I was a bit older by then. It's a memory that's stuck, though!

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I'm really excited by the idea of games breaking free of the confines we've placed upon them over the last few decades - the new Zelda game seems to be a good example of that, this 'here's a world, have at it' approach I find really exciting. The indie space has long been pushing this with Roguelikes, procedural generation and what-have-you, and it'll be amazing to see what AAA and money can do with those concepts.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past.

I've met several people over the years at Develop, I'm not so sure there's one particular thing. But whenever we talk about Develop and what we want to see each year, the point I always hammer is that sense that when it's over I *can't wait* to get back to my desk and start working. It's like this big inspirational, cleansing process that reminds you how incredible the games industry is. Seeing talks, meeting people, taking some time away from 'work' makes the quality of what I'm doing in the weeks after Develop so much higher.

4. What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

The same thing I look forward to every year - bumping into exciting indie devs showing off games on their laptops in bars. That's always the thing that reinvigorates me, it's about meeting people and seeing what incredible stuff people are coming up with.

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

Oh, I don't know. There are so many people I'd love to shake by the hand and just point out how much they influenced my life, and my career. I'd love to meet Gabe Newell, I think I can convince him to let slip about Half Life 3, I can be very persuasive at times.

Dan Marshall (@danthat) is a BAFTA-winning Indie Game Developer and founder of Size Five Games.

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton here

Develop:Five Tim Wicksteed, Twice Circled

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Tim Wicksteed from Twice Circled answers our five question blog feature. 

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?
My earliest memory of playing video games was sitting around with my brothers, playing the demo discs that came with my Dad's Atari ST magazine. Seeing our fascination, and being a programmer himself, my Dad showed us how you could create a simple platformer using code. It was like magic! And that was that, I was hooked, from that young age.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?
The most exciting thing about the games industry today is that is feels like such an open playing field. There's such a diverse range of gaming tastes out there that there's room for games of every shape and size. There are amazingly affordable development tools and the route to the consumer has never been more direct, both in a promotional sense (YouTube, Twitch) as well as a technical one (Humble Widget, Steam Direct). But of course there's a catch; there are also more games and developers than ever before. It's both inspiring and terrifying, we all have the power to succeed but there's no-one to blame if we fail.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past.
I have very fond memories of my first visit to Develop: Brighton. I was still early on in my career and I was lucky enough to be invited to a couple of developer dinners by some friends of mine. It was daunting to hear that all these much more experienced developers were struggling with all the same things that I was at the time: discoverability, funding etc. But it was also reassuring that there wasn't some magic trick that I was missing due to my relative inexperience. The industry is constantly reinventing itself and in that flux there are opportunities for established players and new developers alike.

4. What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

I'm looking forward to catching up with developer friends from other parts of the UK. Develop: Brighton is special because it's the one nearly everyone goes to so it's a great place to catch-up, share and learn from the experiences of the last year.

5 . Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?
 I'd love to meet Finn Brice from Chucklefish (or perhaps their technical lead Catherine West) and talk deep, down, technical stuff. I'm amazed by the technical feat achieved by Starbound so it would be great to just geek out and learn how it was made.

Indie developer Tim Wicksteed (@TwiceCircled) runs Bristol based, one man game studio Twice Circled. He's the creator of pharmaceutical company simulator Big Pharma and was recently announced as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit 2016. 

Tim will be speaking at this year’s Develop:Brighton – check out his talk here

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Develop:Five - Jonathan Smith, TT Games

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Jonathan Smith from Traveller’s Tales answers our five question blog feature. 

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

Pounding aliens with a spade in "Space Panic". Dig-anywhere gameplay 30 years before Minecraft.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

I'm hoping to see Switch players colonising public spaces with portable social multi-player fun. The more videogames are visible in the real world, the better.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past - it could be an inspiring talk, someone you met or something that happened to change your career or business? Or something else completely!

Develop: Brighton is always a highlight of the year. And I've seen... things... you wouldn't believe. One standout moment was watching David Braben and Dave Jones play GTA and Elite (respectively), two games I've loved dearly.

4. What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

Camaraderie.

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

Miyamoto, to say thank you.

Jonathan Smith is Head of Production and Strategic Director at TT Games, and a member of the Develop:Brighton Advisory Board.

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton here

Develop:Five - Barry Meade

Every week, we ask some of the best game development minds five questions in a feature we are calling Develop:Five. This week, Barry Meade from Fireproof Games answers our new five question blog feature. 

1. What’s your earliest memory of playing video games?

1980, the the back of a pub while on holidays in Kerry, Ireland, they had Space Invaders. We learned how to clock it, it was the best thing ever.

2. What are you most excited or annoyed about in the games industry today?

Can it be the same thing? I think the democratisation of game dev through digital publishing, free tools and mobile has been the biggest change in 30 years. As a business, games is pro-amateur now and at the edges real change is happening, even if the centre is as stiff as ever. I'd say this democratisation is simultaneously the most annoying and the most exciting part of being a developer in 2017.

3. Tell us about a life-changing or special moment you've had at Develop:Brighton in the past.

My favourite memory of Develop is going there for the first time representing Fireproof, the company myself and my friends had just set up. We had nothing to start with but it was so different and freeing being there to drum up business rather than as an employee/observer.

4.  What are you most looking forward to at Develop:Brighton 2017?

For me,  to meet the people who go to it. And to hang out with Fireproof, we always make a big deal of Develop, make it a party for the whole team.

5. Which game developer would you most like to meet and why?

I've managed to meet Tim Schafer and work for Peter Molyneux, both of whom had a big impact on my teenage self. I wouldn't say I have heroes like them anymore but there are certainly devs who's attitude I admire from interviews, so maybe Miyazaki or Miyamoto, or the people behind Paradox software.. in fact thinking about it there's quite a few.

Indie Developer Barry Meade (@Fireproof_Barry), is a co-founder of Fireproof Games, creators of 'The Room' puzzle games and Omega Agent for Rift, GearVR & Vive.

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Find out more about Develop:Brighton here

Why is marketing still a blind spot for indies?

What early lessons can VR devs take from the indie scene, where the marketplace is already mature and getting crowded? We asked indie game marketer Hannah Flynn to write a follow-up to her Develop 2016 talk about this indie blind spot.

I work within a medium-sized team, covering all aspects of comms with my marketing manager. Our meta-job is to ask questions, raise flags, and encourage the right amount of thought about how the rest of the world will perceive our games. Sometimes that results in changes to the games! But marketing monsters with ridiculous demands are a thing of myth (or possibly just of AAA, I can’t be sure - I haven’t worked in AAA).

The videos of sessions from Develop 2016 have just been released to ticket-holders, meaning you can go back and pick up sessions you missed.

I spent probably three or four days working on my session, You Need to Hire a Marketer, to which about 10 people came, most of whom I knew by name.

Other than making a clear attempt to tug your heartstrings and get you to watch my video, I want to ask: why didn’t people come? Why do so many indie studios still treat marketing as a hindrance?

I’ve got a few hypotheses:

Marketing is evil. Or so the popular narrative goes: marketers are suits who interfere with game designers’ craft. Pushing poor decisions based on what will sell and blaming devs when games fail.

Marketers are expensive. Some of us are. But these days there are different ways to pay people, options for flexible working, and more graduates than ever wanting to get into games. There are ways to afford marketing support which don’t break the bank.

Marketers are scammers. As soon as you’re on Steam Greenlight you’ll probably be approached by marketing firms offering you services. Some of these make sense but others will sound like they’re promising the world, meaning they couldn’t possibly deliver it.

I can do it myself. Anything looks easier from the outside. I’m sensible enough of my abilities to know that I couldn’t make a game, and I’d invite you to consider that marketing is a career path in itself which requires its own skills. Some people are excellent self-promoters, bloggers, tweeters - this is wonderful. Hire someone who can help you with the rest of the marketing mix.

Marketing is scary if you have no experience of it, but releasing is scary without marketing. It’s far better to investigate getting marketing support early than to bury your head - your money, time, life - in a game, in the hope that people will just find out about it because it’s good. That can’t happen for all of us.

Hire a marketer. Give the responsibility to someone who likes doing it. Spend more time on your game. Be happier. Sell more games. Make another game. Survive.

If you can’t watch the video, you can view my presentation here. I hope you’ll have a read and tweet to me @h4nchan with your thoughts!

Hannah Flynn is Communications Director for Failbetter Games, makers of Fallen London and Sunless Sea. She has previously worked for Penguin Books, Tate and the NSPCC.

Guest Blog: War Child

1995 saw the release of War Child’s famous HELP album; a revolutionary project where some of the most high profile British musicians came together to record an album for children in war torn Bosnia. 20 years on, I find myself working at War Child working on a project which aims to follow in the footsteps of that famous record – but with a twist.

War Child’s new project, HELP: The Game, mirrors the collaborative efforts of the 1995 record, which asked artists including Paul Weller, the Stone Roses and Blur to record a song in a day to be released on a live album.

This time round however we’re working with some of the most talented gaming studios in the world who will take part in a unique game jam; each studio have been allowed a total of six days, the same time it took for the original album to reach number one in the charts, to bring their creation from concept to completion.

Funds raised will be used for War Child UK's ongoing activities to support conflict-affected children and their families. The result of all of this international collaboration will be brought together as HELP: The Game, a compilation of games which will be published by Sega on Steam as a digital download this summer.

As War Child UK’s gaming manager, it’s been a real honour to lead this project for our charity. But it’s important to note that the game is the creation of the War Child Gaming Committee, made up of the great and good from all over the gaming industry, including Sports Interactive, Gamer Network, YouTube, Sheridans and Bossa amongst others.

The bundle includes games from some of the world’s most innovative and exciting games studios, including Sports Interactive, Rovio, Team17, Hardlight, Creative Assembly, Bossa, Curve, Sumo Digital, Modern Dream, Spilt Milk Studios & Torn Banner.

And it’s really great that here at War Child we’re able to expand our involvement in gaming. The process began when Sports Interactive first got involved with us, contributing 10p from every game sold for War Child since 2007. Our other gaming partnerships include 11bit Studios with their charity DLC and now an additional $1 donation per sale of The Little Ones DLC as of June and Wargaming.net’s charity packages – which was then topped up by the studio in aid of world’s most vulnerable children.

When it launches later this year, HELP: The Game will take the collaboration between gaming and charities to a new level. For me, knowing how many more conflict-affected children will be supported as a result of the money raised for War Child, I cannot wait to see it get started.

Guest Blog: Stories Are Places We Go To

When you think about your favourite place, I bet it’s not just a location – it’s the people who are there with you, and the things you are feeling. It’s a magical place. I think the job of a storyteller, particularly a visual one, is to elicit wide-eyed, open-mouthed wonder from their audience. And great stories make us feel like we belong inside them, they transport us to different places.

When you experience a good story, you feel like you’ve gone on a journey, returning to your own life changed by the experience. The first time I saw The Breakfast Club when I was 15, I felt like I came back older, wiser and a bit taller. And I remember watching Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend one afternoon when I should have been in school and emerging blinking into the sunlight a changed person. That was a seriously messed up place to visit, especially on a Tuesday. 

I read somewhere that stories are survival training, giving you a chance to try things out in a safe environment before you might need to face them in real life. In hero’s journey structures, there’s always a phase where the protagonist acquires and tests out new skills before they master them in order to triumph in the climax.

Like dreams, stories are places we visit in our minds. The fantastical, and unsettling, nature of dreams and stories intertwine in cinema, television and games. Nightmare on Elm Street is a brilliant example of this, or the work of David Lynch, like the creepy scene in Mulholland drive where a man has brought his friend to a diner because he has dreamt about being there with him, and being scared. The source of the fear is a third man, “in the back of this place”: someone so scary that our erstwhile hero hopes never to see his face “outside of a dream”, yet before we know it, he’s headed out back to see if the man is really there, at which point Lynch switches the a point of view shot and we become the man, travelling towards the place which terrifies us.

In Back to the Future, we find ourselves aligned with the hapless Marty McFly, struggling at home with our cowardly father and alcoholic mother. However did these two deadbeats even wind up together? The mum recounts the story of how they met, but something doesn’t ring true. Marty ends up visiting the story himself by travelling back in time. In doing so, he smashes the story to bits and has to piece it back together in order to return home. Back at home in his own time, he momentarily becomes a helpless observer in his own story, watching as his friend Doc Brown is shot down.

I’m rambling on about this stuff because I think it’s particularly interesting given the surge in 360 degree video and virtual reality; advances that might herald a new era of immersive storytelling. Anyone who’s a cinephile and telephile knows what its like to want to live inside a favourite film or show. Good stories have always allowed us to do that, but using head-sets and 360 degree environments, we might take one step further.

I got really excited when I first discovered you could create interactive video that responded to what the viewer was doing: sharing control with the viewer over how the story unfolds rather than it carrying on regardless. Edits and music that change dynamically depending where the viewer is looking or what they are looking at with their mouse cursor (now finger). My first major foray into this world was a horror experience called The Burning Room, and I still love the sense we managed to instil of being present in a haunted place.

Sitting in a cinema or living room while the stories play out on screen allows you to experience love, terror and everything in between while simultaneously feeling the comfort of not really being there, of the characters being oblivious to you spying on them. Some filmmakers have played with this brilliantly, like Lynch’s POV shots, Michael Haneke acknowledging our complicity in his brutal Funny Games, or the classic fourth wall breaks in comedies. Deadpool prides itself on having a fourth wall break within a fourth wall break; “That’s like, sixteen walls!”

When you are free to look and roam around inside a story world, there’s potentially even more fun to be had with these concepts. Like immersive theatre in which the characters/actors are simultaneously aware and unaware of your presence. You can be acknowledged or ignored, the centre of the action or on the periphery. Perhaps you get left in one place while the story is happening down the corridor and its up to you to go and find the next act. Like real life, you can be anonymous in a crowd, a star in the movie of your life, or free to explore and find meaning – assuming you’re not supposed to be at school or work, or perhaps then also.

Stories are places we go to. Good virtual reality stories could be places you want to stay.

Jon Aird
Producer, writer and creator with a track record in making smash hit projects across online, social media and TV. Passionate about future trends and harnessing technology to delight audiences. Past projects include the BAFTA award winning digital Psychoville Experience and the viral hit interactive video The Burning Room.

Jon will be delivering a session at 11.15 on Thursday 14 July entitled Virtual Reality Thrills, Spills and Bellyaches 

http://www.jonaird.co.uk