MAY 2013: THE MONTH THAT MARKED A CULTURAL SHIFT IN VIDEO GAMES ACCEPTANCE

Yesterday the V&A announced the appointment of its first games designer in residence – 22 year old, BAFTA-winning Sophia George. The residency is a partnership between the V&A, V&A at Dundee, University of Abertay and Ukie. You can watch the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones interviewing Sophia here .

Sophia George, the V&As new games designer in residence

Sophia will be taking inspiration from the collections at the V&A and hosting public participation workshops to, in her words, “show the public just how amazing games are.” A spokesperson from the V&A explained that the museum had always been about embracing new, cutting edge culture and games were no different. The vases and pottery in the V&A were cutting edge in their time - it’s just they’ve aged a little since those days.

On Wednesday at BAFTA’s games journalism evening Christian Donlan told the audience that one of the reasons he loved games was because LA Noire transformed the way his dad viewed them, what they are, what they do and what they can be.

Last Tuesday Maria Miller, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport visited NCSOFT in Brighton to learn more about the importance and size of the video game industry in the UK. Her visit was filmed by ITV News.

The week before I was listening to Heresy on Radio 4 and Victoria Coren-Mitchell asked the panel to argue for and against video games being accepted as a new Olympic sport. They said ‘yes’.

On 21^st May, Microsoft not only announced Xbox One, it also announced the launch of a Halo TV series directed by none other than Steven Spielberg.

Forgive me if this blog reads a little like ‘My Week in Video Games’ by Ali Fearnley, aged, well none of your business what age, but this was one hell of a week for the games industry. If ever we wondered if and when this industry and the entertainment we create are going to evolve from being a sub-culture to just plain culture, from being the domain of 18-25 men to the domain of everyone, then this week confirms that this transition is definitely happening.  

Even Rory Cellan-Jones in his sign off described video games as, “One of Britain’s fastest-growing and most important industries.” Why? Because it is. And now that we have a generation who have grown up with games and have never known a world without them, this transition, evolution and acceptance will hopefully become more widespread and happen faster.

  

Ali Fearnley is the conference director at Develop in Brighton. You can comment on this blog below or @developconf on Twitter and /developconf on Facebook or contact her directly at ali@tandemevents.co.uk

MEET HELEN. SHE'S YOUR FUTURE.

Meet Helen. Helen is a 40-something year old (sorry, Hels) working mother of two living in the south east of England. When I first met her fifteen years ago, she would never have dreamt she'd become a gamer. Even seven years ago, Helen had never heard of social media and didn’t play games. She was irrelevant to, and ignored by, the games industry.

Then Facebook opened its doors beyond colleges, Apple launched the iPhone and the likes of Zynga and King were born. These days, the first thing Helen does when she wakes up is check Facebook on her iPhone app, mostly to post (pretty funny, it must be said) status updates about her frustrations at being stuck on level 67 of Candy Crush Saga.

She is not alone. In fact, there are millions of Helens in the UK and beyond and, together, they have breathed new life into an industry that was suffering from the longest console cycle we’ve ever experienced and an ever-reducing pool of gamers happy to pay £40 for boxed product. The Helens were an untapped market. Now they are making the industry billions.

Candy Crush Saga, for example, has so perfectly tapped into the psyche and lifestyle of the ‘Helens’ that it now has its own Wikipedia page and for good reason. It launched in November 2012 and by March 2013 had surpassed Zynga’s Farmville with 45.6 million monthly active users. Its Facebook page has 20 million ‘likes’. It is the most popular app on Facebook. One in seven people in Hong Kong play it. And – despite being free to play – it is the highest grossing app in the Apple and Google stores. It is so ‘addictive’ that some people (not mentioning any names, DAD!) have joined Facebook just so they can hassle friends for tickets to give them access to higher levels. Getting to the end (without paying) brings with it major kudos and the determination of – and downright competitiveness between - Helens to stick with it and win is leading to humorous claims of addiction.     

From a games industry viewpoint, however, it’s not really a laughing matter, it’s one to be taken quite seriously. The Helens of this world have opened up a massive – and massively lucrative – new market: a market that is encouraging creativity and is accessible to even the smallest of players due to reduced development, publishing and marketing costs. A market that has, some might say, saved this industry and, many would say, saved a lot of jobs from being lost from within it. So when your alarm goes off in the morning, think of Helen, and thank her. 

This blog was written by Andy Lane, who is managing director of Tandem Events, organiser of the Develop in Brighton Conference. You can contact him at andy@tandemevents.co.uk and follow conference updates on Twitter @developconf