Mersey Remakes

There’s a lot to be said for curated events over “we’re showing some stuff that got entered into a competition” and over and above all else, this is why given the choice between Indiecade, The IGF or any of the other miscellaneous events abound I’d choose The Indie Games Arcade over the lot of them. It’s not just because I’ve had my work on show there twice (for which I’m incredibly grateful and chuffed to buggery) but because it feels more representative of the rich diversity that comes from Indies.

This years selection, especially, was stellar and a hearty thanks and congratulations to David, Pixel Lab, Sheridans and Eurogamer for putting the show on because y’know, there’s nowhere else I can think of that shows off the stuff that wot we all do and is so accepting of different.

Sure, it may be (in the case of London, not so much Leeds) slightly tucked off the main drag past the grooming booths (Sega had sweets to lure children in, I swear) but thankfully, for the duration of my visit there I rarely caught a point where there wasn’t some folks playing the games. That’s a testament to both the choice and the developers. All of which made games that people would want to play.

In Leeds on Tuesday, which admittedly I was there for far more sociable reasons (the chaps from RR had a wander round then go the pub session, in case you didn’t already know – they’re lovely) watching two guys refuse to budge from Anna Anthropy’s Starcade until they’d played every single game repeatedly was the highlight. I placed Mrs Bob down in front of it on Friday at London and got the same results. That’s a bit special.

Both myself and the esteemed Tam Toucan punched the shit out of each other in Cletus Clay laughing our way through it in Leeds, Tam swore heartily at Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVV, Joe Danger amazed the lot of us. I got collared by a chap in a Eurogamer T-shirt for a brief session on Increpare’s Happening Game. I’m still shit at Tumbledrop. Squid Harder, Fig8 and Ergon Logos look amazing on a big screen. And this is the thing I can’t possibly stress enough – they were a bunch of really playable games that you couldn’t get from a random set of rules or criteria and I dunno, it just feels more right. And that’s ace.

Somehow no-one managed to spot me on both occasions. Clearly, until the Show And Yell, my anonymity was strong. That’s probably a bit out the window after my talk, even if it’s just people muttering about that lunatic under their breath. More on that in a bit though.

It was great to see more developers taking their places this year, Joe Danger, Eufloria, Cletus Clay and others all had folks on hand to show the games off. Due to my bizarre affliction where I appear to be a shadow passing through, it wasn’t until the Show & Yell afterwards that I got to greet anyone properly. Disturbingly, aside from Ben of Zombie Cow I managed to avoid everyone whilst sitting in the same room as them. Quite remarkable even by my standards. Perhaps I am just a myth…

And yeah, the Show & Yell went well. Probably better for the technical hitches that killed the plasma screen off. Interesting talks from most people involved and I got to slap Michael Rose on the head, chat to Alex Amsel and Robert Swan briefly, wave at Terry who I wish I’d known was there earlier and meet up with Barrie Ellis and his good wife for a chat for the first time.

Which was handy considering that what I wanted to do above all else was give the guy a shout out for the tireless and brilliant work he does. Which I did. Whilst standing on a chair berating a room full of developers for not including accessibility features in their games. A much deserved round of applause for the man and I hope I didn’t embarrass him *too* much. The rest of the tale of the Show & Yell is probably best left to someone else’s perspective, it was all a bit of a blur for me given I’d been up since 4am with only a few hours sleep and seemed to exist in a semi-comatose state.

I did have to stifle a snigger at the tumbleweed when I mentioned I wrote War Twat because I fucking hated Everyday Shooter, mind.

All told, good stuff. Mega thanks to David for the opportunity to swear at people in public about something I feel passionately about and thanks to a very drunken Dan Marshall for making my final memory of leaving the place one of laughter and smiles.

You can view the photos from Day 1 at London here.

I get a box to stand on. I can be tall. Michael Rose assures me he’ll be getting drunk. We have a plan.

http://pixel-lab.co.uk/indiegamesarcade/2009/10/show-and-yell/

“We’re doing an event for developers to go with the Indie Games Arcade in London! It’ll be on Friday October the 30th, at 20:30 near the Eurogamer Expo. There will be indie developers, a plasma screen, an open mic for demos and talks, and possibly a few special guests.”

Also, this is awesome stuff of awesome town and makes me happy.

http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/action/mouse-no-probably-a-rat/908/

“Mouse No. Probably a Rat is a little parody of Squid Yes! Not So Octopus!”. Fantastic.

Hi, my name is Robert Fearon and I have entitlement issues.

Yup, that’s right, issues. Y’see, I don’t think the world owes me anything. I don’t think I’m entitled to anything and when I think of all the things I dislike the most when it comes to personal traits, it’s folks who seem to believe that the world somehow owes them something for an arbitrarily decided reason. It kinda fucks me off more than I’m happy with sometimes.

I also think I sound like a broken record on it at times.

The recent cage match between Lewis Denby and Leigh Alexander on game difficulty got my cogs-a-whirring on the whole entitlement thing more. Not so much the articles themselves, more some of the responses. As any regular readers will be fully aware, I’m an advocate of making concessions and conscious design choices to make games more accessible. A few years back, good friend of Mersey Remakes Barrie Ellis of One Switch asked me why this was, it was an awkward time to ask that question as sometimes my life gets in a bit more disarray than I’d like and I tend to drift off for a while and forget stuff. I remembered this question today and I believe it’s long overdue an answer.

Right, you know this life thing? Occasionally in life you’re presented with a dilemma or a situation or something that can have two possible outcomes. For whatever reason, you choose decision one of this hypothetical unmentioned-insert-your-own-example-here scenario and the end result is that you get something out of it. No-one else does. You choose decision two of this hypothetical unmentioned-insert-your-own-example-here scenario and the end result is you may have expended a little bit more time, a little bit more effort and perhaps not coming out of it as well off as you could but a by product of this decision is that you’ve made the days of a few more people a little brighter for it.

To me, decision two is the one that will always trump out. Sometimes it’s a tad self defeating, sometimes it doesn’t work out, but better to have tried to make someones minute/day/life a bit brighter and fallen on your arse with mistakes to learn from than it is to just take the easy route.

Back to this difficulty thing for a bit…

I find whenever this discussion comes up in public, there’s one oft repeated argument. It might be phrased differently, it might have different reasoning behind it but it always boils down to the same thing. Entitlement. Or “What about me?”

I’m sure you’ve read this in some form or another across many forums, comments sections, articles and debates. It might come in the form of “Games used to be hard, I grew up on them, that’s the way I like them and you cannot take that away from me”. It might come in the form of “They’ve already got their games, leave mine alone”, there’s a thousand variants that can all be boiled down to someone essentially shouting “what about me” at the world, always done in a manner that implies that they are absolutely entitled to hold the superior position here. It could be that they’ve been playing games for 20 years, it could be that they believe only hard or obtuse games are proper games and everything else is Wii-fodder but it always comes down to “What about me?” at the end of the day.

Well, y’know, what about you? You guys, gals trotting this out – you’re not special y’know? More to the point, you’re not entitled to a bigger say than anyone else for an arbitrary reason. You’ve all got no more nor less right to be able to play games than anyone else. And that’s important, y’know? I’ve been playing games for over 25 years now and last time I looked I didn’t have a certificate of service that entitled me to have a bigger say in what games should be and if I did, I doubt it’d say “yeah, you can have games but no-one else can because you’re special. Love, The Gaming Police xxx :mwah:”.

It might possibly hold some water as an argument if accessibility necessitated an us vs them attitude but it doesn’t. It’s easy to make a game challenging and accessible. Ok, not easy easy, but certainly not as hard as some folks would have you believe. Considering that the industry was built on more accessible games, the ones that often get held up as examples as things that wot we should be doing by the entitlement crowd, it’s a laughable stance to suggest that it’s them or us here.

It’s frustrating and sometimes amusing to watch the muddles folks get themselves into to justify not wanting “them” to have games. It’s a nebulous them, of course. The “them” that become “everyone who doesn’t share my viewpoint on how I want to narrow the field of games down for my own selfish reasons”.

So, here’s my philosophy.

Fuck anyone with that attitude. Fuck them in the eye. They don’t have a right to demand what can and cannot be made and they certainly shouldn’t be seen as a barometer of what games could and should be because the only thing they care about is what they want.

Why make one person happy or able to play a game over more people happy and able to play a game? It feels like a no brainer to me. And the more people kick against the pricks and try to keep people out of gaming? The more determined than ever I’m going to be to put this stuff in. Should the situation arise where the tide has finally turned and these folks stop barraging comments sections with why some people can’t have games, I’ll still do it.

Given the choice, it seems like the right thing to do. More people happy? Fuck yeah.

Why am I an advocate of accessibility? I’ll take decision 2 in the hypothetical-life-scenario, that’s why. As great and wonderful as I think I am, I’m not the only person on this planet who deserves to be happy and have the things I want.

That and I love games and I want people to be able to love them just as much as I do if they choose. I may get antsy around entitlement issues but never let it be said I’m not human and ever so slightly selfish in my desires also.