Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2016 i Edge

A few years ago, a scene in the UK TV soap opera EastEnders presented a father talking to his children as they played videogames in their living room. To some viewers, it was nothing out of the ordinary. To those of us who’ve grown up around games, though, it felt something like a taunt. We could see the children holding what seemed to be PlayStation controllers, but what we heard were the primeval honks and bleeps from the 1982 Atari VCS version of Pac-Man. You can imagine the meeting in the EastEnders edit suite. “The kids are supposed to be playing with one of those computer things – why doesn’t it sound like it?” “Uh, videogames sound more like movies these days, boss.” “No, no, make it sound more like…

The melodrama of 2007’s King Of Kong casts a long shadow over videogame documentaries, especially those focused on vintage games, but that didn’t stop Andy Seklir and Tim Kinzy from completing their own contribution to the genre in the shape of Man Vs Snake. Drawing on eight years’ worth of interviews and record attempts to tell a story of spirited triumph and tragedy with a real, humane warmth, the film centres on one man’s quest to record a new high score on an ancient arcade cabinet. Crucially, the film displays an integrity and rigour that serves its subject admirably, which helps offset the fact that the game at the centre of it all, Rock-Ola’s 1983 coin-op Nibbler, does not have the profile of the likes of Donkey Kong and Pac-Man.…

Game World’s Largest Pac-Man & Friends Manufacturer Bandai Namco Bandai Namco and Raw Thrills’ gleefully over-the-top collaboration World’s Largest Pac-Man & Friends is now available in western arcades. The machine comes in two parts: a control plinth with built-in speakers and a pair of Happ joysticks; and a faintly ridiculous 150” screen formed from an array of multicolour LEDs. The vast setup offers a surprisingly sharp display, which dwarfs the player to such an extent that you might just be transported back to those days of frequenting arcades as a kid and needing to stand on tiptoes in order to play. But the release doesn’t only rely on nostalgia: those two joysticks support the game’s co-op multiplayer mode which, beside introducing a fresh spin on the ageing classic, must have…

Idle thumbs I’ve never been a completionist. As someone who only got back into games after skipping a generation, I’ve found the Achievements system both bemusing and intrusive. But recently I’ve discovered an interesting use for Trophies on the PS4: you can see which percentage of players has achieved what. Since most Trophies are a mark of progress, you can use it to tell at what point said game has been destined for the CEX shelf. Much like Nathan Brown’s column last month, I’m relating this to Street Fighter V. For four months, I’ve been in a Sisyphean state between the Bronze and Super Bronze leagues. It’s not just that points docked for losing become so unforgiving the moment you reach the latter, but also that improvement is becoming near…

A change is as good as a rest, they say, but it’s considerably better if you’re a developer hawking the latest instalment of a long-running series and trying to keep players interested enough to pony up for yet another slow grind to the top. With Gran Turismo Sport (p36), Polyphony Digital is tackling the problem by shifting focus from its granular tutorials and daunting campaign – although, rest assured, both remain – to an FIA-endorsed online race series. It’s a bold move that repositions the notoriously underhand world of online racing to be GT Sport’s main selling point, but Polyphony is taking steps to shore up what could be a precarious situation by minimising the riffraff through a levelling system that takes racing etiquette into account. But while Grand Turismo…

Developer/publisher Facepunch Studios Format PC Origin UK Release 2017 There’s something of the caveman about Bill Lowe, the lead developer of Before. The long, unkempt hair and shaggy beard bear a striking resemblance to the digital cave people he’s showing us on screen. But beneath the wild exterior lies a fiercely thoughtful individual determined to create something that challenges current gaming wisdom. Before, as Lowe terms it, is a “strategy/survival simulator” set in an imagined Stone Age, the kind Far Cry Primal took advantage of earlier this year and Wild will use next. It follows a six-person tribe and the tribulations of life in a pseudo-neolithic setting. It’s about guiding this group through the most basic of human needs – food and shelter – but it’s also about the social…

Agrinning predator barrels through a teeming ocean, chugging down anything and everything in its path, only ever a few seconds away from death by starvation. Future Games Of London’s 230-million-download Hungry Shark Evolution could be a metaphor for the rapacious world of mobile publishing. According to a report by research firm Newzoo, global mobile game revenue will surpass that from PC games for the first time this year, but the market remains highly polarised and unforgiving, with a tiny percentage of studios and paying customers accounting for the largest share of earnings. It’s a far cry from the year of FGOL’s birth. 2009 was a banner period for mobile game developers looking to build up their own intellectual properties, with the App Store still relatively uncontested and the iPad launch…

Developer Id Software Publisher Bethesda Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Be careful what you wish for. The otherwise positive review of the original Doom in issue seven of Edge signed off with a longing to do more than repetitively plough bullets and plasma into enemies, and posited a game in which you communicate or even form alliances with the opposition. The musing was put forward in the context of another time – the review also explained the nature of shareware and applauded Id’s bulletin-board-trading-driven marketing coup – but looking at it in 2016, it doesn’t feel quite as contrary as it once appeared. In the years since the original Doom’s release, developers set about answering the request enthusiastically, justifying the fodder you mow down by filling…

The final months of a game’s development are a tiring period, but Overwatch creative director Jeff Kaplan isn’t exactly resting up. In addition to monitoring the reams of player feedback Blizzard has amassed since launch, he, like us, has had a few too many late nights playing the thing. Here, he reflects on the relative merits of a passionate community, the key decisions that led to the creation of a very different online FPS, and where it might be headed in the future. You’ve made an online shooter with no deathmatch, no scoreboards and no gear game. Was it a conscious decision to make something that rejected genre standards, or did it just happen organically? It was very conscious. We wanted to, on one hand, embrace what we thought was…

Developer Dambuster Studios Publisher Deep Silver Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Perhaps we’re not cut out to be a revolutionary figurehead. It did, after all, take us 17 attempts to escape that stash room, and nine to clamber up to that gangway. Whenever we invite our fellow guerrillas to accompany us on a mission, they either sprint away or block our exit route. Sure, we managed to liberate that enemy outpost at the second attempt, but you didn’t see the first try when we reloaded our weapon instead of turning that gas valve. And let’s not talk about the incident with the bike. Oh, and could we have some of those boots that supposedly make 25 per cent less noise before we head out? The Koreans…

Developer Heavy Specturm Publisher SIE Format PS4 Release Out now The original Shadow Of The Beast was, as with so many Amiga games of the era, a triumph of style over substance. The game may not have lived up to Roger Dean’s evocative box artwork, but it set an aesthetic high-water mark that elevated its obtuse, frustrating gameplay. In its remake, Heavy Spectrum swings the needle a little in the other direction, but fails to serve up enough ideas to offset its – by modern standards, at least – underwhelming visuals. That’s not to say it doesn’t look good at times. Indeed, some of the character designs are wonderful, the animation is luxurious throughout, and the later stages, when it feels like Heavy Spectrum is getting into the swing of…

Studios look for many things when interviewing prospective employees. Passion is tantamount, as is technical proficiency, and having a good degree behind you will go a long way to demonstrating your commitment to a development career path. But in all the years we’ve been creating Get Into Games features in Edge, the thing that every developer we’ve spoken to wants to see above all else is a strong portfolio of projects. Some of these could be finished games; others might be smaller endeavours focused on the individual’s particular discipline – pieces of art or audio experiments, for example, or a proof of concept for a gameplay mechanic. Building such a portfolio will take dedication, talent and – perhaps more than anything else – a great deal of your free time.…

Location London, UK DR KELLY BOUDREAU Lecturer, Game Design & Theory; MA programme director, Digital Games Theory & Design www.brunel.ac.uk Currently playing: “Amplitude – I’m a big fan of rhythm action and puzzle games. INDUSTRY PROSPECTS “You really have to want a job and go that extra mile to get it. This is where I think our students have an advantage – they’re multiskilled, creative communicators. They aren’t just ideas people, they’re students who can think critically about what’s needed, adapt ideas in game mechanics and then make those mechanics a reality. They’re valuable additions to any work force.” Brunel University is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but its long-standing foundations don’t mean it isn’t at the cutting edge of videogame education. It offers a range of videogame-focused courses,…

Location Hull, UK WARREN VIANT Senior lecturer www2.hull.ac.uk Currently playing: “Bohemia Interactive’s Arma 3: I find the nature of the game – a pseudo-realistic military simulator coupled with a great community – very appealing.” INDUSTRY PROSPECTS “Although the fortunes of the UK creative industry may fluctuate, there remains an increasing demand for IT-related careers. When planning our degrees, we ensure that at their core is an emphasis on educating software developers who understand the fundamentals and are flexible enough to transfer their knowledge across platforms and market sectors as necessary.” The University Of Hull distinguishes itself with a particular focus on industry experience that includes an in-house commercial development studio, SEED, run by students and staff. Hull’s Computer Science For Games Development course offers a three-year BSc, one-year MSc or…

Ashly Burch is an actor, voice artist and writer best known for playing Tiny Tina in Borderlands and a terrifying version of herself in web sketch series Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’? More recently she took on the roles of Chloe in Life Is Strange and Orendi in Battleborn. How did Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’? come about? Anthony [Burch, Ashly’s brother] wanted to make a documentary about indie games around 2007/8. So he bought a camera and we started doing sketches so he could figure out how to use it. They became popular, got on GameTrailers, and he never made the documentary! Early on in the Hey Ash days I was too nervous to write, but it was such an organic development that over time I got more and more comfortable…

Videogame writing has come on a lot, hasn’t it? Players love their epic sci-fi or fantasy stories, and the scope of the lore buried within their worlds. Everyone wants to celebrate the development of the medium into a sophisticated engine of ludic narrative. So when the American writer Michael Thomsen published a sceptical review of Uncharted 4 in the Washington Post, the backlash was severe. Fans scrambled to sign an e-petition demanding that Metacritic remove this review, along with the arbitrary 40% score assigned to it. The voice of Nathan Drake himself, Troy Baker, tweeted a link to the petition, and then tweeted a sort of apology. In the emotionally brittle world of videogames, someone had once again done something simply unacceptable. What really enraged the fans was a single…

Developer/publisher Hollow Pond Format PC, PS4 Origin UK Release 2017 The most recent game from Hollow Ponds co-founder Ricky Haggett – and, indeed, many of the people working with him at his new studio – was Hohokum, a borderless musing about freedom, self-expression and unhurried experimentation. So it’s fair to say that the last thing we expected to see in his latest project was a hex grid. But on closer inspection, Loot Rascals isn’t as rigidly defined as those hexagons suggest. For starters, while this procedurally generated Roguelike is technically turn-based, you’re still able to gad around freely, making time wind on and the world rapidly switch between day and night. Enemies, too, will only move when you do, but some of them are gifted an unnerving turn of speed…

Button mashing won’t get you far in Dark Souls, where relying on a lucky strike is rarely a strategy that stacks up. FromSoftware’s series is notorious for the exacting demands it makes on players, requiring them to learn the intricacies of attacks, positioning and counters, so why would it make a good candidate for a board game reimagining? Tabletop realms are places where rules and mathematical systems are the game, realised in cardboard and plastic, and played with an orderly, methodical approach. Aside from the dexterity sub-category of board games, where flicking and throwing pieces is the norm, typically tabletop experiences include little to no ‘action’, and capturing a sense of nuanced twitch combat in these contexts is simply unworkable in most cases. If you’ve been keeping an eye on…

Do you think a more traditional publisher would have been as receptive to your Firewatch pitch? I’m sure the game would’ve been different, but it’s really hard for me to predict how different it would be or in what ways. Maybe it would’ve needed to be episodic, or longer, or have some kind of connectivity feature? How did you find the process of designing a game with so few precedents? It was hard. Having that big contiguous open world that has to allow players to go anywhere and ostensibly do anything, but at the same time tell a reasonably linear story, turned out to be a lot more challenging and filled with insane one-off solutions than we thought. Were you surprised when you realised how much potential the radio mechanic…

Hitman PS4 We’ve barely had time to fully explore Sapienza, and now a trip to Marrakesh is on the cards. Io-Interactive has somehow topped even episode two’s daunting scale, but while there’s plenty to see in this technically dazzling space, it doesn’t feel quite so cohesive as the first two episodes. Its areas feel compartmentalised in a way that makes proceedings feel more staccato than silky, but that won’t stop us making good on a bit of carefully planned violence. Battlefield 4 PS4 With Battlefield 1’s announcement, we fired up Battlefield 4 for old time’s sake. Clunky squad-creation tools may feel increasingly archaic, and its once-astonishing visuals are now starting to lose some of their sheen, but once you’re up and running, there’s still little to compare to a big…

After some quiet time to let the adrenaline settle, we get together with Id Software executive producer Marty Stratton to talk about the studio’s pulse-raising rebuke to an industry that felt like it was leaving this sort of thing behind. The game took a long time to make – how do you feel now that it’s finally out? Great! We spent that Friday, the entire weekend and a lot of Monday literally just watching people play the game on Twitch. It’s a fascinating window into how people experience your game, and I haven’t experienced that with a launch before, so it was really cool. Were you nervous about releasing a game with an old-school backbone into the modern FPS market? You’re always a bit nervous with any game, just because…

Developer/publisher Three Fields Entertainment Format PC, PS4, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now For better and worse, Dangerous Golf is exactly the game you expect it to be. Built by a team of ex-Criterion devs, it’s a game that owes a large debt to the studio’s most famous series. It is to the sport what Burnout’s Crash mode was to racing: tangentially related at best, with a similar unswerving focus on explosive carnage. The action may be on a smaller scale, but the sheer volume of onscreen objects makes it look every bit as spectacular, if not more so. Squeeze the right bumper and time will slow to a crawl, allowing you to witness champagne corks thudding into a tower of goblets, your ball’s fiery glow lighting them up as…

Developer Atlus Publisher Nintendo Format Wii U Release June 24 OK, Japan, this is getting a bit weird. Tokyo Mirage Sessions is the third game to grace these pages in the past 12 months to wed itself to Japan’s idol scene. Yet while it was merely a five-hour detour in Yakuza 5, and was a fine logical fit for Persona 4: Dancing All Night’s pacey rhythm action, here it’s the setting for a party-based JRPG. And though the Persona series from which Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is drawn typically has a youthful, modern-day cast, here Atlus must also incorporate the stars of the Fire Emblem series, which gives this already awkwardly named game its closing hashtag. Thematically, it’s an absolute mess. Yet, weirdly, it all hangs together quite well. The…

Developer Triple Eh? Publisher Rising Star Games Format PC, PS4 (tested), Vita, Xbox One Release Out now Lumo’s PEGI rating declares it suitable for all ages. Had we been on the classification committee, we might have suggested a rating of 35+. Not because Lumo contains any content even 18-year-olds would find objectionable – the presence of slippy-slidey ice levels notwithstanding – but because it’s so deeply steeped in a particular era of British gaming history that former readers of Your Sinclair magazine will likely get much more from it than anybody else. We thought The Shaw Brothers’ 1986 title Mole On The Dole might have been the most unlikely reference we’d encountered in a 2016 game, but a certain piece of elevator music effortlessly trumps it. Otherwise, this isn’t the…

Location Dundee, UK DR WILLIAM HUBER Head of Centre For Excellence In Game Education www.abertay.ac.uk Currently playing: “I’ve been playing Beeswing, a handdrawn exploration game. It has an amazing slice-of-life feel to it.” INDUSTRY PROSPECTS “The game industry is inherently international, and Abertay graduates find positions in studios all around the world. In this context, one of the most important assets a student can develop is a professional network, starting with their colleagues at Abertay. Our graduates become part of an international alumni network that has been growing over the past 20 years.” A bertay launched the world’s first industry-focused degree in 1997, so it has plenty of experience in teaching development hopefuls. It’s continued to adapt since that time, and now offers a number of courses that cover every…

Location London, UK SIMON FENTON Head of games www.pearsoncollegelondon.ac.uk/games Currently playing: “I’ve just got into The Witcher III. I couldn’t shake the ghost of Skyrim, but now I’ve stopped comparing it, it’s amazing.” INDUSTRY PROSPECTS “I think we’re in a golden age. There are so many avenues open to graduates now, and as well as the sheer amount of studios that have sprung up in the UK, the potential to work abroad is huge. All that said, graduates need to rise above all the noise to make themselves heard, which is a challenge. It takes dedication, a high level of professionalism, having an online presence, and above all else being flexible.” Escape Studios is a digital arts academy that has been training world-class artists for the past 13 years. Escape…

For a videogame developer, Bossa Studios has an unusual relationship with technology. While the studio behind Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread and Worlds Adrift is as willing as any other company to take advantage of improved rendering techniques and faster processors, the team sees these kinds of innovations more as jumping-off points than a foundation. Bossa CTO Sylvain Cornillon and COO Vince Farquharson will explore this in their Design Track keynote at this year’s Develop conference – taking place in Brighton from July 12–14 – and will talk about how disruptive technology can, and should, lead to disruptive design. What should Develop attendees expect from your keynote? Vince Farquharson It’s about the convergence of technology with design and creativity, and the fact that we find technology empowering and exciting but…

“In a world of digital content and usergenerated content, we are providing selfactualisation for many of our players.” Careful, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson – too much self-actualisation can make you go blind “[Some people] don’t believe it’s really a game until you get to the end of the auction and you get your gun and you start shooting. I’m OK if we lose some of those people.” Is Neil Druckmann talking about Uncharted 4 or an eBay bid gone badly awry? “They think, ‘Since Final Fantasy is a special game, then we are also special because we are making it’. I told them off, saying, ‘We’re not special. Wake up.’” Final Fantasy XV director Haijme Tabata shares one of his inspirational leadership techniques “Typical Japanese companies are like armies.…

WEBSITE Lordran & Beyond www.bit.ly/darksoulscomic A collaborative webcomic series founded by writer Zach Sharpe, Lordran & Beyond is a building collection of fancreated Dark Souls and Bloodborne vignettes. Sparingly told and beautifully illustrated, the charming strips explore the dusty corners of FromSoftware’s potent lore with a mix of wide-eyed veneration and studied insight. The newest addition to a growing set is Storyteller, which sees Galvan stumbling through the Shaded Woods, flagon in hand, before meeting another familiar face. The site has also recently uploaded its first Dark Souls III story, called In Her Service, in which a thief takes possession of a Red Eye Orb from a fallen hero, all the while being watched by the wily Greirat. The first of a three-part series, In Her Service is also the…

A friend texted me at the weekend, worried that he’d made a huge mistake. His six-year-old was stuck on a boss battle in a Lego game, and was putting off returning to it. In an attempt to convince the kid of the benefits of persistence, my friend started to tell him about Dark Souls, and how victory is all the sweeter when it comes after so many defeats. The message got through, but did not exactly have the desired effect. Rather than go back to his Lego, the kid said he wanted to watch his dad play Dark Souls. Hesitantly, my friend loaded up DSIII, started a new game, and played through the tutorial, explaining what he was doing at every turn. On the run-up to the tutorial boss, however,…

Developer Capcom Publisher Nintendo Format 3DS Origin Japan Release 15-Jul Monster Hunter Generations producer Shintaro Kojima has a ritual every time a new game in the series is released. “I do this thing with a few buddies of mine,” he tells us, “where we draw straws and we have to use a certain weapon until we’ve finished all of the solo content in the game.” This time around he picked out the sword and shield. But while he’s remained faithful to his choice, he’s still been able to mix things up a bit, thanks to the selection of four different hunting styles. “I’m a little bit skittish,” he admits. “I tend to get sick of one style and move onto another. I started with Aerial, then I tried Striker, and…

A child tennis star, film-school dropout and lover of improv theatre, Patrice Désilets followed a winding and unorthodox route into game development. When he received a tipoff that the French game publisher Ubisoft was planning to set up a studio in his hometown of Montreal, Désilets perceived an opportunity to combine his passions in a career that he otherwise knew little about. After two unremarkable games, the young designer was given the chance to reinvent Prince Of Persia. The resulting game, The Sands Of Time, and specifically his concept to do away with videogame ‘lives’ and instead allow players to rewind their mistakes, showed a design ingenuity that gave Désilets autonomy to begin work on a new kind of action blockbuster. Nevertheless, it took two years to convince his bosses…

While Frank and Rodkin knew that they wanted Delilah to be played by Cissy Jones, who they’d worked with on The Walking Dead: Season One, finding the right Henry proved very hard. “It took months,” Remo recalls. “We heard so many auditions, and this is nothing against any of the actors because there were a lot of really talented people who read, but there was just something about the material that demanded a particular person. And until we found that person, it was really dispiriting. At times I thought, ‘We’re probably just not going to have a great male voice actor.’ I reached a point where I’d accepted that Delilah would be good and Henry would just be fine, but that it would be OK as the player would do…

As a descriptor, ‘retro’ has always been unhelpfully vague. Sure, for a time it became synonymous with the kind of reimagined 8bit visuals that have risen to prominence in recent years, but as developers co-opt nostalgia in ever more diverse ways, the term is becoming increasingly nebulous. That fact couldn’t be illustrated more plainly than in this month’s Play section. Take Doom (p100): here, Id Software has created the best instalment of the legendary FPS series yet, one that brilliantly captures the spirit of the first two games. But while aspects of it, such as its weapon wheel and a focus on brutal fun over narrative, might feel anachronistic among today’s crop of shooters, the studio has taken Doom’s core ideas and applied several layers of polished innovation that make…

Developer/publisher Blizzard Format PC, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now We’re about to pick Mercy, Overwatch’s valkyrie-styled healer, when we spot the tooltip on the character-select screen warning that our team has no builders. We’re on defence for this match, tasked with holding a series of capture points from our opponents, so fortifications are important. Nervously, we hover our cursor over Torbjörn, the Scandinavian dwarf who has caused us so much trouble in our first hours with Overwatch. Early on, he feels almost unbeatable: he can build a single, static turret, whack it with his hammer to power it up, then waddle off, gun in hand, to pick off the stragglers while his sentry covers a capture point, racking up kill after kill. Aim for him, and the turret…

Developer PlatinumGames Publisher Activision Format 360, PC, PS3, PS4 (tested), Xbox One Release Out now Well, this is all a bit embarrassing. And not just the early-’90s surf-dude chatter of the protagonists. Upon its announcement, Mutants In Manhattan was a delicious prospect, a fourplayer, online-enabled, 3D-cartoon callback to the classic Turtles In Time coin-op, made by the best action-game studio on the planet. What it’s turned out to be, though, is a shambles. It is, by a distance, the worst game Platinum has ever made, which isn’t especially surprising given how thinly the studio has been spreading itself of late. Mutants In Manhattan arrives just eight months after the release of Transformers Devastation, Platinum’s previous Activision gig; it’s already made a Star Fox for Nintendo this year, has a Nier…

Developer/publisher Crytek Format Rift Release Out now The greatest trick of The Climb, whether by accident or design, is that you’ll feel like you’ve been on a real rock face after an extended session. In order to ascend the game’s vertigo-inducing routes you simply look at the hold you want to grab, then squeeze either the left or right trigger depending on which hand you’re using. Your free hand moves wherever you aim your gaze, but leaving only one hand on the rock will erode your stamina. You can recover by grasping with both hands, and you can slow the loss of stamina by using the appropriate shoulder button to chalk up. Brilliantly, you can also slightly release a trigger to loosen your grip, preserving your stamina but risking a…

Location Beaconsfield, UK JON WEINBREN Head of games nfts.co.uk Currently playing: “I’ve just finished Firewatch on the PS4, which I enjoyed. It has its flaws, but the tone and performances of the characters are very beguiling.” INDUSTRY PROSPECTS “These are exciting times for our graduates, but of course it can be tough and we do our best to help. One scheme that’s been very successful is the Bridges To Industry programme we run with the Wellcome Trust. I’m also frequently contacted by those inside and outside of the industry looking for people to commission or contract, and I’m delighted to recommend our recent grads.” Four years on from the introduction of its Games Design And Development MA, the National Film And Television School’s course has made a name for itself…

Location Swansea, UK JOHN CARROLL Senior lecturer and programme director for Creative Computer Games Design MArts www.uwtsd.ac.uk Currently playing: “I’m playing the new Doom on Xbox One. I’m really enjoying the retro approach with a modern twist.” INDUSTRY PROSPECTS “For the art and design graduates that are looking to move into the UK game industry I would say build a strong portfolio and be confident in the work you display within it. Tailor your portfolio specifically for the opportunities that you’re applying to. With our course, students will also have the advantage of being able to productively work within a team.” Swansea College Of Art is part of the Art & Design faculty within the University Of Wales Trinity Saint David, and spread across three campuses in south west Wales:…

Illustration box-kite-curve.com I can’t even take comfort in the idea of letting The People decide. We do not need Gamey McGameface I’ve just been asked to do one of my favourite things. Something I love but I still find important to the point of being scary. Some friends who run an independent game development company Skyped me to see if I’d give their next project a decent name. Names are such a big deal that it beats me how anyone is actually brave enough to name anything. And I speak as one who’s named lots of things, including a child. If you actually stop to imagine the thing you’ve named being used, printed on things, talked about and judged, you’d be forgiven for calling everything ‘Project X’. Although that doesn’t…