Nintendo understands that while play does involve competition, territoriality and rehearsal for war, it also involves silliness, laughter and fun.
I adore silliness, laughter and fun. Maybe it comes with being a parent or maybe with marrying a woman who adores it also but I love that we laugh, we joke and we get along like kids.
Fry’s essay is an exposition on why the Wii continues to outsell the XBox and Playstation despite both of them being vastly more capable and powerful. And this, like the recent surge in gaming handheld interest via the iPhone (and Apple’s repositioning of the iPod touch as a gaming handheld) is why casual gaming is making some people rich and lowering the bar for independent developers.
Saturday morning as I handed out MURDERDROME T-shirts, I spoke to Jonathan Temples of EO Creative. Jonathan made a bit of a splash a few years ago doing graphics work for CodeMasters.
Looking forwards to today and we have Northern Ireland games companies springing up out of the woodwork – like Blue Pilot Software, Craic Design and a couple of others (who I’ll tell you more about if they give me a release to do so) and for more ‘serious’ gaming, Dark Water Studios up in the far north. I’m absolutely sure that this is the tip of the iceberg with regards to development here in Northern Ireland.
The province has a long and chequered history of being in the forefront of media creation and, to a degree, digital content and it’s satisfying to see that return.
You watch people play those first-person kill-em-all games and the amount of concentration is fierce. It’s like work. No looseness. All murderous tenseness.
OTOH, when I first saw the Wii in NYC on its debut night, I thought, Geez, even a game spaz like ME could have some fun with THAT!
I still recall how Nintendo was savaged for the lateness of it. And then how all the experts dissed it. (Hey, the same experts who dissed the iPod!)