I've just left BBC's Television Centre after a great pre-recorded interview for Radio 4's ShopTalk with Sony's David Wilson, Sports Interactive's Miles Jacobson, Nottingham Trent Uni's Prof. Mark Griffiths and Strange Company's Hugh Hancock. The programme will broadcast next Tuesday and, as always, it's pleasing to see that major broadcasters and media outlets are playing positive about games rather than jumping on the Ban-This-Sick-Filth bandwagon. Surely there are others - as an aside, anyone want to big up your local games-friendly news media (outwith The G, of course *wink*)?
I've also, coincidentally, left with my new Sony PSP handheld console. Products like the PSP, the GameBoy series and mobile phone games arguably encourage designs which can be played in the length of a Tube journey, or so say Wilson and Jacobson. Indeed, the PSP version of the WipEout series allows gamers to put in a time limit and will design tracks to suit travel needs. Quick-fire titles like WarioWare Inc. on the GameBoy SP emit short, sharp blasts in bite-size chunks. Arcade classics on mobiles and "interstitial" titles adapted for transportable games machines (like The Sims Unleashed on the Nokia N-Gage) give enough interactivity to distract from the scenery and the local colour. Even some console games, like Rez and Katamari Damacy, offer short-term do-able fixes for the time-strapped. To be frank, many of these types of games are more enjoyable than some of their other, longer bretheren.
This harkens back to a comment made by Nintendo design virtuoso Shigeru Miyamoto earlier this year, that games designers should break out of the habit of making "epics" and instead should plan shorter games. Regular readers of the gamesblog may remember the debate which sprang up, both in terms of value for money and in the old gameplay vs. story argument. Sure, he was talking about home console products, but Wilson's and Jacobson's comments today really made me realise this for the handheld market. A bit slow, I know. For the legions of people who say they don't "have time" to play games, a handheld console - with its unique time-filling capabilities - may be key to the mainstream. But is carrying a handheld games machine still kid's play? Can you really imagine serious businessmen and women whipping out their PSP on the Tube?
What should be interesting in the months to come is to see how high-profile "media entertainment devices" like the PSP see through Miyamoto's prediction, and whether the intended broader demographic of users responds positively to the games tailored to a Tube journey or simply uses the device to play songs or watch TV shows/movies.
