I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Katie Hallahan, Co-Designer and Cesar Bittar, Project Director, about the game and get their thoughts on how they finally reached this point. In this exclusive interview, Katie and Cesar talk about fan passion, hard work, dedication, determination and resolve. They remind us why none of us should ever surrender in the face of adversity and why you should never give up on your dreams. This is the story of Phoenix Online Studios and how they came to find their Silver Lining.

Q. Thank you both for taking the time to do this interview. My first question has to do with the game’s central protagonist. I wonder, what was the reasoning behind choosing King Graham as the games lead character when the series has also seen Alexander and Rosella as protagonists as well? Had you always envisaged Graham for the role?

KH: “Originally, when we had planned for nine chapters, you were going to get a chance to play all three of those characters. However, when we condensed to game down to its current form, we decided to cut those parts. While the plot does have the twins under a curse in the game, we also felt that while the entire Royal Family has been the core of the King’s Quest games, Graham has really always been the star. He’s had three games where he was the main character already, he was the very first character we played in the series, and even in the games where you weren’t playing him, his presence was still felt. The fans of King’s Quest have taken a long journey with King Graham already, and it was only fitting that he be the character they play in our game as well.”

CB: “Just like Katie said, Graham is the star. He’s the one that began it all. The good thing is that if we ever did something else in the universe of King’s Quest, we have a great story starring Alexander, Rosella and co-starring so many great and original characters!”

Q. The fan campaign was the most important reason behind the rebirth of this project and this is not the first time we’ve seen an online fan campaign tackle developers head on. How were you able to maintain such passionate and dedicated fans and keep them interested in this project for so long?

KH: “Our fans fervor has often surprised even us! We’re extremely grateful for it, or we wouldn’t be where we are now. The fanbase for King’s Quest has always been a strong and active one, even though it’s been a long time since the games were popular and still being published. I think one reason is definitely that they’re eager to have a new game to play. As well, we’ve always tried to maintain a strong connection with our fans; we’re fans ourselves, after all! We all have that common interest to bring us together, and they know how hard we’ve worked over the years to make this happen. I think they appreciate that, and we in turn appreciate them.”

CB: “I also think that we wanted to go beyond what is normally expected from free game or fangames. We are crazy like that; that’s why it took so long to make! We are so blessed that we have such a great support from them! To them; thank you, thank you, a billion times thank you! I will never grow tired of saying it!”

Q. Have Roberta and Ken Williams, the series original creators, had much involvement with you throughout the course of the campaign? Have they been able to see the new game and offer their thoughts?

CB: “Yes! They recently played the game! Ken mentioned that Roberta “seemed to be smiling” while she was playing the game. Hours later, we received the most incredible words from Roberta. She had finished the game and sent us an email. I woke up to that email and it brought a tear to my eye! We’ll post the whole thing later on our site, but she called the game “Beautiful and fun to play”. It’s amazing because from what we know, Roberta has never played any of the fans games, and much less made any comments! So, receiving the approval from the game creator is amazing. As I was reading the email, I realized nothing would ever top that: That was the moment I worked so hard for!”

The wings of the angels

Q. I followed your campaign before I became a journalist for This Is My Joystick and as a fan of the Kings Quest series. I know this has taken you a very long time to put together, have you lost many staff members along the way, or did you maintain almost everybody who worked on the game from day one? How many people are currently working on ‘A Silver Lining’?

KH: “I think in total we’ve had at least seventy staff members working on this project over the years! A lot of people have come and gone, and sometimes come back. The time they worked on it and their commitment levels have varied a lot. Some people have done one sketch for us and that was that, some worked a few hours a week for years, and others have worked at it like a full-time job. Right now we have about twenty active staff members.”

CB: “Working with a volunteer team has been the most difficult challenge I have ever faced, but also the most gratifying one. People always ask me… “So how did you get that guy to work for free?” I think we are masters of working people’s passions! A lot of people come into the project and see such a talented and dedicated team, that they are more than happy to do anything to help out. Of course, there’s always the core team that have stuck together for years, but we are ever grateful of everyone that ever helped us!”

Q. The game will be released episodically, which I understand to be different from your original intentions with the project. Do you feel this is the future of adventure games and that the days of a full 20 – 30 hour in one package are over?

KH: “I don’t know that those days are entirely over, but the times are changing, the technology is changing, and the games have to change with those things. The rise and fall of the adventure game genre definitely shows that the genre has needed and has been looking for something new to revitalize it. I’m personally of the opinion that it was never dead, it just wasn’t the most popular genre out there after a certain point. Episodic games are starting to become more prevalent, for adventure games and others, and I think we’re going to see a lot more games and companies using that model in the coming years. Adventure games in particular are well-suited to it because they are story and character-driven. You can divide them into chunks or chapters or episodes fairly easily, you can have multiple dramatic cliffhangers, rising and falling action, and so forth.”

CB: “I think getting a story in chunks is sometimes better than a full story because it gives you little pieces and keeps it fresh. When I play a new game, as awesome as it can be, by the 10th or 15th hour it loses that “freshness” and you start giving everything for granted. With something that leaves you wanting for more and coming back every month for several months, you get to appreciate it a bit more. Just like in TV series, where you get more attached and feel you know these characters better than in a two hour movie.”

Q. Kings Quest 8 was a far cry from what Sierra had done with the series before and went on to become the most unpopular entry in the series. Have you ignored its presence entirely or tried to synch The Silver Lining with it in some way?

KH: “We have made the effort to sync up The Silver Lining with all of the past King’s Quest games, including Mask of Eternity. Though it wasn’t popular with the fans, it’s still a game in the series, and we aren’t ignoring that. The events of that game don’t necessarily play a huge role in our game, but Connor is mentioned and what happened to Daventry is taken into account.”

Q. During development time, which of the Kings Quest games would you say you’ve drawn the most inspiration from and why?

KH: “King’s Quest VI has been the biggest influence. For one thing, our game takes place primarily in the Land of the Green Isles, where KQ6 took place. As well, that was almost unquestionably the most popular and beloved game in the series, the real peak of storytelling, music, voice talent, graphics, etc. That game really brought them all together in a fantastic package. We want TSL to be as good as that game was, if not better.”

CB: “The combination of Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen made for the best King’s Quest ever, and that’s something every fan appreciated. Because we were going with a more mature plot, we didn’t completely want to alienate people, so we gave them something familiar and something very new to the king’s quest series (a dramatic, dark tone). I think we found a great balance between the two.”

Many a fond memory can be found here!

Q. At one point, A Silver Lining was to be a standalone project with its own characters and story with all Kings Quest related themes removed from it. While developing that, do you feel the game still could have worked with all new characters or would it have proven difficult seeing as how much of the premise hinged on KQ lore?

KH: “This was more of a back-up plan in case we ever got a C&D. Which of course happened, twice! When we said we would keep that as a fall back plan, we didn’t fully understand how much work that would’ve been. While extracting the storyline would’ve been technically possible, it would’ve been extremely difficult. A lot of work would have been scrapped, redone, etc, and taken a long time to do as well. On top of that, I don’t think the story would pack quite as much of a punch without it. It would’ve much harder to get people as interested in it as they are now.”

CB: “Like Katie said, the story would have just not worked as well. This was a story written with King’s Quest in our minds, and trying to break apart from that was extremely difficult. We did start working on it, and we had an outline as to how to save the original material, because there was no way we were just going to throw everything out the window. That said, I’m so glad we didn’t have to change it! I was dreading the idea so much as we continued working on the new story.”

Q. How much involvement are you having with Activision at present? Are they just allowing the game to go ahead and giving you full creative control or are you bound to certain restrictions?

KH: “We have a few restrictions, but largely they’ve allowed us creative freedom. They’ve been great to work with, and since we started renegotiating with them, it’s been an open dialogue and we’ve built a good relationship. We’re very glad that they reconsidered!”

CB: “We’ve built such a great relationship with them since then. They are now very fast in their responses and in working with us in matters that involve them. Of course, they are not really endorsing the project or really involved with it. This is all us, and we are happy they are allowing us so much freedom and opportunities to get The Silver Lining to as many people as possible.”

Q. Why do you feel Activision so openly challenged your intentions to release A Silver Lining, a license they’ve not touched in so many years. Do you feel there are plans to rejuvenate the series much as Lucasarts have done with Monkey Island? Were they just washing their hands clean of Kings Quest?

KH: “They have in the last year released the old games on Steam and GOG.com, so they were doing something with the license, even if it wasn’t developing a new game. They were protecting their copyright, which we understand; it’s their right and responsibility as holder of the IP.”

Q. For someone who’s a fan of the series, can you give us a brief idea as of what to expect from A Silver Lining and how it ties in with the KQ series?

CB: “The Silver Lining picks up right where the previous game left. We try to answer many of the questions that were left open through the series and try to tie it all up into a series of events that are all correlated.

One thing that they can expect are characters that break away from the “fairy-tale” mold from the previous games. We questioned how would these characters be if they were more close to real persons, and so we deal with things like Alexander’s traumas because of being raised as a slave, Rosella having grown as an only and overprotected child, etc.”

Q. For people who have never heard of Kings Quest or this project before, why would you say they need to experience the Kings Quest games and A Silver Lining? What makes this series so special?

CB: “King’s Quest is a different kind of story than those we normally see out there. With the dark tone, we made it more adequate to the current generation of gamers, but we maintain the whimsical aspect of it, the tongue-in-cheek magic that made it so distinct without it becoming extremely comical like other games such as Monkey Island. Plus, it’s free! What can you lose? Give it a chance!”

Dreams can come true!

Q. Have you ever considered working on an entry in another Sierra game of old such as Space Quest or Police Quest?

CB: “Gabriel Knight! That is my absolutely most favorite games series ever and I would kill to be able to work alongside Jane Jensen on it. We at Phoenix Online Studios are going to try our best to bring back all these series in the future, and hopefully, we can work something with Activision to convince them to let us do so. We firmly believe there is still a market for these games out there, and we know many fans have been waiting for a long time for this to happen. The Silver Lining being so prominent in the news is clear proof of that!”

Q. Knowing that your game will finally be released, knowing what you know now, would you do it all again?

KH: “Absolutely. Even if it weren’t going to be released, I’d still say yes, but I’m thrilled it will be released! There are things I might do differently, but they all have to do with hindsight, knowing now what we didn’t know then about what would take up our time unnecessarily and so forth. This has been an amazing and life-changing experience. Our team is fantastic, our fans are incredible, I’ve learned so much and made great friends, and together we made something we believe in. This is a dream come true and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

CB: “Yes! Especially with the experience we now have, we could have done it so much faster. I think that’s also part of the magic; everything that we learned in the process, all the people we had the great opportunity to work with, and all the doors that this project has open for us, both in our company and in our personal careers. There would be no best way I could have personally spent my last eight years!”

Q. Are you working on another project now that The Silver Lining is finally starting to see the light of day?

CB: “Right now, we look towards the future. We have a commercial game coming called “Corridor 9″, and we are very excited by it. It tells the story of a scientist woman in a post-apocalyptic world, and it explores themes of Religion vs Science and Man vs Machine. You can get more information about it at our company page at www.postudios.com“

Q. How much have companies such as Telltale influenced your direction on The Silver Lining? Have you reworked the control interface to make the adventure resonate with something that is popular and current?

KH: “The gameplay interface is the same point-and-click, five icon interface that was seen in KQ5 and KQ6. Companies like TellTale have been an influence in our decision to make the game episodic, however.”

CB: “It’s not a secret I used to work for Telltale. What I learned there was invaluable, but we had looked at the Episodic model for our next games before that happened. They do a great job at Telltale, but they are more in sync with the Lucasarts adventure games. We want to do the same but with the Sierra games, because we know them by heart.”

Q. Why have you stuck with this for so long when this has been a non-profit offering for the most part? There must be a real passion and belief in your team regarding this project and a hope of seeing future licensed Kings Quest products?

KH: “You nailed the reasons pretty well, actually! There’s a lot of hope and belief in this project. By the time we were getting into years of work on it, we already felt we’d come too far to just give up. We knew we had something great on our hands, and we weren’t about to throw in the towel. There was never an expectation of being paid involved with this game, so hearing that over again was never discouraging or surprising.”

CB: “I think these past two weeks are the answer to that question. Seeing the passion of the fans, the recognition from the creators, the attention from the media, it has been so overwhelming in such a good way. Also, like I mentioned before, the experience and the talented people we got to work with. It has paved the road for the future of Phoenix Online Studios, and so far, that future looks very bright!”

Q. Do you have any advice for like-minded individuals such as yourselves? If they have their own ideas of recreating a classic game or even working on their own IP? What would you say to them?

KH: “It’s going to be a lot of work; a lot more than you probably think it will be! You have to be dedicated to work knowing you aren’t getting paid, or that if you are going to be, it won’t be for a while. If you’re not working with your own IP, try to work out an agreement with the person who does own it. If you’ve got a good product and you believe in it, you may be able to work something out, and you won’t have to go through a C&D later! Never underestimate the power of your fans! Connect with your community. Fans are great, supportive, fun, and it just helps you feel good about what you’re doing and helps keep up your morale on a project like this to know someone else is cheering for you, too.”

CB: “I can probably write a book on this, but the most important things are to know your limitations. It’s great to want to do great quality, but know what you can do, and understand that there is a reason why high quality projects cost millions of dollars to produce. Do the same, but smaller! Also, as much as the reason why we are here today is because we decided to work on King’s Quest, go ahead and do your own license. We got shut down twice and the fear of seeing your work going down the waste is too big for me to wish that on anyone. More importantly, believe in what you are doing, dream high (but keep your feet on the ground), and work hard towards that goal. When it comes to fruition, you’ll see how worthy it is!”

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview and we wish you all the very best with The Silver Lining.

POStudios have done a summary for each of the Kings Quest games in turn. This serves as a great introduction for anyone who isn’t aware of the Kings Quest games or for anyone who needs a refresher as to the story of the first eight games. I’ve listed them here individually. Kings Quest I, Kings Quest 2, Kings Quest 3, Kings Quest 4, Kings Quest 5, Kings Quest 6, Kings Quest 7 & Kings Quest 8.

You can download the first episode of The Silver Lining (What is Decreed Must Be) right here free of charge!

Interested? Read on to find out more…

Q. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Cathy. Firstly, I have to ask, who came up with the idea to mix Plants and Zombies together in a game and how? It seems like the most unlikely combination possible and yet you’ve managed to make it work together so well…

“George Fan, Senior Designer at PopCap, had just finished PopCap’s Insaniquarium, and was noodling around with some new game ideas, one of which was a more defence oriented sequel to Insaniquarium. At the time he was also playing some tower defence mods in Warcraft III and thought “What if I used plants as towers? Plants are great because you can give them lots of character, and no one expects them to move”. So out went the fish, in came the plants. Around that time, however, a plethora of gardening games appeared in the casual games space so rather than blend in, he decided to come up with an usual mix in form of plants and… zombies. He was pretty sure nobody else would be working on such a combination! As it turns out it was a pretty compelling one!”

Q. Can you talk to us about any of your upcoming projects? Has there been any further word on when we can expect to see Plants vs Zombies and Zuma’s Revenge ported onto XBLA and PSN as well as any other of your titles that have yet to grace the formats?

“As a company policy, we don’t discuss future plans or upcoming games. That said, our priority is to have our games on as many gaming platforms as possible: PopCap believes that everyone is a potential player of games; our job is to make great games and make sure they are accessible to this audience of everyone. Having our games on as many gaming platforms as possible is a big part of that strategy. We’ve announced that PvZ is coming to XBLA, and that’s still the case; expect that first console adaptation of PvZ to arrive later this year!”

Q. You’ve partnered yourselves with World Winner and allowed people to play your games for cash prizes. When coming to port your products onto consoles and handheld devices who are bound to many terms and conditions, do you further appreciate the freedom the online community can provide and wish there were changes in place to make such things more accessible within home consoles?

“PopCap appreciates the variety actually. When your audience is ‘everyone’, that’s a lot of wish lists so we do our best to provide as many varied gaming experiences as possible to cater to the wishes of as many people as possible. Some people want to play at home on their PC with their kids, some on their phone on the way to work, some against their friends on Facebook while others want to incorporate a different aspect of competition afforded by our agreement with World Winner. PopCap’s job is to make fun games and make them broadly available for people to enjoy, but we don’t insist that one size fits all and we can appreciate different gaming platforms and the different gaming experiences they offer.”

Q. We’ve seen an increased interest in bringing games onto social networks and playing in web browsers with the rise in popularity of Mob Wars and Farmville, and yourselves recently bringing Bejeweled Blitz to Facebook. Do you feel that playing gaming in this way could be the next step for the industry?

“Absolutely, social gaming is a very exciting space to be involved in right now, and still in its infancy in many ways. Bejeweled Blitz is PopCap’s first foray into social gaming and it’s doing phenomenally well. We are now looking at adaptations of our other classic franchises for the social space; as well as looking at some more experimental ideas that would be designed specifically for the social space.”

One of Popcap's classics!

Q. What do you feel is key to making your games infinitely replayable? Can you give us some insight into the secrets of PopCap’s success?

“PopCap start by asking “do WE like playing this game?” We invest time in enhancing the industry and consumer’s casual game experience, prioritising a superior design process and spending about 2x/3x as long developing and polishing each game as anyone else in the industry. It is expensive but results in extremely high quality games that set PopCap’s offerings apart from other casual games and make them truly special and memorable, and hopefully nearly infinitely replayable!”

Q. Your games are very replayable in their own right, but I’ve also noticed that you try and implement some story in there to try and give the game further illustration, such as the story behind the Peggle Masters and their secret ambitions and desires in Peggle Nights, or the story of Bookworm Adventures 2. Is story important to Popcap and do you feel it will continue to play a part in future games, perhaps more prominently than before?

“We, are always learning new things about how players interact with our games, and trying to incorporate that back into the next title. Often, I think these narrative naturally occur ; we are passionate about our games and for many of us, the characters take on lives of their own and we kind of owe it to them to tell their stories! In terms of development, PopCap starts with a core game concept, builds a quick prototype, and then refines it, over and over and over again, until it’s really fun. Then we polish it until we think it’s ready to be called a “PopCap game”. We don’t write huge design docs, and we are willing to kill a game at any stage if we don’t think it’s working out.”

Q. Many developers have begun working with the iPad more and more, with you introducing Plants vs Zombies HD to the format just recently. How did you find developing for the iPad? Was it easy to develop for? How do you rate it as a playable portable format?

“As a developer, the iPad offers the same easy development environment as the iPhone but amps that up with great technical specs and a potentially whole new way for somebody to interact with a game. PopCap believes the iPad has the potential to kick start a whole new wave of creative innovation similar to the wave kicked off by the launch of the iPhone and iPod touch. We are really enjoying the possibilities it presents in terms of development.”

Q. With the recent announcements of the Playstation Move, Microsoft Kinect, the 3DS and the continued compatibility of the Wii, do you feel Popcap products could benefit from this hardware and have you been considering possibilities for each respective format? Can you visualise your games being played in 3D or being controlled through voice recognition and full body movement?

“We just launched our first WiiWare game, Bejeweled 2, in North America. I don’t have official plans for any of the others but I have learned to never say never for PopCap. Things move fast and you just never know when there might be an opportunity for us in one of these areas. We won’t do it just to be ‘trendy’; it would have to actually make our games more fun or a different gaming experience.

We don’t have immediate plans for 3D versions of our games. Beyond flashy effects, there’s not a lot that 3D can add to a game like Tetris, Bejeweled, or Solitaire; they are 2D games at heart. In fact, one could argue that “dressing up” a game like Tetris or Bejeweled would only detract from the simple, unadulterated fun the game offers, for example by making it harder for the new player to quickly grasp the core concept.”

Flower Power!

Q. Have you considered allowing the community to mod some of your games, perhaps shipping your games with level editors and enabling players to share their finished ideas with one another, such as Valve have implemented in Left 4 Dead and Half Life? Would this be detrimental to the companies overall vision?

“Again, we never say never. Back in January, we released a level pack for Peggle Nights, which featured five all-new levels based on the top entries from a Peggle Art Contest. Going forward, we hope to provide our customer base to create content for our games in more direct, integrated ways; but that’s a fairly long way down the road at present.”

Q. Have you drawn influence from any games or entertainment media for any of your titles, whether reading a book or watching a film?

“Absolutely. Influences come from anywhere and everywhere, from everyone in the company. From Bookworm Adventures to Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies, you can find video game and other pop culture references sprinkled throughout our offerings; sometimes you have to squint to see ‘em “

Q. I had a crazy idea one time to make a musical version of Peggle and wondered what it would turn out like, and it definitely had something to do with Ode to Joy. Have you ever considered bringing any of your games from the computer screen to the TV or movie screen and which do you feel would plead the most interesting case?

“We have increasingly heard this question; particularly in relation to Plants vs. Zombies. It’s certainly interesting but I think it would have to be something really special… the zombies are complete divas!”

Thanks to Cathy for letting us take up some of her time and we look forward to all of PopCap’s future endeavours.

You can find plenty of PopCap coverage here at This Is My Joystick, with reviews of everything from Bookworm Adventures 2 to Plants vs Zombies.

He is a close friend of Alex Turner, lead singer of Arctic Monkeys, who McClure met on a bus in their native Sheffield but what many don’t know is Jon is a huge fan of football games and even runs his own 32 team tournaments. Luckily I managed to snatch a few moments with the outspoken frontman to talk about his love of gaming for This Is My Joystick.

Q. You were the first person to play Football Manager 2010 outside of Sega Sports Interactive as a games tester, how did you get involved?

“I just went down to Sports Interactive to see what they do and really enjoyed it, I picked up loads of useful tips, I’m the fucking Daddy at it now, but after twenty-odd seasons it has started to get a little boring.”

Q. What is your earliest memory of being in control of your first football side?

“Managing Newcastle when they were a good side, the Kevin Keegan years with Les Ferdinand and co.”

Q. Do you begin a season playing at your beloved Sheff Wed, or do you head straight into a top six premiership side?

“Fuck that shit, they have enough problems at the moment without me getting involved, if you’re playing Football Manager, you want to be playing Champions league not pissing about in the lower leagues, it’s just too hard.”

Q.Tell us about the time on tour playing Football Manager on your laptop when an attractive female approached you and asked you what you were doing.

“I was in Europe on my way to do some press, when a very attractive female asked what I was doing, I felt like a bit of a geek so had to come up with something fast, so I told her I was a scout for a football club and was scouting for players and I use this new system and she said “Wow that is so cool”.

Q. Did you pull it off?

“I don’t think so, no. [Laughs]“

Serge calls me the Pepper Grinder!

Q. What is your gaming console of choice?

“I’m a PS3 man, but if I can blag an Xbox 360 I will play that too.”

Q. PES or FIFA?

PES all the way for me, it’s just so fucking slick, I have dabbled with FIFA but nothing comes close to PES.

Q. You recently Played PES with Kasabian on tour and even organised your own tournaments, but who would win a super tournament of Kasabian, Artic Monkeys, Mongrel and Reverend and the Makers members.

“Me of course! Serge from Kasabian calls me the “Pepper Grinder” because I always grind out a result in every match. We have proper 32 team tournaments, my brother is the boy at this game and my cousin is the fucking daddy and would beat any of the above. One thing you need to put in capital letters though is that ANDY NICHOLSON IS SHIT, and I even beat him 7-1 once. Promise me you will put this in capital letters.”

Q. Does it ever annoy you how some people rush to select Man Utd, Chelsea etc online in PES?

“No, No, No I don’t play online brother, it’s a bit fucking kinky that. It’s like swinging, it just feels kind of dirty and wrong playing with strangers. Rob Nicholson has been known to create a slimmer version of himself in the game and have skills like Ronaldo and I’m like “what are you doing?”

Q. What other games do you enjoy?

“I do enjoy Tiger Woods golf, which is a great game.”

Q. Please tell me you don’t play golf in real life as it would scar my rock n roll image of you, and replace it with the Reverend in chequered trousers.

“No way brother, the only golf I have ever played is “Scally golf” where you take a few mates to the park and pick out something like a bandstand in the distance to hit. I recently broke my shoulder skiing which made me realise that some sports the working classes are just not cut out for; skiing and golf are those kind of sports.”

Q. Is Gaming becoming too corporate?

“It’s the way of the world, you just have to look at the music industry to see that. If the quality of the games improve then it’s no bad thing, but again like music it originates from creativity so it’s important that side of it remains.”

Q. You had a lot of fantastic writers on board for your idea of a truly independent music magazine called “The Ark” is this still a possibility?

“Absolutely, and you should read more about it in the next few weeks. I’m not massively involved, as the idea encourages people to create their own user-content-based-magazine.”

Q. Are printed magazines that are slaves to deadlines and advertisers in danger of being threatened by independent websites that have the luxury of telling it like it is and publishing it instantly?

“Absolutely, digital media has become massive; nobody buys newspapers anymore do they? Why would I when I can get the latest news on my phone. Even the independent newspaper is available on my phone.”

Q. Gaming now outsells CD’s and DVD’s does this surprise you?

“Not really man, if you go into HMV you find they are selling more games than music which shows just much things have changed.”

Q. What do you think about the whole Gaming is corrupting the nations youth vibe?

“Never listen to the Daily Mail. You just have to put the telly on to see much more violence than you will ever see in a game, but looking back as kids before violent games existed, we used to play with Toy Soldiers and pretend to blow heads off etc so to blame video games for societies problems is just a lazy answer and doesn’t deal with the real causes and issues. The only thing I will say is that kids need to go outside and play more.”

Q. What is your favourite game soundtrack of all time?

“I don’t know about my favourite but I can tell you I hate the soundtracks to the Pro Evo games, [starts to sing] ~Well there was Kennedy, and there was King, There was John, There was Jim, They did come, to teach and sing, To save our souls, forgive our sins.~ I hate that song but it sticks in your head. I’m sure Konami have enough money to buy a few decent songs, I will gladly give them a few of mine on the cheap. COME ON KONAMI SORT YOUR TUNES OUT!”

Konami Sort Your Tunes Out!

Q. I hear you are playing Glastonbury this year?

“We are playing at Leftfield but I urge anyone going to check out our Reverend Sound System show on the Sunday in the dance village if you are there, that’s going to be something else, I promise you.”

Q. Speaking of which one of my most Bizarre Glasto memories is seeing you in a jumpsuit with a guitar saying “I’m on stage in 35 mins”, and some security guard replying “No pass, No Entry”…

“You saw that shit? Don’t get me started, he was a typical posh kid who managed to blag a job at the festival and the power went to his head, what a wanker. What is it about a Hi-Viz jacket that turns people into a neo-Nazi?”

Q. Do you have a favourite Rock N Roll/Gaming Quote, you can leave us with?

“James Skelly from the Coral was once asked about what preparation he had done for their third album and he replied “Smoking weed and playing Pro Evo”… [Laughs] genius.”

I thank the Reverend for a little introduction to the state of things, and wonder if Andy Nicholson will want to defend his gaming pride, or if the next PES game will have a Reverend and the Makers soundtrack… Watch this space.

Q. For anyone reading this article who may not know what Unlimited Detail Technology is, in a nutshell, what is it?

“Its job is to find one atom for every pixel on the screen and not touch any of the others, it took us fifteen years to perfect the technique (it began as a hobby). What we have now works very well. We are able to display pictures with no geometry limitations at 24-30 fps 1024*600, one core with out any graphics hardware assistance, and we have only just begun to optimize so we are hoping to double that without any hardware assistance.”

Q. One of your big points is that it provides more detail and more utility than polygons. What is your reasoning behind this?

“In a polygon game the computer will take time to process each polygon, so if you have more polygons on screen then you need a faster processor. If we look at games today, we see many areas where things don’t look realistic (of course unlimited detail in its tech demo form doesn’t look realistic either, that will come when we begin importing laser scanned point cloud data models). The polygon count has been slowly increasing as better hardware is made, but if you look at Avatar the game and Avatar the movie we still see a huge difference. Unlimited Detail jumps over a few decades of hardware development by giving us unlimited geometry today.

Regarding utility, polygons are difficult things to work with, for example; every object the artist makes must be built to a strict polygon budget. They often want to make a more beautiful object but they are simply not allowed to. Once the object is made they must begin the task of rebuilding downscaled distance models. The distance model system works by having models of different sizes for different distances, if an object is far away you only want to use a simple 8 polygon tree, if it’s close then you want a high polygon count model. Models are rebuilt four-eight times depending on the game, the first few models can be downscaled with computer assistance and markers placed, but after that they must be rebuilt by hand. Unlimited Detail has freed the developer from all these issues.”

Q. While reading up on different websites around the internet, I found a few people saying that developers are simply more comfortable with polygons. Do you agree with this? Are developers simply not ready to transition out of their safe zone?

“I understand such mentality, my grandmother was delighted before Y2K (year 2000 computer crash) she thought that it would end all technology and we would have to go back to the horse and buggy, it is normal for people to want to hold on to the good old days. I saw monkeys on David Attenborough cracking nuts with rocks, and he went on to explain that the young ones learned it easily but most of the old ones could not progress to learn this new trick. I am glad to say that the majority of companies we correspond with do not hold on to the past with both hands. We have been contacted by many developers eager to licence Unlimited Detail when completed. Please understand, we aren’t about to tell the industry to leave polygon editors and all move to point cloud data editors, there is no problem with building your graphics on maya at the highest settings then converting to point cloud data, to the developer he still feels like he is using polygons, the difference is they now have unlimited amounts of them. Put yourself in the developer’s shoes for a minute and see things from their perspective.

If you make a game without UD and your opposition makes a game with UD then firstly the UD game looks better (no angular sides and laser scanned real world objects) you know the UD game was cheaper to make (artists didn’t distance model, and a lot of art was bought cheaply from CGI libraries) but the biggest blow is that you built your non UD polygon game for a PS3 and so your models are big and they aren’t going to run on a Wii or a PSP or most other systems so you sell your one game on one platform (or at best you also do a PC release for those who have the latest graphics card). Alternatively, your Unlimited Detail using rival company presses a button and all his graphics rescale (point cloud data rescales as easily as a bitmap image on paint) and so he releases his game on all consoles and can even release it on PCs with no graphics card in the developing world (China, India, Russia, South America,  the largest market on earth), so you see him make 10 times more sales than you. As much as the focus of Unlimited Detail is graphics it will be the universal scalability (even down to mobile phones) that will be most in the developers mind, as well as the huge artistic cost savings.”

Q. In your picture gallery I saw the jungle picture and the reflections in the water. Needless to say I was simply amazed at the detail. Was that something easy to achieve with your technology?

“Id love to say we did some trick but truth is I just made them all blue and turned them upside down. If it was a polygon game that would have doubled our polygon count and made us twice as slow, but for UD, volume doesn’t equal speed so it was a cheap trick. We have built real water reflections since then. “

Q. What are some of the trials and errors you have faced through the development process of this technology so far?

“When trying to build a search algorithm that scans 3D atoms your biggest problems are what do you grab when they are far away and small ? How do you know whether an object is blocked by another object ? In the end perfect solutions were found. I don’t use the word perfect lightly, for a long time I was not at all happy with some parts of the system but they kept evolving and now we are at the point were the core of our algorithm is less then two pages long and it has no multiplication or division (multiply and divide slow a computer down). Our claim is we have reached the point where it’s so small and efficient it can’t be improved upon. Often in maths you reach the point of perfection from which there can be no improvement. Consider Pythagoras, there are longer ways to find the area of a circle, but he found the perfect way on which there can be no improvement. Likewise, time will be our judge, but in the future when UD is taught in universities it maybe held as the highest and best way to process 3D. I personally like UD because it’s so simple and “pure” .

If you were an unkind person you could say the polygon system looks like a ship that is sinking but it got patched up with straw. It’s wasteful, so distance modelling must be used. It can’t do complex texture, so advanced displacement maps are added. It doesn’t scale well in to the distance so maths correction programs are installed. Grass fades and disappears if it’s too far from the camera, objects pop in and out, every thing is hollow like an easter egg, it’s a system of “tricks” that have a nice result by brute force and masses of work most of which is inefficient. It was great for hallway games like Doom, but we use it now to make trees and forests and ideally it was never meant to be used in such a manner. If you were a more generous person the truth is Polygons have been great. They served us well, and we should be grateful for all the work the people involved did to bring us twelve years of great 3D games. They aren’t about to leave us completely and they may not be the best solution for real time graphics any more, but they are still a great modelling tool and are likely to remain so.”

Q. You are the Chief Executive officer of the operation. What are some of your responsibilities?

“I do all the “chatting” with developers and laser scanner companies, the media and everyone else who needs chatting to. I’m also the original inventor and joint project leader and I also do some R&D in to new technology for the distant future.”

Q. Greg Douglas is the Chief Technology Officer. Can you tell us what he does for the operation?

“He is [the] joint project leader, he also handles some areas that I can’t, like compatibility with graphics cards and polygon to point cloud conversion.”

Q. Are you and Mr. Douglas the only people working on this project, or are there other people behind the scenes?

“We were but after investor involvement we now go between six-ten people depending on what sub part we are working on.”

Q. What exactly is point cloud data, and how does it work?

“Think little 3D atoms, X, Y, Z and some property coordinates, like colour and texture. However we store it all in a zipped format that recycles any common structures. So it’s all nice and small in the end.”

Q. In Figure 1.5 the amount of objects on screen and the detail that is involved was astounding. Is this something that would become commonplace if your technology were utilized at the next level?

“I have been told on one or two occasions “your pictures are too crowded”, so such levels of detail are not always desired by everyone, but if you want to have such detail it’s now available.”

Q. When you say “unlimited geometry” what exactly does that mean?

“Good question. I think some think we mean unlimited computer memory, we certainly don’t mean that. Computer memory isn’t an issue it’s so cheap these days and it gets cheaper all the time. We mean we can show unlimited volumes of objects on the screen. Normally if you have a polygon tree on the screen and you add a second tree the computer will be twice as slow, with Unlimited Detail you can put as many trees as you like and it will run just fine. In a way its like having unlimited processing power (very loosely speaking).”

Q. On your site, it says that this technology should be more mainstream in about sixteen months. Is that still the plan?

“Let’s say we’ll be done in two years, that way we can finish it in one and you’ll all think we were quick.
However we intend to release real time .exe demos long before completion. (No, I cant say when.)”

Q. To anyone else developing new technology for the industry, what would you say to them?

“Give it up and go cook fish and chips instead, (kidding). It’s very hard, the tech people are the ones who do the assessment in these companies and if you have a huge leap in technology then basically they are being asked to cause problems for their careers. Imagine if you are a polygon expert who spent eight years in uni, the whole company loves you, because you have boosted polygon efficiency by 18%, then they ask you to asses whether polygons are no longer needed. A ray trace expert who poured his life in to ray tracing, then Unlimited Detail comes along and it’s 200 times quicker. The idea that if you invent something better then they will all come knocking on your door with bags of money just isn’t true. The only way a big company will pay enough attention is by you becoming a financial threat to them. I’ve had senior levels of graphics card producers tell me that “ We have enough polygons and nobody needs or are in want of more.” (that was six years ago) of course my reply was “Well then shouldn’t you stop building better graphics cards?”

I’ve had heads of departments from games console companies work really hard to tell their company why are we building a core processor that doesn’t give them ten times more power we have promised when we can rip the thing out and just use Unlimited Detail in software. I’ve watched CPU designers move in to graphics, plan to release an amazing system which turns out to be a failure because the idea of swapping 450 years of man research for 12 pages of code from Australia is one that the tech people hope never end up in front of the board of directors. Big companies are like big ships, turning them around is a long slow process, little companies are like little boats and they can turn around and change course easily. Games developers are a cheery bunch and it’s always positive there because they use the 3D system, but try to get the people who make the 3D system to upgrade and you’ll eventually realize the only path forward is to do it yourself.”

-(Special Thanks to Mr. Chris Warris (Quipster99 of Youtube) for providing me with the means to contact Mr. Dell)-

Won’t someone think of the children? Someone actually did, as Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D. and Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D wrote and published a book named Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. In order to research the way games and media violence affect the children, they did something that many others actually forgot to do: they talked with the children themselves and found out some quite interesting facts.

Cheryl Olson found some time in her busy schedule to answer to some of our questions, showing that gamers like us do have someone on the other side of the fence to relate to. Is there even a fence or is such a divide is just a convenient invention of the media and politicians and can be easily crossed?

Q.  Hello Cheryl, and welcome to This is my Joystick. We would like to thank you for your willingness to speak with us, and we’re very thrilled to have you as a guest on our gaming site.

Gamers that have read your book “Grand Theft Childhood” are usually very surprised by what they find. Many expect the usual rant against videogames, and are welcomed by a very balanced analysis that can probably be defined as a bridge between the world of gaming and that of parenting. I guess we’re used to being seen as the children of the Devil, so we are surprised when it doesn’t happen. What prompted you and your co-writer, Dr. Lawrence Kutner, to write a book on such a controversial subject?

“The book was based on a two-year, $1.5 million U.S. government-funded research project. Unlike most academic research, ours was meant from the start to help parents, teachers, doctors and policymakers understand what’s normal, what’s unusual, and what patterns of children’s electronic game play are associated with a higher risk for behavior or school problems.

Our findings suggest that games can be both healthy and problematic, but in ways that are hard to get across in a few sound bites on the news. We published academic papers on our findings, but those are read by a limited audience of researchers, not by everyday people.

We felt it was important to give intelligent people who haven’t been involved in research a chance to see how media violence studies are planned, carried out and interpreted so they could judge for themselves what makes sense. We also wanted parents to know what young teens told us about the role of video games in their lives, and what other parents said they were concerned (or happy) about. A book seemed like the best way to achieve these goals.

I must say that when I got involved in video game research, I didn’t realize how extremely controversial it was. Once I got into my studies, I felt morally obligated to correct myths and misinformation that make parents worry needlessly, and may cause them to overlook more subtle but real problems.”

Q. Now a question that will sound pretty banal, but I can definitely tell you that many are curious about that. Do you play any video games? If you do, what are the games and genres you actually enjoy? If you don’t, do you have any gaming friend or relative?

“My 20-year-old son is a PC gamer, and I’ve watched him play for many years, starting with children’s games such as Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, and on to Age of Empires and Civilization, Starcraft, Star Wars games, and later GTA: Vice City, Max Payne and Hitman.

I felt that it was important for me as a researcher to have some understanding of games, and especially to be familiar with the content and context of the more popular violent games. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know that Max Payne is at core an anti-drug game, and that the Hitman games have an interesting backstory and focus on killing bad guys who have hurt other people.

I tend to like games with stories or humor. When we got a Wii, I bought Rayman’s Raving Rabbids just because I liked the rabbids so much.  In recent months, I bought Bioshock and Portal to play on my son’s PC. Most often, I “collaborate” with my son,  because then I can enjoy the story and graphics without being slowed down by my lack of skill. I have started playing a few games on my iPhone; we’ll see how that goes.”

Q. When you researched for your book, you came to some results that many would find definitely surprising. To what extent did you expect the results that you elaborated in your book? Is there something that you found, yourself, more surprising or puzzling than the rest?

“A number of our findings went against common wisdom. One surprise was how many young teenage girls played Mature-rated video games (meant for ages 17 and older). About a fifth of girls rarely or never played video games. But another fifth had played a Grand Theft Auto game “a lot in the past six months.” Based on some of their comments, I suspect that girls play these games differently and for different reasons than boys. For reasons of time and money, our focus group discussions included only boys. I’d love to do more research on girls and games to better understand this.

I was encouraged to see how sophisticated 13-year-old boys were in their understanding of violent games. They could enjoy playing bad guys without wanting to be them. As one boy told me, “When I play violent games like (Grand Theft Auto) Vice City, I know it’s a video game and I have fun playing it. I know not to do stuff like that, because I know the consequences that will happen to me if I do that stuff.” I was especially struck by how protective these boys were of younger kids; in fact, their concerns about video game influence were almost identical to those of their parents. Their biggest concern was not violence; it was “swears.” Another boy said, “I don’t like my little brother or sisters to watch me play Vice City because they might swear at other people, ‘because of how they do in Vice City. They always give people attitude and take swears at other people. That could make my family look bad, like my mom isn’t raising us regular.’

One somewhat disturbing finding was the correlation we found between playing a lot of Mature-rated games and an increased risk of bullying others. This was especially true among girls. Even so, most children who play M-rated games are not bullies and this was only a correlation; it’s impossible to show cause-and-effect from a one-time survey. The lesson is that kids who most often play games with violent content need to be watched more closely for signs of problems.

More recently, I’ve started to look at what role video games, including violent games, might play in normal child development. Given that the typical young teenage boy plays violent games, and that the youth crime rate has gone down rather than up, it makes sense that these games are meeting needs; such as testing out different identities, healthy competition, building social skills, and dealing with difficult emotions such as anger and fear.”

Q.  In your recent interview on CNN about an extremely controversial game, I personally had the impression that you didn’t tell the anchorman what he was expecting to hear, and he sure seemed quite annoyed by that. What do you think about the way the mainstream media and politicians deal with gaming?

“We have developed a mental “frame” that video games are bad for children, or at best are a waste of time. So every new research report or crime anecdote gets reported within this frame.

These fears are like those raised in the late 19th century by cheap British and American adventure novels, by gangster films in the 1930s, crime comic books in the  1950s, and violent television in the 1970s. To modern eyes, most of these “traps for the young” seem quaint or tame. It’s much easier to blame a simple and obvious target such as violent media than complex factors, such as witnessing real-world violence or growing up in poverty, which are well-known risk factors for youth aggression. It’s also more rewarding for a politician to pass a law against violent media than to tackle complex, long-term social issues.

To be fair, many older adults, including politicians, have never played video games. They may know only what they have heard others say about how terrible video games are, or they may have seen videos or screenshots of the most violent game content and assume all games are like that.

For people who are upset about social change, video games are an easy target to blame. I think that these attacks on video games will lessen over time, as young people who see such games as a normal part of life grow older and attain positions of social influence.

It’s important for gamers and the game industry to try to “reframe” the issue by pointing out that electronic games are a normal part of modern life, that people of all ages play video games, that most video games are innocuous, and that, just as not all books are suitable for children, some video games need to be kept out of children’s hands. The fact that electronic games are called “games” (instead of “simulations” or another serious-sounding label) does not imply that they are all OK for children to play!”

The cover of Grand Theft Childhood

Q. In your book you write extensively about the myths about the effects of gaming on children. What is one such myth that you would define the most negative and maybe detrimental?

“Many adults still don’t realize how complex and creative video games are today. In their minds, games are about shooting, like old arcade games from the 1980s, but with increasingly sophisticated renderings of blood and gore. Therefore, they assume that teens who play video games must be attracted to mindless violence, which may stimulate them to act violently, or at best, waste time better spent on reading and  schoolwork. If you look more closely, even video games not labeled “educational” teach useful life skills such as planning and strategy, recall of information, visual-spatial skills, teamwork, and often even reading. They can also expose kids to new interests; my son’s interest in history, politics and social anthropology was fed by games such as Age of Empires, and even silly games such as Tropico.

A more serious concern is the persistent belief that video games cause real world violence, including school shootings. We reviewed dozens of studies on video game (and television) violence, and there is no good evidence that violent media exposure causes real-world violence or crime. One problem is that most studies don’t actually measure exposure to violent content (they look at how many hours people play) and they don’t clearly define violence or aggression (e.g., they may count kids rough-housing on the playground, with no intent to hurt anyone, as aggressive behavior).

The Secret Service and the FBI have studied school shootings, trying to identify a “profile” of potential shooters and prevent these tragedies. They weren’t able to find a profile. The only thing these shooters had in common was male gender and (often) a history of treated or untreated depression. Some were bullies and some were victims of bullies; some were good students and some not. Many did watch violent films or play violent games, but the average teenage boy today does this, too.

However, people still believe there is a link. They also think that school shootings are much more common, when in fact it’s the news coverage that has increased, not the number of incidents. This is due to the exploding number of cable news and Internet news outlets, constantly looking for new content.”

Q. Violence, not only in gaming, but in all kinds of media, has become more and more graphical and realistic, partly because some technical limitations came to pass, and partly because some taboos have fallen with time. Just to make an example, in old cartoons violence was depicted in a very comical way. Think about the Warner Bros classics. The poor Wile E. Coyote ended up smashed, minced, exploding, falling from deadly heights and generally prey to all kinds of normally lethal and quite bloody occurrences. Despite that, he always walked out without a scratch, or maybe with just a big bump on the head. Nowadays in an average animated production outside of the usual Disney movies such actions would have much more graphical and realistic consequences. The same “evolution” happened with video games. What do you think of the difference between these two kinds of portraying violence? Is the first one really safe for kids? Is the second one really a problem?

“Some researchers have worried about the effects of cartoon violence on kids; in fact, one of the better-known longitudinal studies of TV violence (following kids over time) included Road Runner cartoons on their list of most-violent programs. I think the fact that most parents grew up with these shows, and they and their friends did not act out such violence in real life or refuse to believe in the laws of physics, reassures parents that cartoon violence is not a big concern.

Also, children today seem to enjoy more sophisticated stories in their cartoons, not just the same old steam-rolling and exploding. Many researchers feel it’s important for children to see the consequences of actions, even in cartoons and that children too young to “get” cause and effect should have their TV watching restricted. In my experience, children are pretty clear on fantasy vs reality.

Too much of anything can be a problem, of course, and children left in front of violent cartoons for many hours a week might well be more aggressive, but that might have more to do with the lack of other healthy activities and exercise. Research shows that in a surprising number of homes, the TV is left on almost all the time, and this is linked to a higher risk for problems.

Similar to the situation with TV cartoons, I think as gamers become parents, there will be less concern over cartoon-type game violence. There may be greater concern over realistic violence, especially when it’s linked to moral issues such as war, sexism/racism, or benefiting from crime.

“Realism” is a complex concept; realistic graphics by themselves don’t necessarily make a game feel more real, and some games with simple graphics can feel real due to complex characters and realistic dialogue or situations.”

Q. One of our readers, a mom of two adorable twins, asked us to relay a question that I actually find very interesting: What makes a greater (and possibly detrimental) impression on a developing mind? Graphic depiction of nudity and/or sex or violence?

“There seems to be a European/American split on this issue. American parents tend to be very upset about any nudity in games, but more tolerant of violence (especially if it involves aliens or orcs). I personally would be more concerned about games featuring demeaning treatment of women (as in some Def Jam games, for example) or violence aimed at religious/ethnic/racial minorities, than exposure to minor nudity.

There is actually very little sexual content in commercially available games; game consoles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft do not allow adult-rated games to be made for or played on their systems, so in practical terms parents need to worry more about exposure to violent content. (In non-rated Internet games, sexualized violence would of course be the worst thing for kids. If child-accessible rape games actually existed, I would be very concerned.)

One issue that makes video game research so complicated is the lack of a clear, shared definition of “violence.” Some people think any sentient creature hitting another one with anything (eg, fuzzballs hitting each other with marshmallows) counts as violent. Others are only concerned about violence against realistic-looking human characters. I am most concerned about games that allow mindless killing of everyone in sight, or extreme methods of killing that appear to cause suffering (eg Manhunt, Postal). Fortunately, those games are not very popular among youth. Notice that Grand Theft Auto games include no children or animals (so none can be killed), and maintain a cartoon-world feeling despite realistic-seeming dialogue; this gives players a sense that they can safely take on a gangster identity (like an actor in a play) and that the game violence is comfortably separated from real life.”

Q. Many gamers belonging to the first and second generations are now definitely old enough to enter the parenting adventure. Gaming is for sure not the only hobby that could partly clash with the needs of having a family. Besides reading your book (one thing that every parent with a gaming offspring should probably do), what advice would you give to a dedicated gamer that’s now sitting across the fence between gaming and parenting?

“Thanks for the kind words about the book

First, play games with your kids. Find things that you both can enjoy. Young teens who took our survey (and boys in focus group studies) said that they rarely played with a parent, and most would like to. I think more families are playing together now that systems such as the Wii make games more accessible to casual players. If your child is a bit older, ask him to teach you how to play a level of his favorite game. It’s a healthy thing for parent/child relationships for the child to teach the parent something for a change. It’s also a chance for parents to learn more about their child’s interests and strengths.

When you buy games, look for ones that encourage kids to plan and problem-solve (that could be Zoo Tycoon or a Legend of Zelda game). Choose some that allow for collaborative play, with you and/or with friends.

Notice how games affect your child emotionally. A lot of young teens we studied used violent games to cope with angry feelings. That’s probably healthy in moderation, but might be a problem in excess. Some teens use zombie-type games to master fears, playing over and over until they beat the game completely. If a game seems to upset your child, put it away until he’s older. Keep your games with grown-up themes or scary content someplace inaccessible, and only play them when the kids are in bed.

Don’t worry too much about how much time your child spends with games if she has at least one good friend, does well in school, takes out the trash the 3rd time you ask, etc, but be alert to signs of problems. If your child often misses sleep to play games, loses interest in other activities, or is doing poorly in school, the game play may be a problem or, it may be a symptom of another problem, such as depression, that the child is trying to cope with.”

Q. Nowadays we have multiple rating systems that should prevent minors to play games that aren’t suitable to their ages. Are those rating systems effective? What would you do to increase their effectiveness? Do you think shop owners and clerks should be legally responsible to enforce those rating systems?

“No rating system will please everyone, and if it’s too complicated, it will just be ignored. The US/Canada rating system (ESRB) is clearly better than the systems used for movies, TV and music in terms of the detailed information it provides. Parents seem to value it; among  parents we surveyed, ratings had the most influence on their decision to buy or rent a game for their child.

As one focus-group parent said, “I see the ‘E,’ I know it’s for everyone. When I see the Teen, I know the 10 year old, he can’t have it. Then I see Mature: that’s when I say, ‘Okay, I’m going to read to see exactly what’s going on here.’ Parents need to check more than just the age ratings or content descriptors to see what’s appropriate.

Research on TV violence suggests that violence by itself is not a problem; it’s the context, goals or target of the violence that makes a difference in how violent content may affect kids. One problem with game ratings is that they don’t tell you about those things; they rate violence in terms of blood and guts.  In focus groups, parents said they want to know who is being attacked (zombies or orcs vs. realistic people), if the violence is over the top (shooting vs. decapitating or lighting on fire), and if violent behavior is rewarded or punished.

For example, the SWAT series (a basically pro-social game, where you try to avoid all loss of life) has the same rating and most of the same content descriptors as the Hitman series. Most parents are much more comfortable with an M-rated game that’s set on an alien planet vs a game set on present-day Earth with violence against realistic-looking people. To their credit, the ESRB web site has recently added more detail about game storylines and content to their ratings information.

You need to know your child’s personality, and use your judgment. For example, survival-horror videogames can be too intense and upsetting for children, and for many teens, too. I think it’s best to steer kids away from violent games until they are older, because they don’t have the maturity or life experience to understand, for example, the satirical content in Grand Theft Auto (Some 12-year-olds might be OK playing with a parent or adult relative).

The other advice I give to parents is to keep TVs, game consoles and computers out of children’s bedrooms. It’s amazing how many kids have this stuff in their rooms. My research showed that kids with bedroom computers/consoles played games more hours per week, and played a higher proportion of M-rated games. The main concern is that electronics interfere with sleep, which is critically important for health and academic success. If you can’t keep stuff out of bedrooms, at least use the parental controls, and confiscate the controllers, handheld games, and cell phones at night.

I don’t think shops and clerks should be held legally responsible and fined or jailed for selling games with inappropriate age ratings, but I do think they should be trained about what the ratings mean, and suggest a substitute game if a parent wants to buy an M game for their 9 year old. This  is just good business.”

Q. Speaking about rating systems, different regions have their own. The US have the ESRB, Europe has PEGI, and so forth. Sometimes this kind of approach brings to discrepancies, especially due to some peculiar differences. For instance the ESRB rates Mature (M) games as inappropriate to minors under the age of 17 (and the AO rating, that would entail the need of being 18 is very, very rarely used), on the other hand PEGI has a 16+ and a 18+ rating. What do you think of those  discrepancies and of the possibility of having a single worldwide rating system (at least between regions that share similar cultures like Europe and the US).

“Logically, a shared rating system seems reasonable, but on a practical level, it would be difficult. The ESRB system is purely voluntary, with no force of law behind it. U.S. retailers choose not to sell AO games, and most ask their clerks to check IDs before selling M games to teens. Games cannot be banned, in contrast to European systems.

Also, in the US “adults only” is almost always viewed as involving sexual content rather than “mere” violence. (An exception: Manhunt 2 would have received an AO rating for violence, but some content was removed so it could get an M rating.)”

Grand Theft Childhood has been published in Korea

Q. To my knowledge (I admit I might be wrong), your book is only available in English. Personally I think that such a revolutionary approach to gaming and parenting should be available everywhere. Are there any plans to translate it in other languages and publish it in other countries?

“So far, the book has been translated into Korean (see attached photo), Japanese, and Lithuanian. We’ve had requests from readers for other languages (especially German), but no publishers have come forward to ask for those translation rights. Interested publishers can email me, and I’ll connect them to our literary agency. I would love to see the book more widely available.”

Q.  I know that this seems like I’m trying to have you work in my stead, but given the unusual way you approach the argument, it wouldn’t surprise if there was a question that you would love gaming journalists to ask you, but that never gets asked. Is there one? Can you tell us what question would it be and answer it?

“Gaming journalists ask lots of good questions! It’s mostly TV reporters who ask dumb things. I find myself correcting the same myths over and over. They also want me to be pro-game or anti-game. I’m neither; I’m pro-common-sense.”

Q. This concludes our interview! I would like to thank you for your time and for agreeing to share your views with our readers. Also, I’d like to encourage you to send them a final message, if there’s anything more you’d like to share.

“I’d like to say thank you for the kind comments I so often get from gamers, and encourage you to be skeptical, including about things that I say. When you see research reports in the news, ask yourself questions such as; Who did they study? For how long? How did they define “violent”? How did they measure exposure to violent content? Do these findings apply to the real world?

If you’re interested… I recently produced some videos for parents, with funding from Activision. (They did not tell me what to say; it’s all based on research.) You can see the videos here.”

Thankfully, Dr Mike took time out of his schedule to answer a few questions on the industry.

Q. First of all, thank you for your time. What can we call you? Doc? Mike? Redders?! Would you prefer us to refer to your full title?

“Doctor Mike is fine. Sounds a bit affected, but stems from there being too many Mikes at XLeague, including Mike Bembeneck the inimitable commentator. So, Paul Vale, one of the regular hosts, suggested the doctor bit and it stuck. Calling me Redders, etc is likely to be the last thing you say… Having Ginger hair and the name Reddy led to a strong aversion to nicknames at school.”

Q. So for those out there who are unfamiliar with your work, can you tell us about what you do?

“Well, I get paid to play games basically. It’s not quite as simple as that, of course, and it’s less glamorous than it sounds: a bit like eating burgers in an abertoire. I teach programmers how to make computer games and game players how to program.”

Q. I’d wager that some of our readers would know you best from appearances on the ill-fated gaming channel X-League.TV and their show ‘Games Night’. What’s your take on where the channel fell down?

“Underfunding. The programmes Portland did produce under the XLeague.tv brand; The Match, Games Night, etc, were really good, but Pulse had to repeat them ad nausium because there wasn’t enough content for the channel. That fuelled disillusion in the viewers/players. So, viewing figures didn’t justify ad revenue. A vicious cycle.”

Q. You’ve had a few other TV appearances over the years, is it something you enjoy away from your career as a lecturer?

“Very much, although I do a lot more Radio now. I’d love a parallel career in Gaming TV. If DIY, Home Improvement, Cooking and Antiques can all carve a niche in mainstream Media, so can Gaming. Retro Roadshow anyone? I hear they’re thinking of bringing back GamesMaster. Maybe I could replace Dominick Diamond? Or, God forbid, Patrick Moore!”

Q. Why do you think it is that games related television has failed to hold its own since the days of Gamesmaster?

“Up till now games were seen as being for kids. Even now it’s hard to accept as a legitimate hobby. Too many parents seeing them as sinister. Now every ad break has a game advertised. There’s revenue to support Games TV. Just no-one’s quite got the formula right. I have my own ideas, but the time has definitely come for failure to be a thing of the past. Having said all that, the Internet has rendered TV almost obsolete. Using both is what excited me about XLeague.tv, but maybe they were just too early?”

Q. While researching a recent article, I noticed a thread by you on Alan Titchmarsh’s official forums complaining about his ‘debate’ on the day of the Video Game Bafta’s. What is your take on that whole situation?

“I was absolutely furious, and complained to ITV and the producers of Alan’s programme. I’ve yet to get any response! The patronising tone of the presenter and the other two guests, implying that underage access to games was justification for banning their existence was utterly ludicrous. However, it’s just the same old scaremongering as happened with videos, comics and even the 19th century novel.”

Q. Do you think that as a broadcaster, ITV should have taken a greater responsibility to check the information their ‘talent’ are putting on air?

“Quite simply, yes. The BBC, when I work for them, has a clear remit on balance, even for their externally commissioned programming. ITV’s position was “Oh this wasn’t made by US! We only paid for it…”

Sure, he looks friendly here, just don't call him 'Redders'...

Q. Is there a future for games on TV? Charlie Brookers Gameswipe proved to me that it could work?

“I’m a big fan of Brooker, but I don’t agree that Gameswipe was the way to go. Charlie has admitted itself it was really only a one-off extension of Screenwipe, playing on the tropes of gaming. For example, the programme explains various game types, such as FPS. This is fine for non-gamers, but many felt a bit let down. My take would be to take a more Gadget Show style approach; so maybe I could be the John Bentley or Jason Bradbury of Games TV!”

Q. Our very own Bryony has recently just put together an editorial about how in her MA, in a required piece on the role of Archaeology in popular culture, she wasn’t able to write it solely on video games. Her lecturer didn’t feel that it would be taken seriously next to TV and Movie references. What is your opinion of that?

“One of THE major advantages of Games Degrees is the supportive and sympathetic community that can be found for people wanting to debate and discuss Games as a serious art form. Remember how Film Studies was considered a “Mickey Mouse” degree? I do. Now we have an International Film Schools based in our university.”

Q. Is it just a matter of time before games are respected academically next to Movies and Television, or do you feel that they’ll always be treated with a certain disdain in that respect?

“Just wait a few years and the anti-game generation will be retired or dead! I was really lucky, being born in the 60′s because I “got” computer games before they had even started. I made my own computer from scratch at the age of 12. Not bragging. It’s just what you had to do then! So I was around for Pong and the like at the very beginning. It was clear to me that they were going to be big. Others weren’t so open to a Game Filled Future and did (and still do) see them as mere things for kids. Comics had the same problem, but now we have respectable Graphic Novels.”

Q. Can games be art?

“Some. The same way some Films can be artistic, whilst some are just fun. “Can Art be a Game?” is a more interesting question for me. Some of my ex-students are pushing this boundary. Very exciting times!”

Q. As someone helping to guide  the next generation of games designers, where do you stand on the upcoming motion controller war between the big three? Gimmick or genuine future of the industry?

“Yes.”

Q. Have any of your students gone on to work on any big games or franchises over the years?

“We’ve been very lucky with graduates going to EA, Sega, Blitz, Frontier in the UK, as well as some starting up for themselves or going to Canada. Pretty good for a course started in 2004! I say “lucky” deliberately because the ones who succeed the most bring their determination, their capacity for hard work, with them. We just guide and focus their skills in a creative environment.”

Q. Which would you say you favour? The work of independent developers or the big corporations?

“Indies every time. The smaller budgets and tighter schedules lead to greater creativity. That’s why I’m a big on supporting, and running the UK heats, of the Global Game Jam and mentoring at the X48 game camp each year.

The former, started by the IGDA’s Susan Gold but based on the previous Nordic Game Jam, gives students, lecturers and professionals 46 hours to develop games from scratch. It runs at the end of January, with this year seeing nearly a thousand games submitted; a threefold increase on last year. All the games are available at http://www.globalgamejam.org

X48, sponsored by Microsoft and using XNA exclusively, gives students even less time, with games being improvised in 26 hours. While less polished, and a much smaller event, nearly 100 games are free at http://www.x48gamecamp.com/“

Q. What was your favourite game of 2009, and which games are you particularly looking forward to this year?

“Professor Layton and Pandora’s Box for 2009. For 2010, Shenmue 3? I’m still hopeful. Failing that, The Last Guardian as I’m a big fan of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.”

Q. Is there anything you’d like to plug before we end the interview?

“Two things: 1) Pay for your games. Every time. 2) Make games yourself. Even if only a Card or Board Game. 3) Remember that Maths is important!”

A few of you may recall seeing him on the Glastonbury Festival coverage, Top of the Pops or Celebrity Juice but he is probably best known for being the Blue Team Captain on the TV series “Argumental” or for dressing up as Cheryl Cole and dancing to Fight For This Love for 2010′s “Let’s Dance” for Sport Relief.

Rufus is also a keen gamer and comic fan, so we hunted him down for an interview and luckily for us he obliged.

Q. What performance are you most proud of? Your interpretation of ‘Fight For This Love’ via the medium of dance for Sport Relief or your Gears of War 2 rap for Playr a few years ago?

“HA! I’m just glad someone saw it. I loved doing Playr, and the GoW rap was definitely the highlight of my time on that show, but I’d have to go for the Cole dance. I spent so long rehearsing it and got a chance to really get it right, whereas Playr had a budget of about a pound so I had about nine minutes to record the rap from a standing start. With a bit more rehearsal, I reckon I’d be hanging out with Snoop Dogg by now. Fo’shizz.”

Q. As a viewer I always got the impression that everyone on Playr including yourself were passionate about gaming, was that the case?

“Absolutely. Thing was, the budget was so tight there wasn’t an army of researchers, there were about three dudes who did everything, which meant they’d be gaming for about forty hours a week on top of their day job producing the show. Then I’d swan in and lay down the voiceover in about an hour. Then I’d go to Game and buy half of the titles I’d just been talking about because I wanted to see whether I agreed with the reviews. Most of the time I reckon the show got it right.”

Q. Any funny stories from your time on the show?

“Remember, I just sat in a booth reading the script so there wasn’t too much to go ‘hilariously awry’. That said, the recordings were always a good laugh, but more in a blokey banter-y way, than a “I’ll-never-forget-the-time-James-beheaded-himself-with-the-nunchuck-wire” way.”

Q. Where did your love affair with gaming begin?

“Mario. I know I’m not alone in that, but one Christmas, my Dad bought me and my brother a NES with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Super Mario Bros 2 on it, and that was it. I was in. I only weep that a new generation of gamers will never know the pleasure of cartridge based gaming. Unless they own a DS. Which most of them do. Okay… scratch that last bit.”

I love Super Mario this much

Q. What’s your console of choice?

“Before I had a kid it was 360 all the way, but since he turned up I don’t get those long stretches of time to sit an become immersed in a game, so it tends to be Wii: short bursts, complete a couple of levels of something and then off, before my missus kills herself out of boredom. That said, I still own all three consoles, and my camper van’s getting a PS3 Slim mounted in it so I can sit playing Guitar Hero in the car park at Glastonbury.”

Q. What kind of games do you enjoy most?

“I like a platformer, with Super Mario Galaxy as probably the greatest game I’ve ever played. It had everything, puzzles, secrets, replay value and a physics engine that was intuitive but mind-bending. Man, I love that fucking plumber.”

Q. What is your favourite game soundtrack?

“If I say Mario again, will you hate me? Come on, it’s one of the very few game soundtracks that even non-gamers could sing/whistle, maybe Tetris too. Though I do I remember the fist time I played Tomb Raider, and that sweeping orchestral score elevated the whole experience. Even with the blocky graphics of the PSOne, it felt epic.”

Q. What is your favourite gaming memory?

“For me, the notion social gaming is about having people engaged in a game in the same room, at the same time. I remember standing next to the Puzzle Bobble machine at college waiting for my chance to beat the college champ (I never did), being taught all Blanka’s combos by my best mate Steve (he plays Zangief better than anyone I know), and plenty of drunken nights with various winner stays on challenges on everything from Mario Kart to Boom Blox. The clincher had to be New Years Eve 2004 when five of us couldn’t be arsed to go out, so we set up a massive Dance Dance Revolution tournament in our flat. It was the most sober we’d ever been on New Years Eve; we were all sweating so much the alcohol couldn’t get a foothold on us.

Then there are the personal achievements. Anyone whose defeated an end boss on any game knows that, as the credits start to roll, you want to run out into the street, grab people by the lapels and scream your victory at them. You also know that that isn’t a good plan, if you want to stay out of prison and stuff, so you just sit there, bursting with pride at your own brilliance. When I completed Piccross, I actually considered throwing a party for myself.”

Q. What is your favourite game from last year?

“You know I want to say Super Mario Bros Wii, right? Apart from that I loved Beatles Rock band (I must have watched the intro video alone about 200 times and forced anyone whose come to my house in the last year to do likewise), World of Goo was excellent and Harbour Master for the iPhone is wicked.”

Q. Is there anything that you are excited about in the coming months?

“Okay. Fine. You’re going to make me sound like a know-nothing idiot, aren’t you? Fine... fine… Super Mario Galaxy 2.”

Q. What’s your opinion on the Infinity Ward/Activision split?

“The same as any other corporation that shears into its component parts; I don’t care. The way I figure it, creative types will always find a way of bring us their next great idea and the notion than any business cares about the end product over the bottom line is bullshit. So what does it mean really? That we’ll have to hand over cash to Firm B instead of Firm A. Whoop-de-doo.  The more exciting thing for me is the prospect of a real return to homebrew gaming. Marketplace, Wiiware; all that stuff means that the people who really understand games can mainline them directly to your console is wicked. Get the marketing people out of the way and let the artists make a few quid. For anyone who disagrees, I give you one word. Braid.”

Q. Activision recently announced that extra maps for Modern Warfare 2 will be 1200ms Points (£10.20) is this too much?

“Obviously, but will people still buy them? Of course. Basic economics 101: If people will pay a tenner, don’t sell it for a fiver.”

Q. Where did you find inspiration for your of tattoo of robots fighting monkeys?

“This is a long one, but in a nutshell, I have a theory that there’s a uniquely modern malaise caused by the fact that we are smart apes forced by business and government to organise our lives in a way that benefits computers, and by extension, themselves. That we are monkeys (evolved apes, really) fighting robots.”

Q. I recently saw this pic of Batman, with a lightsabre fighting a shark, maybe it could inspire you to have another tattoo?

TIMJ Tattoo advisors to the stars.

“Hahaha! Aces! Actually, I was thinking my next tattoo might be a lion fighting a shark with a smoking hot lady holding the lion’s tale. It was an attempt to conjure up the most manly image I could think of ”

Q. I hear you dabble with comics too, what’s the most you have ever paid for a comic?

“I paid £30 for an issue 1 of Preacher about ten years ago. If there’s any of your readers that haven’t read Ennis’ masterpiece, you can get the trade paperbacks out at the library now. It’s awesome, and for me, cuts to the quick of religion.”

Q. Who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk?

“Obviously Superman. Superman is the answer to any of these questions. He’s fucking Superman. That’s his whole point. He could toss The Hulk to the furthest reaches of space. That’s a win in my book.”

Q. It has been said that you should never meet your heroes, have you ever met someone you admired only to be disappointed or not actually like them?

“When I was a kid, my Dad recorded the Muppet show every week, and I watched it on a loop. My favourite episode stars Chris Langham, who was forced to step in at short notice after Richard Prior set himself on fire with his crack pipe. It ends with Langham locked in a wardrobe, sawing a hole in it, singing ‘I love you Hawaiian Cowboy’ as about of ton of peanuts fill the wardrobe. It’s absolutely insane, still one of my favourite pieces of television ever, and very possibly the reason that I grew up wanting to make people laugh. Cut to twenty-odd years later, and at a BBC party, I meet Chris Langham. I got to thank him for a moment that defined my childhood and he was very nice about it.

Literally 10 days later, he was being charged for child sex offences. Whilst he didn’t disappoint in the flesh (although neither did he dazzle, maybe he had other things on his mind), the thrill of having met him, crushed so soon afterward by his exposure for such deep unpleasantness, was really saddening. In that regard, I can genuinely say it’d have been better to have never met him.”

Q. Fellow celebrity gamer Dom Joly’s ‘people’ said he was too busy for an interview, can you lean on him for us?

“Maybe if there weren’t so many bloody questions, he’d be more into it. I’ve been doing this for ages.”

Q. Do you ever secretly find yourself wishing you could shoot at gas tanks?

“No, but I do wish I had a laser in my finger that could effortlessly slice through things.”

Q. If you are going to Glastonbury this year there will be a pint of Brothers Pear cider Festival Strength waiting for you by the Jazz World Stage from me with your name on it, see you there?

“I’ll be the one with the moustache. See you there ”

We have taken far too much of the Hound’s time, so give him a huge thank you for the interview and hope I don’t get a restraining order thrown my way when I am next seen stalking him at Glastonbury. I am sure more than a few of you out there are more than tempted to flick to the DAVE channel now so until the next time it’s goodnight from me.

Q. Hi Danny, thanks for taking time out of your schedule to do this interview, I’m a big fan of your work. How do we find you this rainy winter day?

“I am very well, thank you, and thank you for asking. You have obviously been very well brought up, and I would love to respond in kind and ask you how you are doing on this rainy winter day but I think in the interests of brevity and of starting this interview in the most concise and appropriate way, I will on this occasion, not bother.”

Q. I’m now forever going to refer to you as ‘Danny Wallace: Friend of This Is My Joystick?’. Is that ok with you? You could even get your name changed by deedpoll…

“I could do that. Just as I could have it tattooed onto a cat and marry it. Both are unlikely and one is illegal.”

Q. Me and Neil bumped into you at the Golden Joystick Awards, I’ve never really thought you synonymous with the games industry, are you much of a gamer in your private life?

“Yes sir, I am. I’m an Xboxer, by which I mean I own an Xbox, not that I am a former professional fighter. I also enjoy my PS3 and get a kick out of Wii-ing, which is the only word in the English language, I have discovered, to have more i’s in a row than skiing. Plus, I used to work on games magazines as a teenager, like Sega Power, Total!, SuperPlay, GamesMaster and a ton of others. It’s in my blood. I had a test.”

Q. Was this your first time at the Golden Joystick Awards or have you been before?

“Never been before.”

Q. How did you find the event this year?

“Taxi. HAHAHAHAHA! No, but seriously, they sent a taxi.”

Danny and the TIMJ boys. Arrived by Taxi apparently.

Q. Did you agree with many of the winners? A lot of us in the digital media room agreed with about 20-30% of the eventual winners…

“Is that right? Well, to be honest, what I think we need to remember is that they were *all* winners in my eyes.

Although not in the eyes of the judges, but I agreed with a lot of the choices. Mainly because I was sitting next to the organisers and I didn’t want them to take my dessert away.”

Q. What would you say the highlight of the event was? It was meeting me wasn’t it? It’s ok, you can admit it, and I’m completely modest…

“Meeting your mate.”

Q. With your background in media, have you ever thought about pitching a grown-up games program to any TV execs?

“I’ve not thought about it seriously, but the amount of people who asked me that on the day made me think about it a little harder. There’s a videogame-based idea (not a games show, more an adventure) that I’d like to do this year if I have time. I think a games review/news show really should be done.”

Q. You are making your video game debut as a voice actor in the upcoming Assassins Creed 2, how did that come about?

“I was at the videogame BAFTA’s and a very nice man who reads my stuff approached me and said he had just the role for me; “could have been written for you!” he said. Then I saw the character breakdown and saw it was for a “lonely, intense, nerdy” man, and I realised I’d probably been subtly insulted in retrospect.”

Q. What can you tell us about the character you play?

“He’s a historian. Shaun Hastings is his name. He’s sarcastic. I’m disturbed to see he is already the subject of much homoerotic fan fiction. I can never look at myself in the same way again.”

Q. How did you find being voice talent? Did you get to meet any of the other voice actors? By that I mean would you be able to ask Kristen Bell out for me?

“Great fun. They let me mess about with the lines and gave me lots of freedom, so I had fun with it, though I didn’t get to meet the others. They just played their lines into my headphones and I pretended I was in the room. Well, I say ‘pretend’. They call it ‘acting’.”

Scared of chickens, or just acting skills?

Q. Is voice-acting something you’d like to do again?

“Sure. It was fun, but it’d have to be the right thing.”

Q. Ok, you can’t include Assassins Creed 2 as an answer, what was your game of the year for 2009?

“Modern Warfare 2. I mean, come on. Right? Yeah? Exactly.”

Q. Are you playing anything in particular at the moment?

“Mainly the above right now. Can’t get enough of it. I like the awards you get at the end of online games. Yesterday I got ‘Most Time Spent Crouching’. I’ve added it to my CV.”

Q. Is there anything you’d like to plug?

“Yes! I’ve a new book out in June. It’s called Awkward Situations for Men. It’s all about the day I met you… Not really, but it’s about… well… it’s in the title. Head for dannywallace.com for more…”

Q. Was it scary stepping into the unknown and walking away from established developers and going it alone?

“It’s pretty much the scariest thing you can do. Genuinely, I mean I really loved the games I worked on and the people I worked with, and that’s really hard to leave. I think most people know, trying to make a new game is one of the hardest and probably silliest things you can try to do, so it’s fair to say we were nervous and still are. It’s tempered by a fair measure of excitement too. Depending on the day we’ll wet ourselves for one of those two reasons, excitement or fear.”

Q. The success of digital distribution via areas such as Xbox Live Arcade, Indie Games and iTunes has once again made it possible for anyone to create something unique and bring it to the masses, Do you think this will continue or will it go on to become quite corporate eventually too?

“Well, we’ve come from that retail games industry, and you’re right four people just couldn’t enter that market alone. These new avenues of Digital Distribution have opened up a way where we can make a game start to finish and actually stand a chance of getting it in front of people. I agree that that door is slowing closing though in certain areas. Bigger publishers are starting to get involved and the platform holders are giving less priority to the smaller people. I think it’s successful indies like the Behemoth that are all that’s keeping those doors open, so we should celebrate them more really.”

Q. Time and time again Independent developers prove that gameplay and the fun factor is more important than striving for outstanding and realistic graphics. Is this a conscious decision?

“I think for most indies, you are extremely constrained in what you can afford to do with a small team. Those constraints force us to innovate more and try to find other ways to get people’s interest. We’re all competing to grab people’s attention and keep them entertained. Amazing graphics is one way to do that, personally though when I sit down to play a game, I’m looking at the gameplay.”

Q. What are your core philosophies as developers?

“I guess we just try to have fun with whatever we’re doing. If we’re not enjoying making the game, then people probably won’t enjoy playing it.”

Q. Have you ever ventured onto “Indie Games” on Xbox live? Have you uncovered any hidden gems?

“Absolutely, I’ve got a bunch of friends making game on there too. Have you played that game “The Impossible Game”? That game cost me about £1 and then another £25 for a new pad. Genuinely, the A button is now permanently depressed, and so am I actually having watched videos of people getting much further than me. It’s really good fun though. Friends of our made AtomHex on there and Platypus too, both of those are ace. There’s some gems out there, but they aren’t the easiest to find.”

Q. Do you prefer playing games or creating them?

“That’s an awesome question, I wonder that myself sometimes. The fact is, making a game is hard work, definitely finishing one is, but it’s really deeply rewarding when you do. Seeing someone playing your game is a buzz you can’t get from anything else. If I want to have fun though, there’s nothing like sitting round with some friends and playing something like Left for Dead 2.”

Hello Games bring you Joe Danger!

Q. Did Rob the Tesco Delivery man really bring Hello Games to its knees and if so how?

“Yeah, Rob was this kid from Tescos who delivered our groceries once and became our personal focus tester. He was exactly every stereotype of the mainstream gamer, he loves CoD, FIFA and UFC, and has pretty much played nothing else. Watching him play our game was fascinating though, it came at the perfect time and really helped us get a hold on what parts of the game people would find difficult. It caused some massive arguments, but ultimately was really useful. I guess every little helps…”

Q. Are there any other projects, ideas on the horizon from Hello Games, after the release of Joe Danger?

“We’re 100% focused on Joe Danger at the moment and I can’t even think beyond that at the moment. I just want to see people sitting down and playing our games. When you spend every waking making games you really end up not talking about anything other than games we’re playing, ideas for Joe Danger and what other things we want to make.

We still have a few ideas from when we first sat down and brainstormed in the beginning. They float around and there’s some big, crazy ideas in there that we hope we get the chance to make. If I’m honest, I can’t wait to see where we go from here.”

Q. In these times of quick soundbytes, do the very lazy comparisons of Joe Danger and Trials HD annoy you?

“We love it really, lots of people like Trials, so we’re totally cool with that comparison. Once people actually play Joe Danger, they tend to be reminded of other game’s though, games like Excitebike, Paperboy, Crazy Taxi, Sonic. Those are certainly the kind of titles we’re inspired by, old school classics.

I love Trials by the way, it’s one of those games that makes you love and hate in equal measure. When I’m playing, I can’t have anyone else in the room with me. When I watch people play Joe Danger they are normally grinning, and they like to play pass the pad. That’s what we’re all about, which is equally good, but a totally different experience. The games I grew up with always had that effect.”

Q. Where did the name Hello Games come from?

“You know when you are a kid, and someone dares you to ring someone’s doorbell and run away, everyone seems to have a different name for that, like some people call it “Knock Down Dollie”. Where I’m from in Ireland, we used to call that “Hello Games”, I guess that’s always sat in the back of my mind. Maybe that’s our secret plan, we’re knocking on the door of the games industry, then we’re going to run away before it opens…”

Q. Growing up what games inspired you?

“Lots… everything. I played an awful lot of games as a kid. It’s funny though, designing Joe Danger, we talked about toys and cartoons as much as we did other games. I guess it’s kind of hard to talk about games though without using comparisons, and referencing other games. We come from that generation, we grew up with the SNES and Sega Genesis, so those games are our cornerstones. I loved the fact that those early consoles had more quirky, slightly surreal and imaginative games at the top of the charts too. Games like Toejam and Earl or Earthworm Jim were diverse and charming in a way that you don’t really get now.

Unirally, Double Dragon, Mario Kart on the SNES, Road Rash, these are all games we talk about a lot.”

Most Xbox 360 owners will be used to seeing him alongside SuperKaylo on SentUAMessage on the Xbox dashboard with their amusing videos, so are delighted to grab him for an interview with This Is My Joystick.

Q. Where did your love affair with gaming begin?

“France. I can’t be more specific than that because I was 2 at the time. My mum plonked me in front of a Pac-Man machine, then bought me a Spectrum 48K soon after (possibly because she was fooled by claims that it was an educational device). The rest, as they say, is boring.”

Q. Where did your Gamertag come from?

“I was in Tokyo back in 2005 when I came upon great sculpture in the middle of Roppongi Hills by Takashi Murakami called Tongari-kun, or Mr. Pointy and the Four Guards. I took it on board as a pseudonym while I was working at Sony and it’s stuck with me ever since. I don’t remember when I bastardised it to include the ‘head’ bit, but at least I can’t be accused of copyright infringement anymore.

There’s a nice video of it being constructed in Brooklyn here.”

Q. How did your path lead to roles on Xbox Live?

“I’d worked at SCEE for six years (four years as a Content Producer on PlayStation.com, two years as a games producer in their International Software Development team), and a call came out of the blue from a recruitment agency who said a friend (who worked at Cancer Research, not MS before you start calling shenanigaans) had recommended me for the position. I thought I’d give it a go and, eight (!) interviews later, I was deemed worthy of joining the fold.”

Q. Do you only game on the 360, or dabble on other consoles too?

“I definitely dabble. I’m a gamer first, corporate mouthpiece a close second.”

What games excite you in 2010?

“Bayonetta and Darksiders kicked off the year in tremendous style, and with Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 both out this month too it’s shaping up to be on the best starts to a gaming year in recent memory. I’ve also got high hopes for Super Street Fighter IV, Halo: Reach, Alan Wake, Crackdown 2, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Project Needlemouse, Split/Second, Fallout: New Vegas, BlazBlue, Splinter Cell Conviction, Dead Rising 2 and, of course, whatever games are announced for Project Natal.

On the other formats, Heavy Rain, God of War III, Trico, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M, the next Zelda, Sin & Punishment 2 and Epic Mickey.

I’m meant to be getting married at some point, but I may have to postpone until 2011.”

"and it's goodnight from him"

Q. Have you ever played an awful game for achievements only? If yes, what were the easiest achievement boosters?

“In the early days, when I was trying to get my score up to a semi-decent level before I faced the community I did the unholy triumvirate of Avatar, Lost and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

Q. If we hit start on your Last FM Radio, what would your favourite tunes be?

“Tragically, I started searching for orchestral arrangements of Koji Kondo tunes and then just followed a rabbit hole into other game BGM. ‘Proper’ music, I’m listening to at the moment includes *checks iPod* The xx, Delphic, The Temper Trap, The Horrors, Empire of the Sun, Santo/igold, Manchester Orchestra, Pulled Apart By Horses, Twin Atlantic and my old favourites Biffy Clyro.”

Q. Your favourite thing about Twitter is…

“...that it has rapidly become the number one source for breaking news, no matter how hard certain establishments try to block stories from circulating. It’s bringing current affairs back to the people and away from the clutches of Murdoch et al.”

Q. Funniest Facebook status I have seen is…

“...still to be discovered.”

Q. When LIPS is put on, what would your song of choice be?

“Poker Face by Lady Gaga. I’m definitely more of a Rock Band player.”

Q. Does AceyBongos insist on a passion for spandex cock rock when working for Microsoft?

“No, he used to be quite the modest type, but his popularity grew and Jimmy Spandexxx emerged (from a cloud of dry ice, naturally) like some kind of Tyler Durden-esque embodiment of his latent desire to be a testosterone-fuelled, womanising, heavy drinking, poodle-haired cock-rocker clad entirely in overly snug clothing. To be fair, the heavy drinking part wasn’t particularly latent.”

Hello Cleveland, My name is AceyBongos are you ready to rock?

Q. Would you prefer a game from “Games on Demand” or a hard copy of a game?

“If it works, I don’t care if I can manhandle it or not.”

Q. What is your favourite Indie and Arcade game?

“I MA3D A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1 (mainly for the soundtrack) and for Arcade it’s a toss-up/off between Trials HD, Shadow Complex, Battlefield 1943 and Braid.”

Q. Are some developers exploiting DLC?

“They all are, but that’s business for you. Do some of them make bad DLC or deliberately withhold finished content for a quick buck? Of course, but there’s some great stuff out there; Borderlands, GTAIV and Fallout 3 have all enjoyed additional content that clearly wasn’t just left out at the last minute. Paying for additional costumes, ‘lost’ levels and horse armour is where it all gets a bit whiffy.”

Q. What would be your ideal film to enjoy on the current selection available on the Xbox?

“I loved the new Star Trek. It made me wish that George Lucas had given the Star Wars prequels to a younger, more enthusiastic director with an understanding of what made the first three so entertaining. Now Star Trek is better than Star Wars, and that makes me a little bit sad.”

Back to you Trevor in the studio.

Q. In Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, should I prestige or not?

“Do you still lose your perks like you did in CoD4? Unless you actually get something decent for doing so as compensation, it’s just pointless willy waving.”

Q. What do you enjoy most about your job?

“The tubes above our desk that deposit gold whenever Bill thinks we’ve done a good job. That’s how he spends his retirement, you know. It’s a bit like Sliver, only with the limp eroticism replaced with eccentric altruism.”

Q. Are we going to be seeing more of MSN Tech Jane?

“No, she’ll continue to dress modestly, as is befitting for someone with her high degree of professionalism. (Yes)”

Q. Do you still get confused for Martin Fowler from Eastenders?

“Not since I developed the capacity for growing facial hair and sorted my hair out, no.”

Q. Is it better to travel or arrive?

“Depends on the mode of transport and the destination. If it’s a jet pack to Monster Island, I’d say travel.”

Q. Who would win a fight between Superman v Hulk?

“Supes. He’d just pick Bruce up and toss him into space if he had any sense.”

As I run the risk of starting the age old Marvel vs DC comic debate, I think it’s best to finish the interview there, but a huge thank you to Dan for taking the time to speak with us and we look forward to seeing what else he has in store for us on the Xbox dashboard.