1348: A Part of It

I’ve been on and off the show floor at Eurogamer Expo over the last couple of days, with more to come tomorrow and Sunday.

One thing that struck me today is an immense sense of pride to be part of such a vibrant, enthusiastic and exciting industry. Speaking with developers like FuturLab about Velocity 2X (day one purchase for me) and Witch Beam Games about Assault Android Cactus as well as seeing Sony’s legendary indie guru Shahid Ahmad speak on stage just gave me the overwhelming sensation that the business has never been in a healthier place — particularly from a cultural perspective.

Today, I played a variety of different games, each of which was a markedly different experience. I played a peculiar abstract game in which you guide a cube through a floating tunnel-like structure; a platform game in which you can independently control your shadow and use other shadows as platforms; a third-person parkour platformer inspired by Sonic and Mega Man; a first-person psychological horror adventure with low-poly textureless graphics combined with gorgeous lighting; the newest Final Fantasy; and a game that purports to be a spiritual successor to Flashback while successfully combining both top-down shooting and side-on platforming.

At no point did I feel the sense of fatigue or cynicism people sometimes direct at the industry; the show floor was a vibrant place filled with creativity and experience for all ages and ability levels. Even from the press office where I was doing the majority of my writing, I could look one direction and see Surgeon Simulator 2013, look the other way and see Microsoft’s representatives jumping, whooping, hollering and cheering on stage as they showed off new Kinect games, look another way still and see people staring intently at a multiplayer digital card game.

It’s easy to get lulled into a sense of thinking that “all new things are the same; everyone’s risk-averse”, but it’s not until you see a significant proportion of the industry spread out in front of you like that that you realise that no, that’s not the case at all; the risk-averse triple-A sector is just one of many parts that make up the whole — and, judging from the number of people who attended Shahid Ahmad’s talk on indie games on Sony platforms, one that’s quickly being caught up to by other sectors.

So well done, games biz; you’re all right. Now it’s just a case of successfully countering the cynics with reports of fascinating, intriguing, creative projects that people from all over the world are doing. You can start by taking a peek at my coverage from the Expo over at USgamer.