Thinking about it, I wouldn't use the word obsession to describe my feelings towards video games. Passion feels like a much better word but have seen the following description: 'an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind' obsession probably applies to me. It's not all consuming but my thoughts on gaming spread much further than coming home and sticking Halo on for the evening.
For the most part, Video games are vast, requiring artists, musicians, programmers, testers and a hundred other roles to get made across thousands of hours. With this amount there are always stories to tell about the people and the creative process. Just look at the music. Game soundtracks are hugely popular and are posted on Spotify, available as a download from Steam or you can even get them on vinyl now from companies like Super Rare Games.
I am gutted I didn't pick up the Generation 1 Pokémon vinyl that came out a few years ago, nothing like that Gameboy soundtrack to make me feel like I'm 12 again! (My favourite is the Hotline Miami Original SoundTrack, or OST, which I currently have on now as I write with it´s rhythmic and powerful dance numbers). Music always adds to a game and classic tracks can take you back without even picking up a controller. My current obsession is the sea shanty theme tune from Link´s Awakening. Stone cold classic!
Occasionally we will get films, documentaries showing the behind the scenes footage during development. Of these my favourite is 'Indie Game: The Movie' which tracked the creation of Braid, Fez and Super Meat Boy, showing the huge stresses and strains upon these independent creators. It really is well worth a watch, especially in hindsight having played each of these brilliant games. Between them they kicked off the great Indie revival of the 2010´s with help from Steam and the Xbox 360. The Indie scene today owes a lot to these pioneers.
In the documentary itself it really lays bare the problems they have to solve and the doubts they suffered. It is incredible to see the angst and pain they endured to get their dreams made and out to players. It really gives a human element to the titles that is often lacking, particularly from huge AAA games.
I always like to push people a bit further in these games. Whether it’s thinking about Box Art design and whether far too many look similar these days? (Spoilers, yes they do).
So let's look beyond the games and see what else there is out there?
Orchestra
I have always been a huge music fan, there is nothing quite like seeing a band live. It’s exhilarating and there is no way of replicating it. In my opinion there is no better score than the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, a game I love so much. The depth of the sounds and the incredible chanting from the title track just has me every time. It's the same as Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack, utter brilliance.
So when I heard that the Hammersmith Apollo was hosting 'Bethesda Game Studios in Concert' I leapt at the chance to attend! With a mix of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim alongside Fallout 3, 4 and 76 songs it was a fantastic evening. They had a full orchestra alongside a choir (as shown above) which sounded amazing and was visually great to see. I don't imagine many of us think about the effort and sheer numbers of musicians that go into creating and recording a soundtrack. I may actually be a little biased on this one as I used to play in various bands and orchestras.
Still, there are actually several awards out there for this category, most recently was Red Dead 2 picking up the Best Score/Music at the Game Awards. Soundtracks are serious business and have come a long way since the early bit eras. The crowd was full of hardcore fans, nerdy even by my standards with a bunch dressed up as Vault Tech inhabitants! The only downside were the comperes, a couple of guys from YouTube whose jokes fell flat quite a lot... Still I knew most of the things they played which is probably what made me enjoy it so much. They had a screen showing footage and screen shots of various games to give context which was a nice touch.
A while back Shifty and I attended the Royal Albert Hall for 'PlayStation in Concert'. I absolutely love that venue and the concert was pretty good, the biggest problem for us was the spread of titles and eras meant we didn't know that many of the songs. Sound wise both were equally good, but I would say that the Bethesda one was easily my favourite. Although there was the best cosplay I have ever seen with a lass dressed up as Aloy from Horizon: Zero Dawn at PlayStation in Concert. Anyway, there seem to be more of these coming to the UK, I would highly recommend you going to one. A great experience even though they are few and far between. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for any as it’s well worth the price.
Speaking of Bethesda they have added a tonne of music from Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 4 to a playlist on Spotify. It´s a great start but they have so many other games I am hopeful they will get round to doing more. This kind of music is great for chilling out, revising or writing an article for your video game website! Actually the best album on there is The Greatest Video Game Music album (there is also a follow up) that has a brilliant mix, particularly the Super Mario Bros and Tetris themes as well as tunes from Halo 3, Fallout 3 and other games that don’t end in 3…..
Sadly not all companies want such easy access to their music. YouTube has been a brilliant repository over the years for game music of old. Though very few people now own all these ancient games and consoles it is worth saving even if the audience is even smaller. As I have argued before all of these need saving for future generations whether they want it or not. Annoyingly YouTube tracks have taken a huge hit in the last year with Nintendo clamping down on any unauthorised publishing of any of its music. Sure they are totally within their rights to do this but it seems a huge own goal to take it all down without providing a replacement… Who knows they may realise there is some money to be made here...
If digital doesnt take your fancy then the Vinyl revival has hit games with a fair few hitting the turn table including Pokemon and randomers like Snake Pass and Human Fall Flat. Even for a vinyl buyer this is a bit much even for me! ‘Physical’ music tends to come in collectors editions. For instance my sealed Japanese Switch copy of Stardew Valley has the entire soundtrack on CD which is cool. Though most tend to now produce a special USB with all the tracks which also doubles as a very cool memory stick. Fire Emblems Three Houses collections edition has a pretty cool one though they tend to not have the greatest amount of memory.
To be fair to Nintendo Super Smash Bros Ultimate has a shit load of tracks that can be played without even going into a level. Considering it covers so many different games and characters this is a nice touch though something a little more accessible would be nice!
Museums
Growing up I always loved going to a bunch of museums, in particular the Natural History Museum. To see all the dinosaur bones and explore that wonderful building blew me away as a kid. In recent years I was wondering why there has been nothing similar for games. Well, back in 2015 Gaming finally got its own national museum in Nottingham, which in 2019 moved across to Sheffield. I have not been but heard very good things.
It may sound odd to have a gaming one, for instance films have plenty of props to display but what the hell could you include from a game?! Well the Victoria & Albert museum hosted 'Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt' a look at contemporary titles. This is probably one of the biggest gaming events of its kind in the UK, especially at such a prestigious venue. This is a celebration of games in the mainstream.
The set up was an initial couple of areas featuring about 8 games, each with its own section containing the details of the game, its art and then so many different items. For instance, the Last of Us had a brilliant section full of concept art and notebooks but the best part was a huge cork board showing the entire storyboard. It was really cool to see with all of plot points and how the game designers tied it all together.
Other games that were featured were the paint ball shooter Splattoon from Nintendo with a tonne of merch on display (sadly not for sale) which had baseball caps and some very cool T-Shirts. It also had footage of the original working design of the game, with a giant cuboid splatting its way around a black and white map. Though nowhere near as good looking as the final game, it’s crazy to see how much of its charm was already evident then!
The Soulsesque Bloodborne had even more concept art and some showing the stages of design and amazingly part of the musical score! I absolutely loved this touch, shows real thought went into this exhibition. No Mans Sky was on display with a bunch of sci fi items that inspired the team alongside 3D models and drawings of how the spaceships and animals should look like (as shown above).
Further on it had a huge screen showing 5-minute snippets of some of the biggest games around like Eve Online's recent huge war and the League of Legend final where SKT lost. I know a little about these last two games so was great to see a bit more showcased here.
After this there was an amazing section looking at some of the biggest issues in the gaming industry like the lack of diversity in games and how sex is portrayed. These are very important subject matters I do want to discuss another time and ones I want to come back to at another time. It was impressive how they showcased them here with each problem getting its own stand with items and game footage to showcase it. On a big screen they showed a mini documentary that spoke to many different people in the industry and the broad spectrum of thoughts was impressive.
Finally, there were a few hands-on games but generally they were very disappointing. It was all a random bunch and I was kind of expecting some of the games we had seen to be playable. As that is the whole point of them. Anyway, really enjoyed what I saw, well worth going even if it wasn't what I expected.
Arcades
Weirdly my earliest memories of going to an arcade is in Jakarta, Indonesia. In all the big shopping malls there would be an arcade with rows and rows of 90s games I had never heard of. Small screens packed next to each other with a tiny stool in front, each game only costing 100 rupiah (a couple of pence). This is far from the Arcade scene I had seen on TV, which obviously was in America.
So apart from that and being born in the late 80's, in a small town that had bugger all, proper Arcade machines have all but passed me by. It was extremely fortuitous that a couple of years back that the Subculture Archives on Carnaby Street, Soho hosted a Retro Arcade and I was able to attend. It's actually a very cool venue, spread over two floors regularly hosting events of all sorts.
For this one it was a large collection of retro arcade machines lining the walls and then a bunch of TVs hooked up to all kinds of old consoles stacked up on makeshift tables. You had to pay to attend but all the machines were coinless, so you could have as many attempts as you wanted (so long as you managed to get on after someone stopped playing!). Though this is a far cry from a classic arcade scene like those in Stranger Things, the place was amazing with a brilliant atmosphere. It felt like the real deal.
Obviously it was full of people so hard to get onto the most popular machines but this gave me a chance to try out some new stuff. After playing a bit of Duck Hunt (which was meh) and looking over the various people playing the consoles (Mario Kart was permanently occupied it was best to stick to the arcade machines.
A first attempt at Donkey Kong was cool, something I had always wanted to try. Even though I had only Tropical Freeze game play to go off the original actually stacked up pretty well. You could totally see the appeal, particularly chasing those top scores! On the Donkey Kong note it is well worth checking out 'The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters' which is a documentary looking at the great battle to get the highest score in Donkey Kong.
Going even further back in time was Space Invaders, one of which I had played plenty of imitations but again, never the real thing. If it was coin operated it would have drained my pocket money as it sucked me in so much. I kept just needing to have one more go. That was just the start as it even worse with Ms Pacman! The console versions are fine but now I totally get the appeal of a proper joystick.
Of course the main talking point would be Guaps dominating the victories of Street Fighter 2 over me.... Turns out she played the hell of this in her youth and that muscle memory is hard to leave! Not my usual genre but happy to say that she was the victor. Maybe I need to get her on to home turf and try out some Super Smash Bros Ultimate….. Two player on an arcade machine is bloody brilliant though the temptation to put the other person off is too much. Still all is fair in love and fighting games!
As for the venue it had reasonable sweets and drinks but the merchandise in particular was excellent. There is a brilliant Tanooki Suit Mario picture on my kitchen wall courtesy of this event. If you ever get the chance for something similar I would highly recommend it. It’s long over now but hopefully something similar will come back to London soon. As for the arcade machines I totally see the appeal for having one in your home but it’s not for me. I don't have the space and they are so expensive. The main problem is it’s not my era and I am not tied to any one game. Great fun though!
Books
I have spoken about my love for video game books before (in Lore of the Things), about how they expand the universe and create more lore in games. The best, for me, give more back story to a game such as the novel Rapture set before the first Bioshock. I don't want to retread old ground so instead I want to talk about the kind of books I actually read more often.
Delving into the Non-Fiction section there are a myriad of titles that explain the current gaming landscape, from an Introduction to Indie gaming (as shown above) to tales of how a giant of the football world affected those playing in 'Football Manager stole my life'. I know for many this will not be everyone’s cup of tea but there are a tonne of great stories.
The thing that always shone through the most is the passion these people have for their creations and games in general. It helps put things in perspective when you just automatically shit on a new title (though some do deserve that). Sure, there are just some games that are straight up terrible and at bigger companies this can be due to poor direction or company philosophy. For Indies though it is so much harder, I have mentioned Eric Barone before who spent 5 years making Stardew Valley. The story is beautifully told in 'Blood, Sweat & Pixels' written by Jason Schreier, which shows his struggles in finding a job, creating a game and not really knowing it was going to blow up like it did.
Each chapter looks at a different game with the author speaking to many different people involved. Games such as Destiny, Hollow Knight and The Witcher 3 with some being pretty smooth runnings and others completely falling apart after launch. If you read no other book about games I highly recommend this one.
The best part of these are they give games their human element, the sacrifices made to actually have a product for you to play. It really is incredible. One other title that I wanted to highlight was 'Console Wars' a thorough look at the late 80s console scene and the huge fight between Nintendo and Sega for supremacy. Although I had a Sega Mega Drive, I absolutely loved my GameBoy and being so young then, this 'war' completely passed me by.
Being able to go back and see just how big it was is amazing and in hindsight sets up a lot for when Sony and then eventually Microsoft entered the scene. It was a huge clash and rightly so though most people will barely remember this. There are other history style books, some just concentrating on a franchise and others looking at a particular aspect of the design itself. It's not a huge area so far but it is growing with a fair few slated for next year. It's a great time to be a book loving gamer.
Some of you may have realised from the previous paragraphs that I left out a huge set of events, probably the main way people interact with games outside of playing. Gaming exhibitions such as the UK Gaming Expo, EGX or the biggest E3. Most can be easily streamed online and on YouTube, I take a particular interest in any Nintendo directs.
I have fortunately been to one in London, EGX Rezzed in 2019 and it was an experience! Basically, this is a chance for game developers, the press and the general public to see the latest games and try them out. Often there are huge presentations sometimes announcing brand new titles. There are Q&As, meet and greets and a tonne of merch. A huge part of it is the cosplay, with people going to massive lengths to make an incredible homage to their favourite characters.
If you have not been to one there is nothing quite like it. These events can be a great way to try out new things but it all depends on how busy it is. 2 hours of queueing to play something for just 15 minutes isn't really my idea of a fun afternoon.
The flipside of this is eSports which is another area growing so quickly. Professional teams compete in some of the biggest titles for huge pots of money. Not only are they being streamed around the world, sports channels are slowly picking up these events to show on TV. There is even talk of including nonviolent games at the Olympics. I occasionally watch some of the biggest finals, very intrigued to see how the meta is playing out. I think next year Smash Bros is the one to look out for, hopefully Nintendo will support it enough to make the competitive scene flourish as it has by the likes of Blizzard. So, what are you doing beyond the games?
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