There was a planning meeting last week for the new North East of North (NEoN) digital arts festival which takes place in Dundee in November.
During the meeting, Lyall Bruce from SooperDoubleD mentioned an article in the Telegraph in which the reporter visited the town using the ‘Where We Are’ guide book.
Where We Are is a ‘design guide to Scotland’s six cities’, which was put together by the Lighthouse in Glasgow as part of the overall Six Cities project.
I was asked, back in December 2007 to write the introduction to the Dundee section of the book. Since it was going to cover all aspects of design, art, architecture and general creativity, it promised to be quite a challenge to incorporate that into a 1000 word piece.
So in the end it ended up covering the games and comics sectors - two areas I care passionately about used those to illustrate why _I_ think Dundee’s excelled in these sectors. All played for cheap laughs too (to thine own self and so on…)
I missed the launch party in Glasgow for some reason I can’t quite recall. Checking back through Eudora, I suspect it was probably work-related or post Edinburgh Interactive Festival apathy.
I’ve yet to see a copy of the book. I’ve checked the Lighthouse a couple of times, but haven’t managed to track down a copy. Eudora helpfully informs me that I should have received a complimnetary copy, but either it was posted 2nd class, or there’s a well travelled postman with a eye for design out there…
Which brings me to the real point of this piece. Outside the Telegraph piece, I’ve never seen the book mentioned, referred to - of used. While the introduction itself was somewhat contrived, it remains one of the few pieces I’ve ever written - under my own name - and been paid for - which has (apparently) made it into print.
So, this update is far simpler than most. This is the piece introducing the Dundee section of Where We Are:
Sick Cities - Dundee, Design & New Worlds To Order
There is a city where design isn’t just important or cherished – it’s everything. It’s in every building, every bridge, every apartment, road, junction and park. Every tree was placed for maximum effect, every corner because it had to be there. Not only where cars can park – but which cars are parked there. The city’s grown and evolved over the last decade and is now as familiar to many people as their home town. At the last count over 60,000,000 people had come to this carefully designed, exquisitely sculptured city.
Of course, as soon as they arrive, they steal a car, run over a policeman or blow up civic building and their new neighbours.
To the delight of Tayside Police and the city council, it’s not Dundee – but it was born here. It’s a place called Liberty City, one of the key locations in the video game Grand Theft Auto. One of the the most successful games series ever created and a perfect example of Dundee’s quiet and understated contribution to design.
By now, most people know there are some games companies in Dundee – though that tends to be everything they know. Even in gaming circles, the city’s contribution to the world of game design is not shouted from the rooftops. There are no blue plaques dotting offices around the city telling visitors that ‘right here, in 1993, a group of people started work on a game which would change the way the whole world thought about videogames’. Or that ten years later, the same people would be making other cities and bringing the same creativity, passion, enthusiasm and sheer industrial-grade geekiness to new games and reaching an ever widening audience on a rapidly evolving range of technologies.
It’s easy to miss the whole gaming thing though. After all, it’s not widely considered a ‘real’ art form, is it? The hysterical headlines in the tabloids and the sheer bewilderment on Jeremy Paxman’s face when asking a publisher about their latest ‘killer game’ sum up the attitude to interactive entertainment in the UK today. Games are for kids. They’re toys – not even ‘real’ toys. They make the youth of today obese, lazy and violent. They’re contribute to crime figures and have no redeeming social value.
But like most stories where the press are concerned, it doesn’t come close to the truth. Games companies are not out to destroy mankind – any more than DH Lawrence, William Burroughs, Dudley D. Watkins or Abel Ferrara were with their naughty novels, crass comics and video nasties.
Interactive entertainment is one of the most rapidly evolving areas of media in the world. Twenty years ago Pac-Man was state-of-the-art, ten years later, home consoles existed and it was possible to create something like Grand Theft Auto. Now we have titles like World Of Warcraft in which hundreds of thousands of players interact with their fully 3D characters within a persistent online world in which they can talk, act, cooperate and wage epic battles – all from their laptop. It’s an incredible place.
More incredibly, for such a young, vibrant industry, videogames development and publishing has not been the hothouse of creativity you might expect. The major publishers assume all of the risk in creating a title – so they tend to be very cautious. Hence you get sequels, franchises and genres that would make even Hollywood throw up it’s hands in shame. Over the last few years the worldwide market has seen huge amounts of consolidation, acquisitions and closures. Many in the games world confidently predicted the end of the independent games market.
Even Dundee suffered. The three major studios in the city either shut their doors or were sold outright to become part of a larger international company.
At this point, many people simply assumed the games industry in Scotland was finished. Thankfully for me, for gamers worldwide and for the makers of those blue wall plaques I mentioned, they were wrong.
New companies emerged. Programmers, artists and designers who had worked at all of the large corporate studios didn’t leave the country, move into banking or get real jobs. Once again the market had moved on - and this time, it was the developers and designers who were at the forefront.
Games are becoming ubiquitous thanks to new technologies and new consumer devices coming onto the market. Instead of paying £1000 for a PC, a couple of hundred quid for a console and 40 quid per purchase, games can now be played everywhere. From the web browser on your PC at work, to your mobile phone, your iPod and your digital camera, you’re never more than a click or two away from a game.
It’s revolutionised the market. Now one or two man teams can create a game and get it to consumers without the $40,000,000 budget and the blessing of Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft.
The best part of it all, is it’s totally design driven. You don’t have the mega-powerful hardware or the huge team, so instead it’s about the idea, the gameplay and the experience. Everything in fact that designers bring to the table.
But why Dundee? What is in the water, or those biting winds that inspires designers, developers and artists to stay here and create?
Honestly? It’s children. Like Dundee’s previous design tour-de-force – the comics industry – it was something for kids. Therefore not important enough to be lured away to Edinburgh, Glasgow or, <shudder!> London. No one really thought of comics or games as a significant new art form, or something which might prove popular outside the kids market. So the designers got on with it – and made wonderful things.
Dundee continues to host a number of companies which are excelling in this young, rapidly evolving market. In the last four months, three BAFTA awards have come to Dundee thanks to the games companies present in the city. The Dare to be Digital competition is unique in helping to identify and encourage the next generation of talent and game design.
Instead of the lochs and glens, I want bus tours run to the business parks and smaller offices around the city. The guide will point solemnly to a light industrial unit or ordinary looking town house. “Here,” they will say, “is where Lemmings was created. Over there you can see the building in which Grand Theft Auto was written. You can still see the shallow graves resulting from a particularly vicious design meeting.” Shutters will click, flashbulbs pop and the real genius of Dundee’s design revolution will be posted to Flickr accounts and Bebo sites all over the world…
…before the user decides to visit Liberty City and blow the hell out of something. In memoriam you understand.
