The Nintendo Lectures

Nintendo UK’s big cheese, David Yarnton took part in an interesting, if somewhat long-winded panel discussion this week along with some so-called ‘media and entertainment experts’ (isn’t everyone?) – including editor of the scurrilous, [URL=http://www.popbitch.com/]celeb-trashing Popbitch[/URL], Camilla Wright and the producer of the award winning [URL=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm]‘Power of Nightmares’[/URL] the BBC’s Adam Curtis.

The discussion panel was led by sociologist and consumer behavior think tank director, Melanie Howard of [URL=http://www.futurefoundation.net/]The Future Foundation[/URL] and was to look into the role of videogames in contemporary culture – to take a “wider world outside view of what's going on in the world of videogames and entertainment” and how these relate to the issues/realms of quality ‘me’ time, entertainment and popular culture!

To kick off we were treated with a short sociology lecture. Woohoo! Melanie Howard poses the question ‘why is entertainment changing?’ Mobile Phone companies, TV companies and videogames companies alike all apparently want to know the answers to this vague question. Luckily, for Ms Howard, she is the co-founder of The Future Foundation, so she can charge all these companies a load of money to give them some sociology lectures too. What a hoot!

According to Howard we now live in a world in which there is a “much more fluid and flexible definition of all aspects of entertainment”. So far, so woolly. Gaming, she goes on to discuss, “is essentially morphing and changing and spreading out into all sorts of areas of life…and increasingly overlapping with other forms of content from other areas of entertainment and recreation.”

She then gives us her top reasons why she feels entertainment is changing. The first one of these, she feels, is that we are all now involved in ‘a project of self-expression’ in which ‘personal fulfillment’ is the number one wish of what people want from entertainment and recreation. This idea of ‘actively engaging’ ourselves in all sorts of different activities is important and Howard uses the obvious example of how Nintendo’s Brain Training games might well appeal to her baby boomer generation in this respect.

The second issue she raises is the new, more complex and changing ways that we make our social structures - family and friend networks – and, by extension, how we interact with others. Part of what people are doing in this ‘Network Society’ (a term originally coined by [URL=http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/castells/]Manuel Castells[/URL]) is trying to establish a meaningful identity for themselves in their interactions with others. But WHAT ABOUT GAMES?

The third issue she raises is that of globalization and rising disposable income – now apparently double what it was in 1983 – which means according to Howard that we all live in “a world of endless choice and opportunity”. Hmmmm, SPOnG would like to point out that this might be the case in trendy metropolitan areas of the developed world, but it sure don’t seem to be the case for most of the worlds population. But basically we agree with Howard’s ideas about the increased choice of entertainment products and brands on offer in our 24-Hour-Society.

The next key trend driving changes in entertainment is the shift towards what Howard calls an ‘experience economy’ – people are apparently much more likely to want to experience new things and take more risks. This ‘dematerialization’ is part of building up our ‘cultural capital’ – ie in knowing and experiencing as much as we can. At this point SPOnG was getting mildly bored with all this socio-babble. What’s all this got to do with these DS games over there which we can see but can’t touch yet cos you’re banging on about cultural bleedin’ capital??

The next trend Howard identifies is that of a better balance between work and lifestyle. What we do outside of work is becoming more important to who we think we are. Yeah. And? But WHAT ABOUT GAMES?

To finish off our fun lecture, we are then shown a big flashy pie chart with MOVING circles and stuff about blogging, VOIP, convergence, videogames, platforms, Internet, texting, chatrooms and other stuff. Nope, we have no idea why. But apparently we are all now doing two or more things at once – we are the ‘multi-tasking, multi-channel’ generation. Oh right. Which must mean our parents and people that lived back in the pre-modern TWENTIETH CENTURY could only do one thing at any one time. We see now. But WHAT ABOUT GAMES?

Howard finishes off by saying her ‘research’ means that games and entertainment in future will have to be more fluid and flexible. This is just meaningless socio-babble. Games and entertainment will also, according to this, have to be more individualistic, more participative and users will want more control over creation of content. At this point she uses the example of Celebrity Big Brother. No idea why, probably because she just likes it.

Lecture over, her final question to us is this – will all this mean that games will be more fun? Well, if this lecture in tedium and meaningless buzzwords is anything to go by the answer is a resounding NO. We will all soon be giving up playing videogames and taking up yoga and extreme sports instead.

Over to our esteemed panel. The BBC’s Adam Curtis then wades into the fray to talk a little bit about ‘the politics of entertainment’. He moans on a little bit about the lack of ideas in tellyworld, dumbing down, the fact that politics is not just a game in itself. Nothing is authentic and nothing means anything anymore. As Curtis himself puts it: “In a world without meaning, entertainment is everything.”

He then goes on to say that he doesn’t play videogames as you ‘always bump up against the edge’ which apparently is noting like real life where there are ‘no limits’. Games, in his opinion, need to catch up with real life. The man clearly needs therapy. He is deeply depressed about his job and his life. Perhaps the BBC could give him some paid holiday?

Popbitch’s Camilla Wright then throws in her ten penneth. We all, according to Wright, go on and on and on about celebs all the time because we need to have something in common with other people around us. Big Brother in her opinion is somehow like The Sims, as we all apparently try to control the people in there. No we don’t. She is clearly also a bit loo-lah in her brain! Entertainment, she goes on to point out ‘is in a very twisted place right now’. Well of course it is, if you are a middle class gossip columnist paid to dish the dirt and scrape the barrel of celeb gossip!

And now, David Yarnton. David agrees with Adam Curtis that politics is very much a game, commenting, “we don’t actually have a political game yet, but you never know, maybe that’s the next one after Phoenix Wright!” Yes! Now here is the first good idea we’ve heard all day. A game where you play a politician dealing with the day-to-day hell of living in a media-obsessed world. Make it Nintendo! Make it!

David then goes on to make some very valid and very dull points about convergence and the blurring of content between genres – movies, TV, comics, videogames and so on. Its standard stuff, so there’s no need to go into detail here. Back to the depressed BBC Man and the gossip columnist.

At this point SPOnG loses consciousness. We hear a number of buzz words from the panel – including Authenticity, Self-Help, Cultural Significance - but none of them mean anything or seem to relate to anything.

Offers of questions are thrown out to the audience. SPOnG is willing nobody to ask anything, but we have to sit through some tedious questions about ‘The Grey Pound’ and hear some more stuff about what makes brands cool. Apparently, according to Adam Curtis we live in an ‘infantilised society terrified of death as we live in a society where there is no meaning to life’. Oh god. Somebody help this poor man.

What seems to be clear above everything else is that nobody on the stage, other than David Yarnton, neither knows much about or cares much about videogames. On discussing effective marketing, David makes some astute comments on generating effective word-of-mouth marketing whereas the other panelists just bleat on about some stuff they’ve read in meaningless academic research journals.

Well, there we go readers. The Nintendo Lecture on The Future of Entertainment is finally over. Phew! Thank the Lord Mario! SPOnG is not sure what we have learned or indeed what much of it meant, but we finally got to go and play some amazing DS games – Electroplankton, Phoenix Wright, Trauma Center, Brain Training and Animal Crossing.

The point of the afternoon soon becomes crystal clear though. We soon go from being feeling very depressed and confused about living in an infantilised and meaningless, celebrity-obsessed shit culture to soon feeling happy and sedate and at peace, playing through each DS title in turn. This is what Nintendo do. Make us happy. Please no more lectures Nintendo. Just keep making games.