MyUK Launches to Teach Parliamentary Democracy

Tomas has written about a new game expereince amied at young people;

There is an interesting game/experience application by the Parliamentary Education Service and Preloaded called 'MyUK' just gone live.  Its aimed at young people and is about teaching them the core ideas of parliamentary democracy.  I did have a look at a beta version of this while doing a bit of work with the PES, so its great to see it out in the wild.  It has lots of fun little mini-games within a wrapper about running your own political party.  One of the things I like about it, is that there are elements of compromise in the overall experience, something important in the democratic process but that rarely feature in games, which are about winning or losing.

Develop Panel Post on Wellcome's Blog

Tomas has written a follow-up post about the Develop Conference event for Wellcome's blog:

Our panel brought together an eclectic group of people representing different facets of gaming. We had the outgoing Channel 4 Commissioning Editor for Education and founder of Makielab, Alice Taylor, Demis Hassabis, games developer and neuroscientist (and Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow), Phil Stuart of Preloaded and industry veteren Jez Harris.

We looked at how games can talk about the bigger questions, morality and mortality. Preloaded gave us a preview of their new game The End, which looks at the biggest question of all: death. The panel also explored the issues around how the brain deals with the new technologies of games and gaming and what impact it might be having on development (though we reached no clear consensus on this).

Also discussed was how best to design games that are more than just fun – that impart knowledge and question assumptions. The consensus was that this is already being done with many games, but fun must still be the driving force! Games are a good way to talk with an audience about such topics, in part because they are interactive and so give the player an opportunity to explore.

Wellcome Trust Panel a Success!

A big thanks to our panellists and all who took part in the Develop 2001 panel discussion and who helped to make the event a great success.  Here is a description of the event from Tomas's blog:

Then was the session I was part of for the Wellcome Trust.  I’d say it was the most eclectic line-up at Develop this year from a neuroscientist (Demis Hassabis) to a new start-up doing 3D printing (Alice Taylor) to mainstream games development (from Jez Harris).  I think it went well, at least the panel did a great job of talking about serious stuff like fun, death, sex and drugs. Paul Canty from Preloaded showed off their fascinating new game for Channel 4, that looks at death; The End.  Demis also gave us some great insight from a scientific perspective on games development saying that games (and digital media) are rewiring our brains in some ways and that the data that can now be gathered from games and gaming can offer insights into not only how to make better (scarier!) games, but also into how our brains work.  Notes on the Wellcome Trust’s funding for making games is here.

It was also independently reviewed by another blogger (our emphasis):

Next stop was a business seminar (I tried to mix up the tracks I attended) entitled “Money for Good Games”. With the support of the Wellcome Trust (a charitable organisation who offer to fund the development of games with a biomedical theme), an impressive panel chaired by Tom Rawlings comprised of Alice Taylor, Dr Demis Hassabis, Jez Harris and Paul Canty discussed the use of games in the wider world in such fields as education, medicine, mental health and death. However, let’s not forget about the aspect of fun in video games. Indeed, Alice Taylor was keen to emphasise the importance of fun in educational games and beyond, saying: “If you’re bored, you’re not learning”, as well positing that Facebook games such as Farmville were “training wheels for real games”, these often causing players to seek out other, more meaty video game fare in the future. It was also interesting to find out that, according to research, 52% of players think of moral and ethical questions during play… so perhaps people really do care when they’re hurling their villagers to their deaths in Black & White (one of Demis’s past projects). Additionally, some research done for the BBC in 2005 allegedly revealed an almost 50/50 gender split in gaming, the latter statistic arguably quite contrary to the usual assumption of all gamers being male.

Develop Panel for The Wellcome Trust

We're helping to put together an amazing panel of people to talk about games at this year's Develop Conference. Here is a summary of the information:

The Develop Conference is the UK’s main event for games development. This year, the Wellcome Trust is hosting a panel discussion that brings together fascinating voices from in and around industry. There’s also the chance for games developers to find out more about how to get funding for projects around a biomedical theme.

The event looks at the impact of games beyond the console and runs on Wednesday 20th July (11am-12pm). On the panel we have the outgoing Channel 4 Commissioning Editor for Education and founder of Makielab, Alice Taylor, along with Demis Hassabis, a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow who, before becoming a neuroscientist, made a splash in the games industry with games like the BAFTA-nominated Republic: The Revolution. Joining them are Phil Stuart of the multi-award winning Preloaded, and Jez Harris, an industry veteran whose works include Buzz! and the Harry Potter games. The panel is chaired by myself, Tomas Rawlings, games consultant for the Wellcome Trust.

After the discussion, a number of Wellcome Trust staff will be around to chat with developers about how they may be able to access Trust funding to create games. We have a number of schemes for funding games with a biomedical theme (please note the Trust’s engagement around biomedical sciences is predominately aimed at UK audiences).

Our Broadcast Development Awards offer up to £10,000 to a developer with an unsigned project idea, allowing them to develop it up to a state at which a publisher may fund the full title.

We also offer funds to create complete games too: the People Awards scheme offers up to £30,000 to small development studios to explore an aspect of biomedicine in an interactive or game form – particularly if the studio partners with a scientist or science institution.

Another option is the Society Awards, which offer grants of more than £30,000 for developers, again especially if partnered with a scientist or science institution. This is intended for those who wish to explore and engage society at large with an issue in biomedical science.

Funded projects for any of these schemes can take the form of virtual engagement such as via social games, websites, mobiles technology, casual games, ARGs (Augmented Reality Games) and the like, or be based around a physical location.

So for any developers at the conference, do come along to the session on Wednesday 20th July to find out more and talk to us. We may be able to work together to create great games that can inform, educate and engage.

Sony and Its Gaming Strategy

Tomas has been blogging about Sony and its gaming strategy...

Sony is a giant in the gaming world – that is of no doubt. The original Playstation changed gaming forever. It was technically a great machine and pushed games and gaming into new areas.  After an initial shaky start, the PS2 carried that momentum forward, selling 150 million units worldwide to date. As well as the commercial success, some of the titles that came out on the PS2 were critically renowned too; Ico, Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus, GTA: Vice City to name but a few.

We’re now in a new era from then. The rules of the game have not only changed, but are changing still. This is no longer a simple console war-zone between Sony and rivals like Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony is having a bad news month with the hacking of the Playstation Network, but are there deeper troubles – deeper than just the Playstation division?

Auroch's Tomas Rawlings' New Game Studio Launches

I'm really excited to say that our new game studio - 

Red Wasp Design

 - has officially launched today and we've announced our first project, which is in development as I write this.  Red Wasp Design is a new Bristol-based micro studio and our first title is a game based on the cult Call of Cthulhu RPG (role-playing game).  Why not follow us on 

Twitter

 or 

Facebook

?  This is from the initial press release.

An agreement between Call of Cthulhu impresarios, Chaosium and new development studio Red Wasp Design will see the award winning role-playing game (RPG), Call of Cthulhu, coming to a mobile platform near you. The first title, 'Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land' is set in the midst of World War One and pits a team of investigators and soldiers against an ancient enemy, older than humanity itself. This eldritch enemy is using the carnage of the great war to build an undead army amidst the battlefields of Europe. The game will be a 3D turn-based strategy/role playing game and will initially launch on iPhone and Android with more platforms to follow. As the game is still in development, release dates and price points are to be announced after the summer.

Call of Cthulhu was originally the title of a novella by cult horror writer H.P. Lovecraft which has, since it was published in 1928, captured the imagination of generation after generation of fans.

Op-Ed on Gamezebo

Tomas has an opinion editorial on the gamesite Gamezebo:

It is a busy time for new consoles. This spring saw the launch of Nintendo’s new games console, the 3DS. Nintendo has just announced that a successor to the Wii is due soon, too. We’ve also had the news recently of Sony’s PSP follow-up, currently codenamed NGP, or Next Generation Portable. ...

But the world the 3DS was born into is not the world that the DS knew. This is the post-iPhone world, and all the rules of the game have changed. The question is not so much who will win between the 3DS and the NGP, but can either of them stay relevant in a world dominated by the mobile phone? I’m not sure they can.

Filth Fair on Guardian Games Blog

The Filth Fair gets a nice mention on the Guardian's Games Blog:

Dirty games

The Wellcome Foundation has commissioned an iOS and online browser game named Filth Fair to coincide with its Dirt season, which runs until August 31. Players must track down a series of words associated with dirt and disease, using cryptic clues to guess at the missing letters. Think of it as dirty hangman. No wait, don't think of that.

It's quite compelling, especially as, when you guess a word correctly you get a link to a relevant web article so you get to learn lots of interesting things about squalor and hygiene through the ages.

Wellcome Trust Profile of Filth Fair

There is a long blog post written by Tomas on the Wellcome Trust blog:

Making a game about dirt was never going to be the easiest topic. As a concept it is both broad and narrow. A game about throwing mud around, for example, would be fun but would miss the many facets to the subject that the Dirt exhibition had to it. Many ideas looked around the contrast between being clean and dirty and the conflict we often perceive there. We liked these but were looking for something that we also felt had a very broad appeal ­­– we all have a relationship with dirt, after all.

We wanted to create game that everyone could explore at their own level, and looked long and hard to find the right people with the right approach. What emerged from this process is a puzzle/trivia word game developed by Guildford-based developers Toytek. They had already received a degree of acclaim for their work on The Ultimate Alphabet app, so we took the core idea for this game and made it, well, dirtier.

All About the Filth Fair

Filth Fair is a great little word puzzle game that we've been producing for the Wellcome Trust to tie in with their 

Dirt season

.  It's been developed by 

Toytek

.  The game is for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and the Web (as a Flash game).  Here's a screenshot from the game:

The best way to see the game is to play it!

Filth Fair Web Version

There is also a Facebook fan-page here, http://on.fb.me/filthfair. The aim of the game is to find and uncover 331 hidden words from within a huge (and real, not digital) detailed and amazing painting by cult artist Mike Wilks.   Here is a preview trailer for the game:

http://www.toytek.co.uk The Filth Fair was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust as part of their Dirt Season. Running from March to September 2011, the Dirt Season will feature events at special dirty locations including the Eden Project, Glasgow, Glastonbury and other summer festivals as well as a major exhibition 'Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life' at Wellcome Collection.

And some fun blurb written for the game:

Roll Up! Roll Up! The Filth Fair is Coming to Town!

For many months now Wellcome and Toytek have been building an experience that explores the issue of 'Dirt'. Yes, Dirt!  As part of the upcoming season by the Wellcome Trust, a veritable cornucopia of delights especially prepared for your delectation and amusement (and disgust!) is currently under construction.  Once completed in March this year, the Filth Fair game will be unleashed to infect the delicate sensitivities of gentle-folk.  This game takes the form of an “eye Pad”, “eye Phone” or “eye Pod Touch” iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and alsotelegraphonic web game of hidden words and meanings. Central to this gaming experience is a huge painting by Mike Wilks, a noted and famous artist for his 1886 1986 bestselling book ‘The Ultimate Alphabet’.  This game has over 300 hidden words buried in objects.  The player's task is to find and identify all the words. It can be done via cryptic clues, descriptive clues or word-substitution.  Prizes and awards, not to mention acclaim, awaits those who can identify all of the objects within the Filth Fair.  Entrance to the Filth Fair will be free!  Visitors are advised to bring an active curiosity and a strong stomach.

Also of interest to the many visitors is the display of craftsmanship that has gone into the creation of the Filth Fair.  The central painting is not some digital-virtual hocus-pocus – oh no!  The central painting is a real painting, painted by a real painter!  Oh yes, this marvel has been rendered using non-digital paint on a non-virtual canvas in a real London studio.  Be ready to marvel at the “real made digital” before your very eyes!

Those curious to see the many sights and puzzles of the Filth Fair and those wishing to compose strong disapproving letters to their local newspaper about it's imminent arrival are advised to follow the Wellcome “Twitter” musings http://twitter.com/wellcometrust and/or to sign up to the “Face Book” page;http://on.fb.me/filthfair

Previews We had previews in Gamezebo, Pocket Gamer, 9cheats.com, ursegames.com, Touchaholics and Metro:

Filth Fair in Metro

Making of Filth Fair Video We also produced a short film about the creative process going from a physical paintning by Mike Wilks to a digital game. This was featured by Pocket Gamer, Design Week and on the Wellcome Collection site.  Here is the video:

Post-launch

Once the game came out, a few rejections by Apple over content while getting passed became news about the app (and also here too).  We also got reviews at Gamezebo and on 148apps.  We got a great 9/10 review on the blog NiveOverTen. There is also a big article about the game at the Wellcome blog, looking at how the idea came to be:

We wanted to create game that everyone could explore at their own level, and looked long and hard to find the right people with the right approach. What emerged from this process is a puzzle/trivia word game developed by Guildford-based developers Toytek. They had already received a degree of acclaim for their work on The Ultimate Alphabet app, so we took the core idea for this game and made it, well, dirtier.

The final result is an amazing central image, which comes from a real painting by cult artist Mike Wilks. The richness of the image meant that we could place objects in the image that were also in the exhibition, so linking the two experiences. Mike took ideas and objects from the Wellcome Library (including objects that are in the Dirt exhibition) and worked them into a collage of themes and colours. Being able to make these part of a game is especially nice because much of the content we consume nowadays is created and delivered in the digital realm.

Straight after launch the game went to No.1 in the US iTunes Store for Education and Trivia.  In the UK it was 24 and 13 for the same categories.  It got a great write up in Design Week:

It’s a captivating image that you could pore over for hours, even without the competitive element, and a great way to get people engaged with the exhibition’s theme and objects