Norwich Gaming Festival: The Local Renaissance

‘It should have been an easy assignment’, I’d thought, as I headed to the Norwich Gaming Festival. After all, how much could you expect from a sleepy rural city famed for Alan Partridge and affectionately referred to as the ‘graveyard of ambitions’? A place where people embraced a slow, pleasant death of coffee shops and cobbled streets. This would only take a couple of hours and I’d be out in time for a Sunday roast at the pub. The Norfolk Indie Game Developers (NIGD), a group dedicated to nurturing and showcasing work by local developers and the organisers of the festival, appear not to have received this memo.

“We pulled in 800 people on our first day”, Robin, one of the organisers tells me. Not bad for a show in its first year. Then she said: “don’t try to organise a ten day event with 4 people and a handful of volunteers”. Good advice, but it doesn’t seem to have prevented them from going ahead and succeeding. By all accounts the festival was a huge success, with the Forum (Norwich’s high tech fusion of library, community space and media hub) already encouraging them to hold it again next year. Amazingly Robin, who is herself in her third year of study at the Norwich University of the Arts game design degree (which is supporting her efforts and recognising the value of such events by allowing her to count it as part of her course), stayed infectiously enthusiastic and encouraging. And, needless to say, I never went for that Sunday roast.

Founded in 2012 by Alistair Aitchison and Sam Jermy as a meet-up group for the varied but unconnected designers in the area, since then the NIGD has quickly become one of the larger groups of its kind in the country with over 200 members, which isn’t that surprising given how Norwich regularly punches above its weight on the cultural stage. For instance it already boasts a vibrant writing scene that managed to make it the UK’s first UNESCO city of Literature in 2012. Robin took up the reigns recently when Sam left to pursue his career. “As a student myself I’ve managed to get a lot of younger members to join the group,” she tells me. “So we’ve got a nice mix of people who are already established game makers and those who are aspiring to be, which creates a nice dynamic of mentorship and fresh ideas.” Indeed, six students on her course have already benefitted directly from this already, starting their own game studio with support and guidance from the group.

One of the aims was to open people’s minds to the different facets of games and how they are made

Impressively the group already have an expo under their belt, which was held last year as part of the Norwich Sound and Vision festival and saw them landing the coup of Manveer Heir as a keynote speaker, an eloquent and well-known developer from Bioware known for speaking on topics of equality. Whilst that event was more industry focused, allowing local creatives to mingle with established talent and share ideas, the festival was established to interface with the public at large. “One of the aims was to open people’s minds to the different facets of games and how they are made,” Robin tells me, “so we went behind the scenes as much as possible, also to promote the local area and show there is an interest in and a demand for game development, and to give members of NIGD a platform to promote their own games and to get involved with the wider gaming culture.”

Despite its cultural cache, Norwich is also a very traditional place and so interaction with the general public and educating them on the breadth and potential of the games industry was an important objective. To this end, Project Spark workshops gave people an insight into basics of game creation, while a public game jam saw the theory put into practice. Central to this bridge-building effort was the choice of the venue. The Forum, Norwich’s incredible social hub, a edifice of glass and metal contains the library, the local BBC and the curve exhibition space, which during the festival contained a retro arcade that proved a great success with young and old alike. Meanwhile in the large atrium, jostling for space with a farming exhibition (of course), there were driving sims and demos supported by Game, as well as space for local developers to show their wares.

Among them were Harry Howarth and Jon King of Midnight Launch Studios showing off their 50s B-movie influenced space game The Only Certainty; a kind of top down rogue-like that sees the player traversing hostile space and scanning for the remnants of humanity. Whilst Jon is based in Essex, Harry lives in the small seaside town of Lowestoft, which seems to have contributed to the game’s sense of isolation. NIGD has been a lifeline to their project: “I really don’t think we’d be anywhere near as capable or connected with the indie community if it wasn’t for NIGD. Simply talking to other members via Twitter has connected us to so many other fantastic people who’ve helped and inspired us, directly or indirectly.” You can read our full interview with Harry here.

The festival has also thrown its net further afield, attracting devs from London, including Tom Hegarty of Olli Olli fame and Imre Jele of Bossa Studios, the creators of Surgeon Simulator, and contact between them and the local developers was no doubt a valuable and inspiring thing for both parties. Another smaller developer drawn in from outside Norwich are Sarah and Woody from the Utopian World of Sandwiches, based in Cambridge, who I caught up with before their talk on the founding principles of their indie start up. Like many others, Woody had recently left his stable job at a larger developer to go it alone and embrace the dream of making his own game, after creating a quirky prototype one weekend. Meanwhile Sarah still works as a user experience designer during the day, and fills that role and that of a producer for her husband in her downtime.

Their game, Chompy Chomp Chomp released on Xbox Live on 2012, is a whimsical, fast paced party game that has garnered comparisons to Bomberman. Four players take control of cute, whacked out looking demons chasing each other around various arenas. Each has a coloured disc at their feet showing the colour of the opponent they have to eat, leaving a puddle of goo and horns in their wake. The colours regularly change, forcing players to keep on their toes, and things are kept hectic with a smattering of power ups. The game feels incredibly fun and to my mind was a brilliant distillation of Assassin’s Creed’s multiplayer, which also sees you hunting a specific target, while others hunt you. A sequel of sorts is in the works that will bump the player count up to nine, making it an even more perfect fit for parties and they are also working on a board game version, where the hectic nature of the game looks to have been cleverly translated into players moving and bluffing based on hidden dice rolls. Chompy Chomp Chomp looks to have served them well, but they insist that for them good design comes first and monetisation and expansion later: “we don’t let the money get in the way of the design process”, says Woody. Similarly the pair have rejected the trend of freemium, outlining how difficult it is to do ethically, and even when it is done well, it can still have a negative impact on the produce of a studio: “perhaps there’s no Half-Life 3 because Valve are so busy making hats?”

Sarah and Woody found their company on the principles of “empathy, humility, and love” which must differ quite drastically from the pillars of most games companies. Except perhaps from Nintendo, whose president Satoru Iwata recently said “the raison d’etre of entertainment is to put smiles on people’s faces,” in response to the company’s failing fortunes; a statement that must have made their shareholders roll their eyes, but caused Sarah to jump for joy. “We thought, oh my god, he should come and work for Utopian World of Sandwiches. He totally gets our philosophy!” Little wonder the studio had such an easy sell to Nintendo when they discussed putting Chomp Chomp Chomp on Wii U. “They just got it. We spent the last fifteen minutes of the meeting talking about the weather”.

While Sarah and Woody hail from Cambridge, Linden Holt-Whittaker was very much local. He gave an inspiring talk on the creative processes that drove his one-man project, Voyage, a spectacularly artful looking game set in a flooded Norwich. The player takes on a lone figure traversing the waters that stretch as far as the eye can see in a little row boat, finding clues about the lives of the people who lived in the city. Rowing through a street of terrace houses towards the brooding spire of Norwich Cathedral, its ethereal outline providing a point of reference like the distant mountain in Journey, it looks like it will be quite an atmospheric experience. Like Gone Home, Linden seeks to tell the story of the lost souls of Norfolk through poignant notes fished from the slate grey waters, but also cites the oblique nature of Dark Souls as a reference point for the story telling.

Like Gone Home Linden seeks to tell the story of the lost souls of Norfolk through poignant notes fished from the slate grey waters, but also cites the oblique nature of Dark Souls as a reference point for the story telling.

Linden’s talk was on how he was inspired to enter the industry by Half-Life, which subverted expectations and demonstrated that videogames could be meaningful, not to mention the more fringe artistic work of Jason Rohrer, whose exploration of the indie scene can be seen in the inspirational documentary Us Versus the Games Industry, which was also screening at the festival. Whereas Gone Home plays with the horror genre to subvert expectations, Voyage seems to draw on that other well-used videogame trope of the post-apocalyptic landscape. Although the emphasis is on the mundane and everyday over the fantastical, giving Voyage a strong magical realist tone.

Linden’s game ties into a strong tradition of the East Anglian countryside inspiring artists. For instance the writer WG Sebald, who was himself a Professor at the University of East Anglia, wrote the novel The Rings of Saturn using a walk in Suffolk as a means of exploring psychological and philosophical notions. With its thought-provoking, otherworldly atmosphere, Voyage promises to be a similarly psycho-geographical response to the landscape, and one that depends on its firm connection to a real place.

Working on all aspects of the game’s design, including its brooding score, Linden is also all about working within his constraints but demonstrates that now you don’t need a penny to start making a game, just some free time, enthusiasm and an internet connection. Voyage was made entirely with free software, including the free version of Unity. Rejecting the open world sandbox for a more focused experience has meant that Linden can focus down on making the little he has perfect, and has spent a long time thoughtfully creating a control scheme that simulates the action of rowing through rhythmic swiping gestures with either a mouse or touchpad. The importance of the feel of this to the game means he is not making the game controller compatible, which demonstrates an unwavering dedication to his core principles. Like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Voyage seems like it falls into that rare category of games where the core mechanics and control scheme really affect the player’s connection to the world, rather than using the same off-the-shelf set up that every other game uses.

Linden’s work continues a pleasing trend for videogames drenched in the atmosphere of a real time and place, like Simogo’s Year Walk, which is imbedded in Scandinavian myth, or Campo Santos’ forthcoming Firewatch, set in the forests of Wyoming. As Linden says, “I want to experience stories about where I live… I want the telephone poles to be like the ones that I see every day.” Although there’s a limit to the amount of realism you can utilise in capturing a place: “it’s as much Norfolk as GTA is the city it’s set in.”

Linden’s work continues a pleasing trend for videogames drenched in the atmosphere of a real time and place

Such real world reference is a good way to make videogames understandable to people unfamiliar with the medium, and Linden is passionate about making games relatable to a wider audience by making them culturally significant. The fact that such ordinary people were in the audience and seemed fascinated by the project is a good sign that he’s moving in the right direction. Organisations like the NIGD and this festival are a good way to nurture this trend and local arts funding entities would do well to take notice.

Taking games in an even more artistic direction, visual artist and Central St. Martins graduate Eliot Johnson gave a fascinating talk on the conceptual and aesthetic underpinnings of A Light in Chorus, which he is co-creating with Matthew Warshaw. Those inspirations are as wide ranging as shipwrecks, the history of Cliff house in San Francisco, and the aesthetic of Sonar and Lidar scanning techniques, but they are all unified by a fascination with the landscape and how human history is layered upon it. As with games like Flower, A Light in Chorus presents the game world as a meditative space, where the player moves through the world, their interactions transforming it and bringing it into being.

Utterly beautiful in its look, the game utilises Eliot’s skills as CG artist, using point clouds made of light to subtly describe the shapes of building and nature, using a different colour palette for each. Eliot says the final product will have seven such environments co-existing, and the player experience is based on the joy of playing with the juxtaposition of them. As such their main design goal is to find a way of rewarding players for being subversively creative. Work in progress videos of the thing in motion already look jaw-dropping and you can’t help but wonder what the experience would be like on an Oculus Rift.

The success of the Norwich Gaming Festival and the NIGD are proof positive that interesting, relevant work is being created outside of the traditional urban centres. Furthermore the opportunities arising from the indie renaissance and accessible means of creating and distributing games has allowed for works like Voyage to explore personal stories set in real locales, over the usual mainstream AAA titles that often use homogenous, fantastical settings in an attempt to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. If you live outside the big cities why not look around to see if there’s a similar organisation in your area? You may be pleasantly surprised by what you find.