Something I miss in the current era of games is having my world reflected. I don't mean the world in a global sense, but my first-hand experience of it. I miss seeing what's familiar to me put into game form.
What I'm talking about, I suppose, is games set in a Britain that I recognise. I'm excited, tentatively, that the next Watch Dogs game will take place in a semi-familiar London, but everything about the trailer released at E3 suggests it'll be a London that's filtered to appeal to as broad an international audience as possible.
In short: one that isn't necessarily tailored to people who actually live there. For all intents and purposes, it looks like it'll be a sweary EPCOT.
I enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Syndicate's interpretation of Industrial Revolution-era London, but it was still removed from my fundamental day-to-day experience. I miss those games I played growing up where I felt I was being spoken to by the designers.
"This is for you, kid!"
I'm talking about little details, such as the gym climbing bars in Skool Daze - we had those at my school! Or the Post Office logo in Everyone's A Wally - it looked like a real Post Office sign! Or the none-more-Beano antics of Jack The Nipper - look: a British high street!
Furtherrmore, what those games had, aside from the minutiae of British life, was a sensibility that was uniquely British. Put the two things together and it felt like a warm embrace. I felt - and this is going to sound ridiculous, but it's true - less alone.
What I'm talking about, I suppose, is games set in a Britain that I recognise. I'm excited, tentatively, that the next Watch Dogs game will take place in a semi-familiar London, but everything about the trailer released at E3 suggests it'll be a London that's filtered to appeal to as broad an international audience as possible.
In short: one that isn't necessarily tailored to people who actually live there. For all intents and purposes, it looks like it'll be a sweary EPCOT.
I enjoyed Assassin's Creed: Syndicate's interpretation of Industrial Revolution-era London, but it was still removed from my fundamental day-to-day experience. I miss those games I played growing up where I felt I was being spoken to by the designers.
"This is for you, kid!"
I'm talking about little details, such as the gym climbing bars in Skool Daze - we had those at my school! Or the Post Office logo in Everyone's A Wally - it looked like a real Post Office sign! Or the none-more-Beano antics of Jack The Nipper - look: a British high street!
Furtherrmore, what those games had, aside from the minutiae of British life, was a sensibility that was uniquely British. Put the two things together and it felt like a warm embrace. I felt - and this is going to sound ridiculous, but it's true - less alone.
ENGLAND FOR THE ENGLISH!
These days, it's a dangerous thing to say you're proud of your country. Get too patriotic, and it risks coming across a bit Yaxley-Lennon.
In part, you can thank Morrissey for that.
Remember when he waved a Union Jack on stage at Madstock in 1992, and wrote a song called Bengali In Platforms in which he implied that Asians didn't belong in Britain, and a song called National Front Disco, where he sang "England for the English", and everyone was all "Is... is Morrissey a racist now?", and his defenders insisted that he wasn't, and Morrissey said that if you called somebody a racist then it was because you'd already lost the argument, and sued the NME for libel when they wondered if he was racist, and then years later it turned out that he probably was a racist, even though he continued to deny it despite saying stuff like "Everyone prefers their own race"?
Morrissey? More like Gaslighty - amirite?!?!!!!!!!
Can you blame people for treading softly around the notion of being proud of being British when you've got so many racists saying racist things, while denying they're racists? Can you blame anyone for being a bit embarrassed to wave a Union Jack?
I mean, these days there doesn't seem a great deal to be proud about anyway. We're staring down the barrel of Brexit, we've got a racist, power-hungry, liar on the cusp of becoming our Prime Minister. The country is fractured geographically and politically.
It's horrible, and I just hope that somewhere down the line we'll spring back the other way, in much the same way as the current climate is a reaction to decades of "They're taking away our bent bananas!" and "They're cancelling Easter!"-type headlines that painted political correctness as some sort of mental illness.
Nonetheless, living in Britain is what I'm familiar with, it's my bedrock, for better or worse, and it's what I connect with. Heck, it's what connects us all, whether we're Remain or Leave, Tory or Labour, black or white, straight or gay. All of us who live here have that shared experience of living here.
And, especially given the size of our games industry, it's a shame we don't see that depicted in games more.
These days, it's a dangerous thing to say you're proud of your country. Get too patriotic, and it risks coming across a bit Yaxley-Lennon.
In part, you can thank Morrissey for that.
Remember when he waved a Union Jack on stage at Madstock in 1992, and wrote a song called Bengali In Platforms in which he implied that Asians didn't belong in Britain, and a song called National Front Disco, where he sang "England for the English", and everyone was all "Is... is Morrissey a racist now?", and his defenders insisted that he wasn't, and Morrissey said that if you called somebody a racist then it was because you'd already lost the argument, and sued the NME for libel when they wondered if he was racist, and then years later it turned out that he probably was a racist, even though he continued to deny it despite saying stuff like "Everyone prefers their own race"?
Morrissey? More like Gaslighty - amirite?!?!!!!!!!
Can you blame people for treading softly around the notion of being proud of being British when you've got so many racists saying racist things, while denying they're racists? Can you blame anyone for being a bit embarrassed to wave a Union Jack?
I mean, these days there doesn't seem a great deal to be proud about anyway. We're staring down the barrel of Brexit, we've got a racist, power-hungry, liar on the cusp of becoming our Prime Minister. The country is fractured geographically and politically.
It's horrible, and I just hope that somewhere down the line we'll spring back the other way, in much the same way as the current climate is a reaction to decades of "They're taking away our bent bananas!" and "They're cancelling Easter!"-type headlines that painted political correctness as some sort of mental illness.
Nonetheless, living in Britain is what I'm familiar with, it's my bedrock, for better or worse, and it's what I connect with. Heck, it's what connects us all, whether we're Remain or Leave, Tory or Labour, black or white, straight or gay. All of us who live here have that shared experience of living here.
And, especially given the size of our games industry, it's a shame we don't see that depicted in games more.
DAZED AND CONFUSED
Don't get me wrong; I enjoy games which punt me into a black hole, or have me slicing the chins off of zombies. I love all that. I love universal themes. I love escapism. But sometimes I also want to feel a connection that's more tangible and focused-in.
I've talked a few times about wanted a modern interpretation of Skool Daze, and whenever I do somebody will chime in and say "Durrr - they did that. It's called Bully". No they didn't, you point-missing buffoon.
Bully doesn't represent what I loved about Skool Daze. I played Bully, and it was fine, but it was set in an American academy that I'm only familiar with from films and TV shows. Yeah, sure, there were elements that we can all relate to a bit, but only in the same way as we can relate to, I dunno, Tomb Raider, because we all know what a woman is.
To be completely honest, Skool Daze is not a great game. At least, not in purely gameplay terms. The controls - as with so many ZX Spectrum games - are laid out in a bizarre way, there are a dozen different keys, it's slow, it's frustrating. And yet, it remains probably my favourite ZX Spectrum game, purely due to the wish-fulfilment of being able to go off-piste in an environment, and within a daily structure, that was so recognisable.
That was why it appealed; I could break the rules, and it was delicious. Its starting point wasn't some fantastical world, where I was playing a gangster or a bloke with a sword on the end of a chain. I was me - just a kid - with a peashooter and a catapult, trying to avoid getting picked on. It was pure wish fulfilment for a bullied, disempowered, 13 year-old.
Bully never resonated with me in the same way, despite having so many of the same elements, because its setting wasn't one I'd ever been a part of. To be honest, I'm not even sure a new Skool Daze would chime - given that it has been 30-odd years since I last went to school, and they have interactive wipe boards now, whatever they are (and I doubt anybody is about to release a parents evening simulator).
Nevertheless, Skool Daze continues to represent something that is missing for me. In amid all the escapism, I just wish there were more games set in my country, and fewer games set in America. I'm looking forward to how closely Watch Dogs Legion achieves its version of London, but given the cringe-inducing voiceovers on the trailer, I'm not hopeful.
I want a game with fewer machine gun-wielding Dick Van Dykes, and more park bench drunks drinking Zywiec from the Polski sklep on the corner. I want to see buses full of rowdy, multiracial, school kids. I want clip board wankers to intercept me while I'm walking down the street, and Iceland home delivery trucks, and constant roadworks, and weird little shit shops that sell knock-off toys from China and poorly-translated hair treatments that contravene trading standards.
I want games that are set here, as it really is; not as it might be, not as it was, and not as imagined by some Canadian whose first-hand experience of Britain extends as far as a Google Images mood board.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoy games which punt me into a black hole, or have me slicing the chins off of zombies. I love all that. I love universal themes. I love escapism. But sometimes I also want to feel a connection that's more tangible and focused-in.
I've talked a few times about wanted a modern interpretation of Skool Daze, and whenever I do somebody will chime in and say "Durrr - they did that. It's called Bully". No they didn't, you point-missing buffoon.
Bully doesn't represent what I loved about Skool Daze. I played Bully, and it was fine, but it was set in an American academy that I'm only familiar with from films and TV shows. Yeah, sure, there were elements that we can all relate to a bit, but only in the same way as we can relate to, I dunno, Tomb Raider, because we all know what a woman is.
To be completely honest, Skool Daze is not a great game. At least, not in purely gameplay terms. The controls - as with so many ZX Spectrum games - are laid out in a bizarre way, there are a dozen different keys, it's slow, it's frustrating. And yet, it remains probably my favourite ZX Spectrum game, purely due to the wish-fulfilment of being able to go off-piste in an environment, and within a daily structure, that was so recognisable.
That was why it appealed; I could break the rules, and it was delicious. Its starting point wasn't some fantastical world, where I was playing a gangster or a bloke with a sword on the end of a chain. I was me - just a kid - with a peashooter and a catapult, trying to avoid getting picked on. It was pure wish fulfilment for a bullied, disempowered, 13 year-old.
Bully never resonated with me in the same way, despite having so many of the same elements, because its setting wasn't one I'd ever been a part of. To be honest, I'm not even sure a new Skool Daze would chime - given that it has been 30-odd years since I last went to school, and they have interactive wipe boards now, whatever they are (and I doubt anybody is about to release a parents evening simulator).
Nevertheless, Skool Daze continues to represent something that is missing for me. In amid all the escapism, I just wish there were more games set in my country, and fewer games set in America. I'm looking forward to how closely Watch Dogs Legion achieves its version of London, but given the cringe-inducing voiceovers on the trailer, I'm not hopeful.
I want a game with fewer machine gun-wielding Dick Van Dykes, and more park bench drunks drinking Zywiec from the Polski sklep on the corner. I want to see buses full of rowdy, multiracial, school kids. I want clip board wankers to intercept me while I'm walking down the street, and Iceland home delivery trucks, and constant roadworks, and weird little shit shops that sell knock-off toys from China and poorly-translated hair treatments that contravene trading standards.
I want games that are set here, as it really is; not as it might be, not as it was, and not as imagined by some Canadian whose first-hand experience of Britain extends as far as a Google Images mood board.
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