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Interface
Columnhe BBC, one of Britain’s most widely
read news outlets, recently wrote
an article about Dan Houser leaving
Rockstar Games. It’s unusual for
mainstream media to cover games,
but the BBC reckoned the inner workings of our
industry were interesting enough to write about
for their broad userbase.
To most people, this is a good thing. Closer we
come to a cultural acceptance of games as the
equal of film and music and art. Further we
move from the idea of fat kids eating Cheetos
in a basement. Commercially, the more people
who think about games, the better, because
this grows the number of people we can market
to. We should be delighted whenever games
break out of their niche and stand blinking in the
sunlight of the mainstream press.
But many game devs took the BBC to task
for printing an error. The original article, since
updated, noted that “Rockstar is still one of
the few gaming companies that take years
rather than months to develop new games.”
Devs know this is wrong: most indie developers
take more than a year to develop even non-
commercial side projects, while triple-A titles
take at least a few years from conception to
release (here’s looking at you, Elder Scrolls VI).
But it’s not surprising that people who aren’t
game developers don’t know how long it takes
to develop a game. How long do you think it
takes to build a swimming pool? How much does
it cost to build a car? The BBC’s mistake wasn’t
intrinsically silly, but our industry’s response to
it – a general, abrasive ‘LOL’ – will discourage
the BBC from covering games again. It’s a weird
reaction to a nice thing. I think a lot of us are
anxious about games going somewhere we’re
not used to.
A lot of us weren’t cool kids. A lot of us
are gay. A lot of us have blue hair or tattoos or
depression or dream of one day buying a yellow
Vespa because that’s what Haruko drives in FLCL.
And a lot of us have had to deal with not being
very well understood by people who just seemThis Is Not My
Beautiful House
T
“I think a
lot of us are
anxious about
games going
somewhere
we’re not
used to”
more in tune with the wider world: the people
who watch Love Island, and the people who go
clubbing, and the people who have jobs that
other people understand.
It’s understandable that many people who’ve
formed their lives around being a little bit
different – in an industry defined by not being
like those guys over there in the suits – aren’t
quite sure what to do at the prospect of being
part of the same cultural conversation as
McDonald’s or fashion or Billie Eilish. But this
isn’t an instance of liking a band before it
was cool. Mainstream culture won’t cannibalise
the niche we know and love better than
anyone else. It’s just going to expand it and
make more people love what we already love.
We shouldn’t put off mainstream media by
snarking at them from Twitter because they
don’t know as much about making games as
we do. We should embrace them, correct their
mistakes, and look forward to additional and
accurate mainstream interest in the strange,
murky world we spend our lives in.
Games’ identity is fluid. The Cheeto-eating
basement kid is a stereotype for a reason. The
PC master-race is still going strong, but they now
sit alongside mums playing Candy Crush and
Twitch streamers talking about mental health
and DICE giving game of the year to a goose.
Games are getting big enough for the world to
take notice. The bigger they are, so are we. Red Dead Redemption II: like so many games it took
years to make, and doesn’t include a secret Vespa (that
we know of).LOTTIE BEVAN
Lottie’s a producer and
co-founder of award-
winning narrative
microstudio Weather
Factory, best known for
Cultist Simulator. She’s
one of the youngest
female founders in
the industry, a current
BAFTA Breakthrough
Brit, and founder of
Coven Club, a women
in games support
network. She produces,
markets, bizzes and
arts, and previously
worked on Fallen
London, Sunless
Sea, Zubmariner,
and Sunless Skies
as producer at
Failbetter Games.