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 gaming: edinburgh international games festival 04
It's gamestart for EIGF 04. Now in its second year, the Edinburgh International Games Festival nestles alongside the more established events taking place this August in the Scottish capital. “It gives the games industry the opportunity to take its rightful place alongside other mainstream entertainment forms,” according to festival director Lisa Fox.Fox, who'd previously worked in “advertising, music and the entertainment biz generally”, including working on the PlayStation “in the early days”, got involved with the festival when she was “approached by the heads of the two trade bodies, ELSPA and TIGA. I didn’t need to think about it too hard. I mean, it’s a fantastic idea and a real step forward in positioning the industry within the overall cultural mix.” It's true that we're currently in an interesting period in gaming history, when the medium is starting to be taken seriously. “The truth is that video gaming is growing up,” says Fox. “The people playing games are getting older. This means that they are expecting more and more sophistication from their gaming experience and developers are spending more time and effort looking into what makes the average games player tick. “EIGF is about the ‘culture of games’, their creative sophistication, their influences and their impact on all aspects of entertainment,” she says. “You wouldn’t have had a film like The Matrix if not for the influence of comic books and video games. So we’ve specifically tried to position the EIGF as exploring the crossovers between film, TV, literature and music.” How does the festival strike the balance between catering for the public and creating an industry forum? “Actually that’s a tough one and something we are still working on,” replies Fox. “What we’ve tried to do is appeal to everyone. So we have a trade conference and two consumer events, which give the public the chance both to get hands-on with the games and to meet the people who make them. This doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world."  What about the fact that in industry conferences, representatives have a tendency to get on their soap boxes? “Well that’s inevitable at most events, but we’ve stressed from the outset that the festival marks a coming of age for the games industry,” say Fox. “It’s a place to explore the art, form and business of interactive entertainment. For those reasons EIGF is unique and we are quite adamant about asking corporate personas and sales pitches to be left at the door.” The fact that the festival offers an arena where games can be discussed without the focus simply being on the hype of new products is refreshing. The youth and idiosyncratic vision of the festival really seem to be working in its favour. “We were amazed at the huge amount of support at the outset from some of the biggest names in interactive entertainment who helped get us off to a very solid start,” say Fox. “It was great to witness presidents and CEOs of companies chewing the fat with students just about to embark on their industry careers in such an informal and relaxed setting.” This is one of the most remarkable things about the games industry – unlike, say, Hollywood, the gap between producer and punter isn't a vast chasm. So, where does Fox see the games industry going, and what role can the EIGF play in its future? “That’s almost impossible to answer,” she says. “With the plethora of new devices and consoles on the horizon, not to mention the way that technology continues to advance in leaps and bounds, whatever happens in the future, it certainly won’t be dull. EIGF is in an ideal position to take these technological developments and put them into a cultural context. Only a handful of people understand the technology, but everyone can grasp a good story presented in an entertaining medium. At the end of the day, it’s about the content and about the people. And EIGF is the only place where these two can meet.”
Daniel Etherington
Edinburgh International Games Festival 04 is at various venues in Edinburgh, 08-22 August 04.
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