Thinking Big

The inaugural Northern Exposure conference took place in York last week, organised by Game Horizon and Game Republic, and chaired by Revolution Software's Charles Cecil.

The theme of the event was to look at emerging opportunities for games developers, and identify and take advantage of new avenues to market, such as those offered by Xbox Live Arcade and self-publishing. With a high calibre of UK experts offering insight and real examples, the event may have appeared local but actually covered issues relevant to the global market.

Amongst the highlights were Blast Entertainment's Sean Brennan ripping into the obsession of massive budgets and head-counts for next-gen projects, suggesting that UK developers could take advantage of a market more appreciative of creativity and innovation.

Eidos' Lou Fawcett revealed details of the company's entry into the casual market with the SoGoPlay label, suggesting that developers should reconsider what they think makes a good game, and that small ideas can have a big effect on the player.

IGA's Ed Bartlett discussed integrating in-game advertising into development projects, suggesting that forward-thinking studios can easily take advantage of the opportunities if ads are incorporated into a project from the very beginning. He also highlighted his concern that the in-game ads sector my be cannibalising itself through acquisitions and limiting its own market.

With Team 17's Martyn Brown talking through the process of developing for Xbox Live Arcade, Introversion's Mark Morris discussing self-publishing and Pembridge Partners' Hugh Mason revealing the advantages of outside investment, the event covered a lot of opportunities for developers looking to break away from the traditional videogame model.

Here, we present a quick interview with Charles Cecil, where he discusses the success of the event, how he would like to see it grow next year and opening Northern Exposure up to a wider audience.

It was a success and the feedback has been excellent. Like so many of these things it had two purposes. The first was to explore a theme and the second was the opportunity to network. Certainly within Yorkshire there's a real camaraderie and that's shared with a lot of developers in the North East. So it was only natural that the Game Republic and Game Horizon could come together. In that sense it was enormously successful.

The point of the event was to explore new ways of getting original IP to market. What we were very keen to avoid was a publisher-bashing session. That's one of the reason why Sean Brennan (CEO of Blast Entertainment), who's very outspoken and very bright, was invited along.

The conclusion was very much that while publishing based on third-party licences and expensive original titles will continue to follow the traditional videogame model, there appears to be new models emerging for independent developers that can bring their own IP to the table. Introversion put across its point very well and Team 17, which has one foot in the indie camp and one in the mainstream, also delivered an interesting angle. It was interesting to hear that a games publisher had been offered the rights to publish worms on Xbox Live but had turned them down, for example.

I was surprised initially by that but also delighted. Basically, it's recognition of the fact that there is profound change going on the industry and nobody quite knows where it's all going to lead us. Again, that's fantastic for independents because they have the flexibility to change and adapt much quicker than the larger companies. Obviously a distributor like Pinnacle Software has an enormous interest in how the market grows as we move to new models. Distribution is going to change profoundly and Pinnacle has always been very innovative in their approach to distribution.

There was a certain level of uncertainty from people. We had 160 people in attendance, which was approaching capacity. One of the options, with a name like Northern Exposure, is to expand it into the North West and maybe down into the Midlands. Personally I think it's great to have events across regions. At Game Republic we have a very strong community of Yorkshire developers who meet regularly, so meeting annually with a wider group of developers is very valuable.

As far as the subject matter was concerned I think it was very relevant to cover the issues in the here and now. In a year's time it's very difficult to say what will be the burning issue but hopefully we can move fairly quickly and a couple of months beforehand come up with a theme that is particulary important for developers in the area that's being covered.

It didn't occur to us at the time but I think it might well have done. Certainly, there were fewer developers from the South than I would have expected. At most of our events you do get representatives from companies that feel there's something to gain from attending. It something that we should consider for the future. The great thing about holding the event in York is that it is a gateway for places like Leeds and Sheffield, and the North East. It's a great place to have an event where you can pull in people from around the region. But certainly we don't want to limit it to the North.