Clive Fencott - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games

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Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Game invaders : the theory and understanding of computer games / Clive Fencott ... [et al.].

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-59718-7 (pbk.)

1. Computer games. 2. Computer gamesDesign. 3. Video games 4. Video gamesDesign. I. Fencott, P. C.

GV1469.3.G365 2012

794.8dc23

2012002566

Preface

Game Invaders and Game Invaders Live (GIL) have interesting histories, and it is worth a few words to outline them, as they do to some extent explain why both are as they are.

Degrees in gamesvideo games, as they used to be calledhave been around for about 15 years at the University of Teesside and a few others. When they began there was very little theoretical and/or analytical material with which to establish game courses at an appropriate academic level. In the mid-1990s Clive went in search of suitable theory, found some, found he had to invent some, and began to put this together in his teaching: a final year undergraduate course called Game Futures. The idea was that students thought about the future of games rather than Clive telling them what that future would be. This was just as well, as Clive didnt know the future of games and would have wanted a lot more money to tell anyone who wanted to know if he did. The history of what would become this book and GIL had begun.

Games people wrote about how to develop games, how to design them, and what the industry expected, and gradually the academic community got its act together and suitable theory and analytics began to appear.

In 2003 Clive started writing a book based on what is now much of the book you now have in your hands. And a publisher got interested and all was going well until the publisher, or rather the editor Clive was talking to, stopped talking. The idea of a book was put on hold because at about that time, Teesside University put out a call for staff who were interested in developing their entrepreneurial sides. Clive was fed up being messed around by the publishing world and decided that there might be a business opportunity in selling analysis data on games to game developers and the like. The university and a regional Proof of Concept fund agreed with him, and in 2004 a company called Strange Agency was set up. Jo Clay was its first, and for a while only, employee while Clive continued with the day job and the company, which was also a day job. Mike and Paul got involved as software and database experts respectively and along with Clive, Jo, the university, and the Proof of Concept Fund became shareholders and board members.

The idea was that the analysis data should be automatically generated and made available through a software system that accessed data from the companys web server. The desktop software worked well and data on thousands of games were collected and made available. People in the games industry were quite interested and the team demonstrated at trade shows such as E3 and tried to drum up business. But sales were hard, very hard, to come by and eventually after many trials and tribulations Strange Agency was wound up in 2009.

Rather than let it all go to the wall, Clive, Mike, Jo, and Paul decided to return to the original idea of publishing a book. Mike completely rewrote the software so it ran wholly on the web as a Silverlight application, and the book was rewritten to incorporate all that they had learned about games analysis. GIL meant that students and teachers could undertake their own analyses to support the theory and examples in the book. The current book, web app, and website, a truly multi-media publication, came into being.