God Save the Queen

Wandering Stars

Not everyone agrees on this point, and Bateman knows it. "I think some hardcore gamers are suspicious of International Hobo's agenda when they hear us talking about making more accessible and forgiving games for the mass market, or designing games to appeal to many different kinds of players," he says. "There's a knee-jerk reaction that says 'you must make the game according to your vision, never for commercial reasons' - this idea that a good game is a good game, and every allowance made is a betrayal of 'gamer culture.' I respect that point of view for someone making a non-commercial project, but for those of us making a living from making videogames I feel it is irresponsible not to understand the wider audience. Your company's livelihood depends upon making games that people want to play.

"We're not saying that all games should be all things for all people - that would be nonsense - but we are saying that it's worth taking the time to understand what players really want, all players, not just those gamer hobbyists who spend the most time and money playing games (and who are over-represented inside developers and publishers). The hobbyists will always find companies willing to make the games they want to play, but the market for videogames already contains a huge diversity of players, many of which are currently not well served by many of the games being made. If our job is to make videogames, our duty is to make the games that people want to play - and that involves more than just making the games that we ourselves want to play."

International Hobo has made plenty of waves over the years, and you can't do that without encountering some skepticism. "We come in peace!" Bateman says with a laugh. "Seriously, as a consultancy, we like to think of ourselves as being on everyone's side, but some of the things I've written may seem to be overly critical of certain companies. I may criticize Electronic Arts, Sony or Microsoft from time to time for some of the things they do, but I have enormous respect for these publishers. I criticize out of my respect for their achievements, in the same way I am more forgiving of student projects because they reflect a talent that is just emerging, and that I believe should be encouraged. A successful company warrants a more critical eye."

So where does the A-Team of videogames go from here? "One thing I'd like to do is set up or ally with some small development studios, where we can experiment with quick, short games," said Bateman. "The upper market games - those that end up on the PS3 and the Xbox 360 - require such a huge volume of resources to develop that it's actually quite difficult to innovate on such a project. Publishers understandably want to play it safe with the big investments, and so you can maybe sneak in a few good ideas, but for the most part it's an uphill battle to innovate on games of that scale. I'm weighing up our options for this sort of future step, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't one or more developers under the ihobo umbrella by 2020."

Wendy Despain heartily endorses Bateman's books on game design and has a new book of her own on the shelves (which she edited and wrote one chapter for) called Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG. Look for it on Amazon.com.