Big Picture Mode
Industry issues given the widescreen treatment
Nathan Brown sees similarities in Japan, Center Parcs and games
One of the things I most appreciate about Japan – yes, I’m still thinking about Japan, sorry – is how well designed it is. In the UK, public transport is a nightmare, but in Japan it runs like clockwork, and this is only achievable because the entire experience has been mapped out in a logical way. There are little lanes painted to either side of where the doors are when the train pulls in, ensuring everyone lines up nicely and leaves plenty of room for people to get off first. On approach to a station a PA announcement tells you which side of the train the platform will be on, while an HD display above the doors shows you which way to turn when you get off depending on which exit you’re after. Whenever someone asks me why I love Japan so much, I say the trains. I’m cool like that.
There are exceptions, certainly: the famous Shibuya scramble crossing is obviously the result of a tanked-up town planner accidentally making approximately 436 roads converge at a single point, realising what he did the next morning, and styling it out by getting drunk again and just plonking down a load of pedestrian crossings. But by and large Japan is a thoughtfully put together place, which has always reinforced my thinking of it as the spiritual home of videogames. Of course these guys make good games. Just look at their country.
There’s very little of that sort of thing in the UK, obviously, but I did get a rare glimpse of it while taking a holiday recently (subscribers, if your issues arrived late this month, this is why). As the unlucky owner of two profoundly irritating children whom I infuriatingly love unconditionally, I went for the first time ever to a Center Parcs – which is essentially a family holiday resort in a forest. It is, in UK terms, a revelation in terms of logical planning.
Our chosen park houses thousands of people, but our little bungalow felt spacious and private. The swimming pool – swimming complex, really – was a revelation, with family changing cubicles with entrance and exit doors and a drop-down shelf that locked both at once. The pool itself is laid out such that the little monsters stumble straight away upon the kiddie pools with their invitingbut-harmless slides, the grown-up thrills hidden at the back of the building behind a high-enough wall and complex walking route. Best of all, wherever there was somewhere for children to play, there was somewhere to get a beer right next door, with views out over the playground. Magic. We had a good week, but since we left it’s just made me even more keenly aware of how badly assembled the rest of the country is. To the extent that it works, it does so in spite of itself. Center Parcs, like Japan, has an appreciably gamelike feel to the way it all fits together.
I read recently on the wonderful fashion blog Die Workwear about how, in the mid1930s, the editors of US menswear magazine Apparel Arts sketched out, across 14 pages, a sort of manifesto for the future of menswear retail. These guys really went to town, designing a multi-floor department store that would serve a sartorially minded gentleman with everything he could possibly need in one place. They drew up floor plans, specified fixtures and fittings, dreamed up a top-floor restaurant that would be converted into an ice-rink in winter. It’s marvellous stuff – except for the rooftop ice-rink, perhaps – and the blog in question used it as a springboard into a lament for the death of holistic retail shopping. Everything’s online these days, and thus everything is specialised.
Yet what jumped out to me about it was that here were a bunch of reporters and critics jumping the fence, using their skills and experience to make better something they believed wasn’t currently up to snuff. There’s evidence enough of this in the game industry, whether it’s a critic who tires of writing about bad stories and becomes a narrative designer, or a game-maker breaking out into a different field – the BioWare boss who quit to make craft beer, for instance, or Keita Takahashi’s sadly unfinished Nottingham playground. Perhaps more of us should give it a go. So much of the world feels broken, and there’s nothing a gameplayer likes better than making order out of chaos. Take the biggest everyday frustration in your life, and think about how a videogame expert might make it better. If you think you’re onto something, get in touch. Though before you get started, I can confirm from bitter experience that there’s nothing that can be done to fix the kids.
Whenever someone asks me why I love Japan so much, I say the trains. I’m cool like that
Nathan Brown is Edge’s editor, and can now be found tutting loudly on a railway-station platform near you