Long time no post, but I really don’t have anywhere else to put this and I want to write it down while it is fresh, so here goes…
Sometimes my brain does things before allowing itself to work out whether it is a good idea, especially when there is a stage involved. It happened once while I was holidaying in Mallorca and left me standing on a stage in a garish shirt naming hits of George Michael and Elton John. It did culminate in free sangria, mind.
It happened again, this time in front of fifty or so prominent members of the games industry. If you don’t know, this week has seen Brighton host the Develop conference. By virtue of the fact I went to ECTS a couple of times, I know what a specular highlight is and perhaps more importantly I asked nicely I was chosen as one of the people to cover the conference for Disposable Media.
Another bit of information needed for these events to make sense is to know that there is a gaming radio show and podcast called One Life Left. It is occasionally daft, regularly funny and very excellent. According to Wikipedia:
“One Life Left is Europe’s first and, currently, only professionally produced dedicated videogames radio show. It is presented by Ste Curran and Robert Howells. It includes news, reviews, features, competitions and a weekly studio guest. One Life Left is broadcast on Resonance FM, a London community radio station at 20:00 every Monday.”
Obviously as that is from Wikipedia, it is wrong as Simon Byron is the co-host with Ste Curren, at least at the moment anyway. The pair hosted a live show at Develop on Wednesday lunchtime which was great and on Thursday they also stepped up to take the edge off the free sandwiches with a little segment entitled “Opinion Jam”. To quote the Develop conference website this time:
“A conference, compressed: Ten industry luminaries put their ludicrous opinions under a stress test. Each makes a three-minute speech with as much composure as they can muster, then tries to defend their point under crossfire questioning from their fellow competitiors and the Opinion Jam Devil’s Advocate. The winner? The speaker who converts the most people to their lunatic fringe. A new, improved, unnecessarily complex scoring system and thrilling audience interaction make the Opinion Jam an essential choice for attendees whose attention spans have been ruined by video games.”
A great idea, although there was a slight problem when they didn’t have ten luminaries on the day. Despite that, things pressed ahead with the use of the three minutes devoted to topics as wide-ranging as begging for work (in a professional, respectable manner) to singing the hits of the-day-before. Perhaps the bravest opinion to be put forward is that games, created by the games industry, should be referred to as “Games”. Charles Cecil on the other hand didn’t dare stir up such heated debate and went with the old classic “You shouldn’t need to put a chair up against your door to avoid paying pimps when you’re in Ukraine” although he did claim to have never been to Ukraine, which in my opinion harmed his overall argument.
It was all going swimmingly until they ran out of luminaries and asked for some more. Thankfully, Ellie Gibson of gamesindustry.biz fame stepped up and ranted about people ranting about there not being enough women in games, claiming women are capable of making up their own minds. She filled her three minutes, people nodded. Very good.
And there was still some time left, but somehow it was me that ended up on stage trying to convince people my opinion was correct, not another industry luminary. I tried to convince them that over preparation was a bad thing, which seemed appropriate. I made a couple of points, but more importantly the audience laughed when I intended them too and as soon as I started to run out of steam Ste ended the time. Excellent. Amazingly a fair few agreed with my opinion and while I didn’t win* I don’t believe I came last, or it was at least close.
Perhaps the best thing to come of it was that at the free bar after the conference had finished was punctuated with people saying “Hey! You’re that guy!” and meaning it in a good way. Even better, they all said it was really quite good and that I was very brave to do it. Despite that, more than one person continued by pointing out the irony** that a lack of preparation was my only major problem. One person also told me it wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t got a northern accent. I’m not sure of the reason behind that, but thankfully I have got a northern accent so it did work. According to his criteria at least.
I also managed to bump into both Ste and Simon in the evening, who also both seemed happy with the whole thing. As well as Ste saying he appreciated someone (anyone!) volunteering he even asked if I minded him ending my time when I started providing them with dead air. I said it was alright, this once.
The whole Opinion Jam will be available in a podcast soon if the recording worked, although there is a chance I’ll be edited out. However, in the politest possible way, it is hardly a show that exudes professionalism from every pore so it’ll probably stay in. In fact if it wasn’t for that slight lack of professionalism in the show I would never have volunteered myself, I’m not that daft. I knew how it worked and I felt what I was about to say would fit in with the rest of the show…but if it all went wrong it would probably still fit in with the show anyway.
In the end I think it probably went quite well, but more importantly it was good fun and I’d do it again in the same situation. Plus it turns out they are both genuinely nice guys, which is always a good result.
No sangria reward this time though, unfortunately.
*Although if you normalise the results so my speech lasted three minutes, not one and a bit…
**This isn’t actually ironic as my “presentation” was about how being over-prepared was a bad thing. Being prepared is a good thing and it would have helped. In retrospect, this was something that should have been mentioned but, y’know, I didn’t prepare.
