Teaching the World to Sing

Paulina Bozek rose to fame as the mind behind SingStar, Sony's at-home karaoke experience which spawned a thousand special editions and, arguably, the entire home music game genre. Since then she has worked at Atari alongside Phil Harrison and, in 2010, started her own studio, Inensu, working on social and casual projects.

On Wednesday, Bozek spoke at Evolve in London, about the history of the music genre, what happened when that bubble burst and what we can expect to take its place. Afterwards, GamesIndustry.biz caught up with her for a chat about all of these things, and more.

Q: What can you tell us about your new, unannounced project - I understand that it's a music platform project. What sort of direction will it take?

Paulina Bozek: Well, we're very much focusing on a fan platform. That's our focus. It's going to be social network first - or at least heavily Facebook connected, definitely - and mobile as a sort of second stage.

We're just really interested in connecting fans with their music idols. Looking at that space, I guess that's broadly all we're saying for the moment. The angle is very much fans and I suppose the audience is very much teens.

Q: And the other project you're working on now is the Closet Swap idea for Channel 4. There seems to be quite a large ethical aspect to that, it's not a purely commercial thing. How important is the social funding aspect of projects like that?

Paulina Bozek: Channel 4's education department spends money on games and online apps and platforms and websites, things like that. I think where that came from, the people who head that department up said that if they were going to reach teens with any kind of educational message, it made sense to make games. Online experiences.

That's how we ended up with that funding. I think that our angle with Closet Swap, the thing that's really important, is that it's about championing personal style over disposable high-street fashion. The ethical angle is really, 'stop buying mountains of cheap clothes'. Swap.

But we're really approaching it very much to engage the average high-street trendy shopper - teenage kids. We're not really preaching to the converted. We're very much making a popular, fun, cool app they'd use with friends. The positive activity of swapping has an underlying ethical message.

There will be ethical messages inside the experience, but we're really trying to make this fit into the average teenager's life, rather than having something that only appeals to those who already see themselves as ethical.

Q: So would you say that the ethical message is secondary?

Paulina Bozek: It's not secondary, it's very much a key focus, but the way we look at it is that it's a positive activity - the whole thing is positive. So rather than getting people involved with the negative side of ethical fashion or whatever, we want to make it positive.

So you can swap clothes with your friends, it's very much a local community app, it's not a public swapping site, it's very local. It's actually really interesting, there's a lot of innovation happening in the fashion space. I think when you bring apps and technology, or even social networks to the idea of fashion, which is a pretty old school industry - it's still reliant on magazines and TV programs and trends and stuff - we sort of see it as this new era of communities and recommending and sharing and curating, so it's really interesting.

It will be kind of gamified too, there'll be a game element.

Q: Mentioning Channel 4, they've funded a lot of these sort of projects over the years, but they've recently had to make some cuts. Also, Alice Taylor (previously Channel 4's educational software commissioner) has left to start her own company. Aside from the extra competition, is that a bad thing?

Paulina Bozek: I don't think it's going to have a bad effect, because she's leaving it at a point where it's very well established, it's had several good years of promoting and delivery really interesting experiences. She's won an award, or the department has won an award - lots of the games have been recognised. I think it's pretty stable, she's really established something that can grow.

Our commissioning editor is Jo Twist, and she has been from the beginning, so it's not a major change for us. All of the projects are underway, so I think she's leaving it in good hands. As far as going off to do her own thing - I think it's a personal choice and I think it's a great thing. I think she's actually done a start up before.

Perhaps being around lots of small companies was inspiring as well, you'd have to ask her. There are other people there who can carry on the work and if she's looking to start something new and build it, that's absolutely great. I totally don't see it as competition at all, it's great to have so many people doing start-up style companies in London because having a community of people working and doing their own thing is really supportive - there's a lot of knowledge exchange and help.

I think it's better to have more going on, it's better to be thriving and have more competition than less.

Q: About a fortnight ago Bobby Kotick took a bit of a sideways swipe at casual and social gaming in a conference, saying that he didn't the space as compatible with quality titles and that there wasn't any room for Activision to make money in it. Is that the sour grapes of a man who's missed the boat?

Paulina Bozek: I saw that quote. I think it's surprising - and denial. [laughs] The evidence is there, the numbers are there, the revenue is there, for social and casual on web and mobile. 200 million people are playing games a month on Facebook - that's a published statistic - so it's not just down to opinions, at this point I think it's proven itself.

Consumers are moving to these networks and moving to mobile. It's fitting into their daily routines and their play patterns and their socialising. So you can't just imagine that it's all on your console, and only when you get home. That's not how things work anymore, I think it's a surprising comment.

Having said that, I have, since seeing that comment, been at an event where I saw Activision people. They were not Bobby Kotick, obviously, but they were actually really quite cutting edge with their opinions and commentary around the space. It seemed to me like they were really noticing, they were aware of bringing their business up to date so that it can embrace multiple platforms. But that's totally anecdotal observations from me. [laughs]

I just find it interesting, because I did hear that comment he made, and was like 'what'? But then I met other Activision people who were really on the ball - I don't know, maybe he's pulling a Steve Jobs, where he says "no we're definitely not working on iPad".

I don't know if you saw in my presentation, but Tapulous brought Guitar Hero to the iPhone and it was totally a limited part of what Guitar Hero is - Guitar Hero is about much more than just tapping along to notes - but people still loved it. People loved the rhythm action fun they could have tapping along to notes on the tube or whatever. I know that Rock Band has released a Rock-Band like Tap-Tap Revenge app on iPhone - I've heard really good things about it.

Q: Mentioning your presentation at Evolve, you seem to have a real passion for the music game genre, which really came across. Is that sentiment which stems from SingStar or does it run deeper than that?

Paulina Bozek: I don't think it was always necessarily going to be music, but when I came into the games industry ten years ago it was always from a pop-cultural view. I was never a super gamer. I played games, I picked them up, but very very casually. I was never, at that point, deeply into games.

I was always into pop culture, looking at the wider picture of what engages people and what is meaningful to them. I knew I wanted to do entertainment. For me the idea of entertainment and technology was really interesting, much more so than normal entertainment like TV. I think it's really interesting because of the way it's constantly reinventing itself because of technology.

As passionate as I am now about music, I was a teenager like that. You know when you're a teenager growing up you create your identity by the bands you like and the music you like. I'd have the bedroom that was plastered in posters and tapes. It's kind of a natural thing.

I can relate to it in a natural way. I've always been really into pop culture and the arts and music, but also books and things like that. I guess I just really like creative and cultural products, and probably music more than anything else.

Q: Actually, that idea of defining yourself by your musical tastes is something I wanted to ask about. How important is that power of pre-branding when you're selling music games? The idea that real fans will automatically love anything to do with their favourite band?

Paulina Bozek: Well I think for Singstar there were practical issues. So, we want you to sing along to these songs, it would help if you've heard the songs before. [laughs] We learned that. I think SingStar operated on multiple levels. Because it looked like an MTV music program, it was instantly relevant to people - they were familiar with music videos, perhaps more than they were with videogames at that point, that audience.

Having songs that they recognised and loved, that was kind of appealing for anybody. I guess also we had two audiences. We had a young audience who found it very aspirational to sing along with Beyonce or Rhianna, and the for the older generation it was fun and nostalgic to sing along with Take That.

But we also learned when we released in foreign countries, like Spain or Latin America or Poland, that it's important to have local relevance - both from the point of knowing the lyrics and the bands that you grew up with or hear on the radio. Of course there was an American influence and a UK influence, but we couldn't over-estimate the importance of local music and what people like.

I think music is a sort of shared experience - beyond just being attracted to the marketing of it, I think there's a physical enjoyment to music and a social aspect that people enjoy. We're continuing along that stream of thinking with our new project. It's not performance-based, it's not singing along, but I think there's so many layers going on with music, there is that social aspect, that aspirational aspect, there is an identity when you're young, a desire to be connected. We're kind of in that stream.

Q: How much do you think that services like Last.fm and Spotify have changed that landscape? Have they broadened the possibilities for social music apps?

Paulina Bozek: Yeah, I think those are super interesting. I think the whole world is moving to a social model. I find out about things - about great new restaurants and new music through my friends more and more - because they show up in my stream or I'm using an app where I can see that five of my friends like a restaurant or whatever.

So I think that with Spotify and Last.fm that's what they're all about - community and suggestions and finding out about music that way. I also think that streaming is... If you could commercially make it work, it could get people back into paying for music in some way. My appetite for music is too large to actually download and pay for everything I want. I listen to lots of different music - I just want to try it.

I've had a Napster subscription account for about seven years and I don't like owning physical music. It's annoying. I can't even be bothered to download it. [laughs] If I can just stream it, that's great. I think that convenience wins out. iTunes is a brilliant interpretation because it's convenient and frictionless so it's done brilliantly well. It's more convenient than pirating music. I think that streaming is even more convenient.

I've seen some statistics that say that teenagers are tapping into the streaming services, because it's good, you know? Always on, you put a song in and there it is, I can see what my friends are listening to. It's convenient enough that you might actually pay for it. They're definitely part of the future business model. They are, not the only, but a big type of future music consumption.

Q: Another thing you spoke about at Evolve was the slump in music games and the way that dance games have taken that mantle and are in the ascendancy. Will we see a similar lifecycle with dance games to music games?

Paulina Bozek: I think they have the same potential to be big, because anyone can relate to it - if it's done right anyone can have a go and try it out. Again you can tap into the different audiences and music likes and genres and so on. It has the same point of appeal.

I think the only way the cycle might be a bit faster is that we immediately have four strong titles on the market at once. I think with guitars and singing we sort of had a couple of major players first, then the wave caught on and you had loads of products coming onto the channels. Right now we're looking at four major products at once - Just Dance, Dance Central, Konami and SingStar.

So if anything there's just more product earlier - I guess they're platform specific at the moment, they're not flooding every single platform at once. I guess the music game thing lasted four years. I'm not sure the life-span will be four years but definitely a couple of years.

Q: We heard a lot at Evolve about self-managing communities, user generated content and even the community as product - has the role of developer changed to community facilitator?

Paulina Bozek: I think you have to set up that framework in a way that it's going to work. You still have to come up with creative ideas and implement them. Think, 'what will they want to share next? What can we give them? What will make people want to share and communicate. I think it's not a given. We actually have a really long list of ideas which will fit into the product we're building, but all of them have the concept of 'how will the community take this and share and amplify it'?

We're not creating big chunks of content just for them to consume, we're creating content for them to take it and contribute to it. I think the way we see that is that, when communities get together, they can entertain each other. In far greater ways that we can entertain them. If we can give them enough for them to take it and run with it then it's not just about sitting around waiting for us to create the next level. We'd rather they were able to entertain themselves the whole time.

Those are the kinds of things we think about. We think about long returns, how things might evolve. We think about events a bit more, how they stoke that community action and engagement - it doesn't happen on its own - and we think about listening to the audience, very very carefully. In any possible way. Analytics, surveys, forums, focus tests, all of those things. It's a service-based model of a game which, over time, continues to develop.

Q: We hear a lot about the term gamification, and it's application to a lot of things outside of the traditional gaming sphere. What is it about that concept that appeals to people, do you think?

Paulina Bozek: I think you create an experience, a social opportunity. That experience you might do on your own, you create a social opportunity to do that together. The game elements almost give you goals and rewards and feedback. I think those are the mechanics of games that can be applied to a lot of different things.

They naturally tap into, whether it's a competitive nature or a collaborative nature. Probably competitive, people are competitive, and you give them a score. [laughs] You give people a score or a leaderboard or a list, I think people get attracted to that in some way. Similarly with collaborative things. You put people in teams and people can be competitive in teams.

If I exercise, or go to the gym, I want to have goals. I think with games, if you really boil it down, to the mechanics, then what I see as gamification is putting some rules and goals and rewards around an activity and I think you apply that to many many things.

I think what gamification does is - games have always been interactive. It's not like television or magazines or editorial, pushing things out of you. You do something and something happens, you have this influence over the media. More and more industries are becoming interactive. We sort of call them gamified but they're becoming interactive. More social.

The fashion thing is a really good example. Where we used to just read a magazine or look at TV but now there's this whole uploading, rating, sharing... It's a much richer experience.