Designing for the masses

Hindsight is a bit like cheating - it's easy to analyse the past when you already know the future. So now they've proved themselves, every publisher will tell you SingStar, Buzz! and Guitar Hero were dead certs for success. Turn back time, however, and depressingly few would have been quite as vocal when it came to backing any of these concepts as they were pitched.

Still, several million copies sold later, representatives from the development studios responsible for this holy trinity of mainstream gaming are at the Develop Conference to discuss the aspects of what makes their games work when similar titles have previously failed.

The first thing all three agree on is the need for extensive pre-production in establishing the concept. How important is this? Take SingStar, for instance. "Actually the early ideas were fantasy oriented," producer Paulina Bozek at SCEE's London Studio reveals. "One was about this girl singing and bringing the world to life through song and the other one was called Sing-along Safari and it was a girl singing along with animals."

Hardly rock 'n roll. But through playing around with the concept, the essence and potential of what makes today's SingStar games soon shone through. Crucially, it was fun, even in primitive form - something the other two games share.

All three have another thing in common: they are all based around music. Is this the key to the mainstream?

If only it were that easy. "Even though Harmonix is a music game company, I don't think it's just a case of having a music game to reach a diverse market," laments Rob Kay, senior designer on Guitar Hero. "In fact, we can prove that: our first two games [Frequency and Amplitude], even though were critical hits, they didn't sell and they were music games."

Rather, he argues, the element shared by successful games is that they offer a role - being a rock star on stage, participating on a music quiz or performing for a crowd - that people can easily relate to.

Equally vital with regards to the quality and accessibility of the experience offered has to be the bundled peripheral, Kay continues, because it reinforces the role - you see the controller and instantly know what the game is about.

"I think it would be on its arse without four buzzers," David Amor, creative director at Relentless, offers bluntly before highlighting the crucial role of the Buzz! controllers in effectively removing the learning curve. "If you think it's the blue answer, then you press the blue button - it's easy to forget that most people really don't know how to use a DualShock controller."

Kay agrees. For him, the specialised controller changes not only the game but its reach, too. "If you have a controller you have to learn the 'language' of the controller but suddenly when you have a microphone or a big red button on a buzzer or a guitar, the language comes from the world around you and everyone understands that. So [opting for a guitar peripheral] was huge, it was kind of revolutionary for us."

As was the decision to include a multiplayer option, something the team initially thought about ditching due to time constraints but thankfully didn't - it's now most people's Guitar Hero play mode of choice. And that's because, like Buzz! or SingStar, it's the social element of the game that radically enhances the experience.

"I would have been quite happy to ship Buzz! without any singleplayer mode but Sony wanted it in there - I've yet to find anyone who's played it," says Amor. "To be honest, Buzz! isn't about finding out who knows the most about pop music - that'd be dull as the same person would win every time. It's really just setting up an environment so that four people on the sofa can take the piss out of each other and just have a bit of a laugh."

In that sense, it's more about off-screen than on-screen interaction, something Bozek can relate to. "[SingStar] is not as engaging and immersive as another type of game would be; it's a lot more about setting up a scenario where you get people interacting, about social dynamics, where things kind of evolve on their own." According to the producer this refreshes the game experience, meaning it's potentially different every time you play and, as such, unlikely to lose its appeal.

The industry has certainly seen the attraction - the change in publisher attitude towards the bundling of specifically designed peripherals has been something of a U-turn. That's due to the fact that despite the massive initial investment, these titles are able to maintain a high price point and consistent sales while many of the 'normal' games around them soon end up in the bargain bin. Crucially, they also offer the opportunity to release sequels at a lower development cost - in just two years, SingStar is now in its sixth iteration.

And with the online delivery potential offered by the new consoles, the future looks very bright - particularly so for this type of game.

"It seems like most of the videogame industry is making games for the ten per cent of the people that play games," Amor concludes, before conceding there remains much work in changing non-gamer attitudes. But he is certainly optimistic. "People are ready to be entertained. I don't think that there's anything fundamentally about a videogame that will stop anybody playing them apart from us coming out with things that they want to play or will not be intimidated by - enough people play board games or watch TV. There's a massive market out there that we've started to tap into."