How Video Games Changed the World Page #13

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the equivalent of the independent

film scene.

You've got games that are made by

one person, two people,

little teams who are saying

something that they want to say.

Just like indie films came about

when the cost of making films

was drastically reduced, now,

tools and publishing options

are available for essentially,

the little guys, who just want

to put their game out there,

games that don't have so much

appeal, but cost SO much less.

They can recoup their investment

with just a few thousand sales.

Suddenly, it seemed the

idiosyncratic bedroom coder of the 1980s

was back with a vengeance, like

someone had turned back the clock.

And an unusual time-twisting

indie platform game called Braid

led the charge.

Braid is a puzzle platformer,

and it was created by Jonathan Blow.

On the surface it's all about a guy

trying to rescue

a princess from a horrible monster.

When you first pick it up,

I'm just playing a platform game.

But, then, going into kind

of the fourth dimension,

playing with concepts of time,

and reversing and speeding up

and manipulating time in

a way that took something

that looked familiar and completely

reinvented it.

One aesthetic thing I didn't like

about it was, the main character.

Just didn't care for the little guy.

He looked like a sort of

squashed Hugh Grant.

HE LAUGHS:

You know, that's just my taste.

I'm not a fan of

miniaturised Hugh Grants.

Braid is almost a game that's

kind of too smart for its own good.

Almost, I kind of feel that it's

a game you admire.

But I definitely remember reaching

a point where I was like,

I'm not really having fun any more.

And that's fine,

that's absolutely fine,

because I think, for indie games,

they have to explore what a game is.

Braid earns a place on our list

for proving indie games could sell,

paving the way for other individual

and experimental titles.

Braid was swiftly followed

then by Limbo, which, again,

was a beautifully stylised,

very emotionally wrenching story

of a small boy walking through

a kind of ethereal landscape.

Journey is probably the most

famous example of that.

Fabulously beautiful.

Incredibly emotionally involving.

There's a point where the little

fella just can't quite make it up

a snowy mountain and Jesus,

it'll get ya!

Many of the new wave of indie titles

hark back to the retro past,

offering subversive or surprising

reimaginings of gaming's heritage.

And indie games aren't something

you have to seek out

in some obscure hobby shop.

Today, you can buy them

without leaving

the comfort of your own hand.

There's this whole line of video game

genealogy that starts off with

the arcades and moves through

the Game Boy

and stuff like Tetris and Mario

and ends up with modern

arcade-like mobile games

like Candy Crush and Angry Birds.

Games started off as something

that everybody played.

And now, again, they're something

that everybody plays.

Lots of people that didn't really

think of themselves as gamers

will play something like Angry Birds

because it's like a time killer.

Wherever you are,

whatever you're doing,

in a doctor's waiting room, on the

bus, if you're bored on the Tube,

you can play Angry Birds

and it kills that dead time.

With its intuitive, visually

appealing gameplay, Angry Birds has

brought intense hand-held pleasure

to millions, just like your mum has.

Angry Birds is a nice enough game.

I don't think it's the best game

in the world, but I mean, certainly,

it deserves to be a success.

Whether it deserves to absolutely

rule the entire universe

to the exception of everything else,

I really don't know.

Yesterday, when I was buying

my train ticket to come down here,

I looked over at the ticket clerk's

phone that was lying

next to the ticket window.

Angry Birds. It's just everywhere.

Like Pac-Man, way back yonder,

Angry Birds has become

an unstoppable kiddiewink

merchandising phenomenon,

with branded goods, cartoon shows,

theme park rides and all.

But Angry Birds isn't the only

indie game to have built an empire.

Our next game is, if anything,

an even more impressive achievement.

Minecraft is just one of those

bits of gaming genius.

I think you can sum up the appeal

of Minecraft effectively by saying

that it's Lego of video games.

Minecraft is an open world game

which lets players

shape their environment by placing

or destroying blocks.

It's easy, it's creative

and it's social.

The beautiful thing with Minecraft

is that you see people playing

together to create something,

to build some massive project.

People coming together to build replicas

of the Starship Enterprise, and stuff like that,

within Minecraft,

and that's a lovely thing,

because most of the time in games,

people come together

to destroy stuff, and each other.

Minecraft became a hit,

selling over 33 million copies.

And its most enthusiastic

fans are children.

Children can interact with Minecraft

and it allows them

to be creative in a way that

nothing else does.

Like, reading a book is great,

it's wonderful,

but it doesn't allow them to be

part of that fantasy. Minecraft does.

And they create these huge

worlds for themselves,

these huge structures,

not because someone is telling them

to, but because they want to.

And they're probably learning so

much about teamwork and design and

architecture and the environment,

just through playing this game.

You get lots of teachers now,

geography teachers use Minecraft to

get children to design villages.

You get physics teachers now using

Minecraft to teach kids

about simple mechanisms.

And finally, I made it work.

The Minecraft escalator.

It really communicates to kids.

My children,

my sons play Minecraft a lot.

My older son is on

the autism spectrum.

To him, Minecraft is so valuable,

because it's a world of logic

and creativity, which he

immediately understands.

This is the same for all children.

Like, it's really helped my son,

in a lot of ways,

to kind of express himself, which is

really profoundly important.

I'd love to shake the maker of

that game by the hand,

because I think he's

kind of changed my son's life.

So, the world of games has

become like the world of cinema,

with multimillion dollar

blockbusters to one side

and low-budget,

cerebral indie titles on the other.

But now, there are signs

of a third way emerging.

We're seeing the beginnings of

the gaming equivalent

of the critically acclaimed

HBO box set.

Where did you get the money for this?

Drugs. I sell hardcore drugs.

Oh, good. Well, start helping out

with the mortgage, then.

Tsk! Yeah, you wish!

Jimmy? Dad? I'm coming. Come here.

Jimmy?

Jimmy, stay back!

Jimmy, I am warning you. Stop!

The Last Of Us is the story of these

two survivors

in a world that has been ravaged by

this pandemic.

And we follow Joel, this

middle-aged survivor,

who's going to do anything

it takes to survive,

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