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It was only a winter’s tale

It began on a cold wet November day at the home of Doctor Who… Roath Lock Studios in Cardiff Bay.
Four people (thrown together by more luck than judgement) had been asked to formulate a plan for a new way of using a mobile handset in conjunction with ´óÏó´«Ã½ archive content.

Robin Moore, Head of Innovation at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales, had asked Anna Guina, Suzy Walters, Jonathan Lewis and I to come up with a creative solution for the task at hand, joining a host of other teams at a two-day event – “The Future of Content: Smartphone Storytelling,” where we we asked to pitch new content experiences - merging games with video content - all designed to reach an 18-34 year–old audience (no pressure!) to a team of judges from the ´óÏó´«Ã½’s Connected Studio division.

I’d dearly love to call the experience a furnace of inspiration, but pitching a gaming concept based upon the hit ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales series Rhod Gilbert’s Work Experience was more of a “praying for a lightbulb moment”… err… moment, whereby the weirdest ideas we could imagine ended up on an enormous sheet of paper! And to compound things, another team found themselves a man down, so Jonathan joined up with them – leaving us to our own devices…

And as it transpires, we won! And the game you’re playing today is that original sheet of paper’s slightly less deranged sibling!

Just another winter’s tale

We were keen to do something inherently different, but very familiar. From experience, working with known ´óÏó´«Ã½ talent can often lead to a goldmine of creative opportunities, and there are few stars shining brighter in ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales’ ecosphere than Rhod Gilbert.
We were also blessed to have the Work Experience series producers, Zipline Creative on board – Rhys and Nathan could not have been more accommodating or generous in time and ideas.

Charlie Campbell and Katie Bird from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Connected Studio were brought in to lead the project’s technical aspects, leaving us (now rejoined by Jonathan!) to manage the scripting, contracts, rights, talent and the tangential - but immensely important - elements such as creative ways of promoting the game on social media.

Charlie and Katie were also instrumental in driving the biggest element of all – who’d actually design the game?!

Commissioning an external developer to design and build a ´óÏó´«Ã½ gaming property is a surprisingly robust process, chock-full of dotted Is and crossed Ts, and featuring a series of checks and balances!
The indies behind each submission (who happily submitted despite all the Ts, Is, checks and balances!) were just brilliant. They all bought into the project completely, and making the decision on a winning submission was a joy, albeit a really difficult joy! In the end, it was Bristol-based Mobile Pie who won out, with a wonderfully creative submission, and a back catalogue of fiendish, yet fun games acting as a reference point for us.

And why should the world take notice?

When the Work Experience series first aired many years ago, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales' Brand Guardian Nicola Rivers designed a set of “Paper Doll” promotional materials. This look and feel – slightly grubby, slightly childlike, slightly innocent, slightly weird – stuck with us, and became the template for the game’s user experience. Huge credit to Nicola, she asked no questions and didn’t bat an eyelid at ours!

Richard Wilson (what a lovely man) and team at Mobile Pie were wonderfully proactive. Their timescale – six weeks start to finish – was as tight as a duck’s hindquarters, and yet they delivered their Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate and Final versions on time and on schedule - every time.
The delivery of the Alpha candidate is an interesting experience – the jump from scribbles and ramblings to a working game takes a massive leap of imagination, and yet, here we were - within a fortnight of shaking hands with Richard at Mobile Pie – playing a strange, Rhod Gilbert-themed video game on our phones and computers. It was rough around the edges, but you could begin to see the possibilities.

We’d always envisaged that the game would include brand new audio supplied Rhod himself, and the great man didn’t let us down. I made the short trip to Risca in the Gwent valleys to record a comedy script with Rhod. The plan was to use the short voiceovers as commentary on the actions of the user while playing the game. My script amused the ´óÏó´«Ã½ team, but it’s not until you put it in the hands of a pro that it really comes to life. Rhod was superb – he’s a self-confessed luddite insofar as games are concerned, but he fully appreciated the potential, and hammed it up beautifully. Some of the outtakes were gold – and were the ´óÏó´«Ã½’s stringent editorial guidelines a little more lax, we’d happily share!!

Of one more love that’s failed?

Using the lyrics to “A Winter’s Tale” by David Essex seemed like a really fun premise for chapter titles to this essay, but it strikes me now that “Of one more love that failed?” comes across like a rather defeatist ending for something that isn’t remotely defeatist.

Aaaaaanyway, I digress…

Today, you’re playing (or are about to play) the fruits of many months’ headaches and labour by a team of committed people. It’s a bit rude, a bit crude, and very silly – but we like to think that it’s a fun way to waste twenty minutes of your day!

And Rhod’s voiceovers just make it so much richer… it’s definitely worth whacking the volume up!

Enjoy!