On the ground at Project Joystick

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By David Field
22:04 Jun 14, 2007

The invitation lured us to “the next big thing in games.”

It was hosted by MTV, not a regular player of gaming, but we just had to go and have a sniff. It was only a matter of time before gaming’s lure to “youth culture” was married with the Telstra juggernaut. A partnership made in marketing.

So here I am at the party for the next big thing in games. Unquote.

I am standing in MTV's offices, located conveniently less than 50 meters from my old high school. Unlike my old high school, however, everything is extremely bright, colourful and funky. Perhaps that's why I'm not enjoying myself.

I recognise nobody. Press junkets, especially technology and gaming ones, are always an insular affair. They are comprised of a scruffy (and generally drunk) crowd that knows each other. This, though, is a scene that’s a level of cool well above the gaming gang norm.

Perhaps I feel out of place here because everybody is perfectly groomed. Mostly, because it’s the first gaming event where I can’t see any familiar faces. My spider sense of doubt is tingling.

Young, hip business types are all around me. I’ve struck up a conversation with a photographer from train trash MX who is handing out press releases to whichever writer is taking this assignment (and who is also absent) and I describe the evening to him, he sort of gets where I’m coming from, but remains a stranger. I’m on my third scotch and Coke and am yet to talk to anybody who knows what exactly this launch is all about. I head over to the exit and fish some press releases out of a bag.

It turns out that Telstra wants to put a million dollars into the development of a game based on an idea submitted by a member of the general public. I ask a man with perfect hair wearing a Bigpond shirt what the launch is all about, and all he can tell me is what he reads verbatim off a promotional postcard. Futile. I feel somehow that I’m the only one who gets it, but I don’t.

The man with perfect hair goes off to ask his manager for more information while I look around again to try and spot people I know. I still don’t recognize any other print or online journalists. Where’s the usual gaming press crowd and why aren’t they here? Some appropriate TV personalities are there with their cameras though. Peter Blasina (the Gadget Guy from Channel 7’s morning show) is there, as are some guys from Cybershack (who are filming without their hottie – a sure sign that they’re trying for some actual content).

I hunt down Hair to see what he's found out about the event for me and am mistaken by his boss as the new boyfriend. It doesn't seem as though Hair has asked why we are here, or that anybody around him really cares what is being promoted.

In a last ditch effort to find some meaningful information about the event I am up to my neck in, I head to a demo computer that is running a promotional flash game. Double bonus, it has full internet access. A craftily formed Google site search leaves me with no information about “Project Joystick”. But I do manage to find the terms and conditions of entry on the entry form of the site which went live minutes ago.

Based on these and the complete lack of information the press junket provided me with, I can conclude that Telstra is mining the casual gamer community for original Java based mobile phone game ideas. The main prize is AUD$20,609.40 worth of HP gaming-spec computer, monitor, internet access and mobile phone -- see the terms and conditions, part 13 (it's Java, so you'll have to click it).

The most interesting bit is the AUD$10,000 ~~worth of experience~~ "Industry Learning Package" with an unnamed game developer, see part 13, section (f). Could be a big proper one, may be a small graduate team. Who knows? Why bother with the secrecy? Have they yet to actually sign a developer?

First impressions are that this is a ticket for the afraid, or lazy. A kick through an open Telstra door to somewhere. There are a multitude of doors prospective young game designers have to put a foot in, some more realistic than others, this smells like a promotion that shows Telstra cares, but if the door opens to a yellow brick road that Telstra are willing to sing along with you as you skip to success, then whammy bonus happy win to them and you, but we can’t snuff the stench of a marketing exercise.

This all smells of an idea born in a boardroom, not a creative team seriously looking for new talent.

Telstra own all the rights to sequels and media pertaining to you and your creation. I can barely hear the alarm bells ringing over the in-house DJ.

I was interrupted by a bouncy girl telling me a presentation was about to begin, and an introduction to Telstra’s head of marketing (or something of whatever) who looked anxious that I was actually reading the terms and conditions and not waiting with the crowd for the launch speech.

Later, an MTV host assures us she’s qualified to launch Project Joystick because she has a brother who plays video games and she spent her life playing solitaire instead of studying at school. And something unrelated about Oprah that magically segues into tabletop Pacman. After a short promotional video, a Telstra spokesman asked us to join him in celebrating the launch of Project Joystick.

I just made eye contact with some girl who was definitely cute, probably quite bright and certainly bewildered. Not a PR bunny -- they have a way of conveying in-with-it cool. This one was simply another MTV pretty there for the ‘event’, not the thing of it all.

The thing is still running and honestly I don’t think that anybody in attendance knows what’s going on, let alone the viewers who will see the MTV segment in an hour or so.

I'm posting from home, but “THE NEXT BIG THING IN GAMES” is still rocking its way toward a hangover back at MTV HQ.

And we’re hopeful of good intent, but a few sweet talking babes and Bigpond smoothies away from being at least half convinced.

There’s a site for the pure version of the vision, it’s here.

Until it all shapes up, I’m shipping out. Thanks for the Daiquiris, Telstra.

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