Playstation ACCESS Issue 2

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coVer starDesign a cover for Access! Win prizes!

It’s hard work coming up with covers for Access. So next issue we’re going to take a break and let you do it instead.

The theme for the issue will be ‘Gaming Takes Over the World’. You can enter a photograph, an illustration, a block of text or pretty much anything else that refl ects the theme and makes a great cover.

One winner will have their design used on the cover of Access, and will receive a top of the range Sony DSLR camera and start-up lenses, a NEX-7 compact camera, and a PS Vita plus start-up games. Their design will also be made into a poster distributed by Don’t Panic, as well as being shown with the best of the rest inside the magazine, and displayed in a special Access Cover Star Exhibition held in London. The competition will run until 29 March, with a shortlist chosen by the public vote, before an expert panel from PlayStation and Access pick the overall winner.

For full terms and conditions and to enter, go to dontpaniconline.com/accesscoverstar

PRESS STARTPs Vita VoX PoPsWe took a trip to the special London preview of PlayStation’s Vita Rooms beforeChristmas to see what gamers thought about their fi rst glimpse of the new kit

Ciaran Browning, 18Student, Bristol

I wouldn’t say that I’m the biggest gamer but coming here has seriously blown me away! I’ve never owned a handheld console before – I’ve got an iPhone 4 but it’s really limited in what it can do from a gaming point of view. The PS Vita is just amazing – the camera’s great, the touchscreens, the analogue sticks – it just all works really well. My favourite game is Resistance. It plays well on the PS3, but the PS Vita feels even better – you’ve got the two analogue sticks, the touchscreens, the accelerometer, and it all really comes out inthe way the game plays.

Zoe Stacey, 23Cinema Assistant, Swindon

The PS Vita is brilliant, especially the touchscreen on the back. Some of the games have been really clever in the way they use it – for example in Little Deviants you use the rear touchscreen to move the landscape around. That feels really diff erent and innovative. I’m defi nitely going to buy one – I’m a big fan of Little Big Planet, so I’ll be wanting to get that, and it would be good to see games like Starhawk being converted for the PS Vita. My favourite game today has been Uncharted. I’m a big fan of the game on the PS3 and the graphics pretty much match up to that.

Martin Doddington, 36NHS Project Manager, Norwich

I’ve been really impressed by the PS Vita today – in particular the motion sensors have really stood out and been better than I expected them to be. I didn’t think the whole thing would be as sensitive as it is, but they’ve really made the controls properly responsive. The big games like Reality Fighters play really well and the gun sights in Uncharted are brilliant, but surprisingly, it was the darts that got me. Maybe I’m showing my age, but I thought that was fantastic. It’s all really simple and it’s really addictive too – justgreat fun and a great game.

Just for KicKs When Rizzle Kicks got hold of a PS Vita to take on the road, the boys said thanks by shooting a video of themselves mixing work and play. Watch out for it appearing on the Access Facebook page soon. They dotted some cheeky gaming references throughout the video - spot them and you could win prizes. See facebook.com/playstationaccess for info.

yourart here

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You’ve just turned a PS3 into a PS Vita – are you a gamer?Yeah, I love gaming. The PS Vita works well with me because I’m busy and on the move all the time, so it lets me get involved with games. My friends are always going on about Call of Duty, but with that sort of game you really need to lock yourself in a room and devote hours to it. I can’t do that, but I can be on the road on the PS Vita and playing my friends back home.

In the PlayStation videos we see you play in odd places – like the top of Nelson’s ColumnWell with PS Vita you can play anywhere, and being Dynamo, I can get anywhere. So the whole partnership really works.

Your magic is always out and about – on the street, in dressing rooms. Is that important to you?In this day and age we’ve got so much stuff literally at our fingertips, with mobile phones, Twitter and YouTube. Entertainment has changed and people don’t really go to the theatre – at least my friends don’t – so you’ve got to take the show to them.

You’ve done magic for some pretty big names – who was your favourite?My most memorable moment was when I did magic for Pharrell Williams. He’s probably one of the coolest guys there is, but I turned him into a little screaming girl – he was properly screaming when I finished.

Is that the aim with your magic?Not always. Sometimes I do stuff and I just want it to be an intimate piece of magic; maybe I want to bring a tear to somebody’s eye, to move them in that way. Sometimes stunned silence is the best reaction; walking across the Thames doesn’t make people scream – it’s just pure astonishment.

Look out for Dynamo’s PS Vita tricks coming soon on youtube.com/playstation

best of the bestUncharted 3 voted the top title of 2011

In December we listed our top five games of 2011 and asked you to tell us which one should win Access Game of the Year.

We put Uncharted 3, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Batman: Arkham City and Modern Warfare 3 up on the Access Facebook page, then retreated to a safe distance. It turned out to be a two-horse race between Uncharted 3 and Skyrim, with Uncharted eventually emerging as a clear winner with a massive 46% of the vote.

The following is an edited version of the Facebook comments, and it goes without saying that they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PlayStation Access. They are quite funny though.

Philip Littler Uncharted 3Haven’t played all of these but Battlefield 3 isn’t in the same league as Uncharted 3. I loved Batman: Arkham City but Uncharted blew me away – pinnacle of gaming for me so far. It has everything you could want. Often game designers seem to be unable to get all elements of the game to work – one thing is good but at the expense of something else. Not so here.

Howard Seymour SkyrimJust a beardy dungeon keeper at heart.

Norton Crowson SkyrimCome on!! Skyrim gives endless possibilities as to how to play the game and you can explore completely without boundaries within the Elder Scrolls world. WIN!!!!!!!

Darren Lavercombe SkyrimI can’t understand how Uncharted has more votes than Skyrim.

Mark Sammons SkyrimThe new Batman does look sweet and Uncharted is well worthy, got the other two and they’re epic, but nowt beats the Elder Scrolls, best game and best series ever. Five more please Bethesda.

Barry Aldridge Uncharted 3For me it’s Uncharted 3. A brilliant game for both single and multiplayer functions.

John Cerberus Camilleri Uncharted 3Whoever voted for Modern Warfare 3 is an idiot and should be slapped.

James Mark Williams Batman: Arkham CityAs amazing and just jaw dropping as Uncharted 3 was, I feel that Arkham City just gave me a bit more bang for my buck (single player-wise of course).

Simon WilsonUncharted 3 Uncharted 3 dudes :) Skyrim would be a close second. Gotta LOOL at CoD even being on that list ;)

Magic touchThey say a good magician never reveals his secrets, but luckily Dynamo made an exception to talk about his new collaboration with PlayStation

gaMe for anythingIain Simons is Director of GameCity, the Nottingham-based organisation dedicated to celebrating videogame culture. He remembers some of his favourite GameCity moments

Desk JobWe do this thing called From the Desk of..., where we have Skype chats with developers around the world and they talk us through their desk and what they’re working on at the moment. We did one with David Jaffe who made Twisted Metal and God of War and it was really great. They’re always kind of intimate in a weird way.

Playing with FoodThis year Eric Chahi, the French developer who did From Dust, collaborated with an experimental chef and created this weird four-course meal that you could play. They made these perfectly spherical peas out of pea cream, and you had to move your pea balls around this maze to get them out so you could eat them with the chips. It was proper bonkers.

Ancient tunesIn the first year we put on a concert with Richard Jacques, the guy who did a lot of the Sonic soundtracks. He did this really po-faced piano recital in a 15th-century church in the Lace Market in Nottingham, playing stuff like the Outrun and Sonic theme tunes in front of a huge crowd.

A C C E S S

COMMUNITY

S TA R

Laurence fee For relentlessly bringing Scottish gamers the latest in PlayStation news, events and competitions. And for being the first to get involved with absolutely everything we do.Follow him on Twitter: @PlayStationSCO

01Dara Ó BriainDara is a huge gaming fan and he and I have had some great nights playing fi rst-person shooters. We get very into it and obviously end up yelling at each other. We’re similar in that we’re both very big on gaming and yet we’re both essentially button-bashers at the end of the day. There’s not a great deal of fi nesse in what either of us do. He’s appeared on BBC Breakfast talking about how games are on their way to becoming an art form, but we don’t sit around sipping brandy discussing that. We just stick a game on and play.

02 Simon PeggWhen the fi rst PlayStation came out, before online gaming and multi-player gaming was the norm, Simon and I were planning to get two TVs and two PlayStations, and play the same game at the same time in the same room as a competition. This was before light plasma screen TVs, when putting a television into the back of your car to lug it over to someone’s house would have been basically insane. We talked an awful lot about the fact that we were going to do this. And never did it.

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Brendon BurnsBrendon’s an Australian comedian and is probably the person I’ve played games with the most. If you’ve seen his live show you’ll know he’s not worried about whether he’s off ending anyone. When he’s giving me a proper beat-down on a game he’ll yell trash talk at me like he’s a gangster, shouting things like, “Bitch better have my money!” If you bring that attitude to the table every time you play with someone it works very well at annoying them.

Serious Gamers

Ed Byrne spills the beans on the most formidable funny men he’s ever played against


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Stand-up comic and Mock the Week star Ed Byrne says gaming

has come a long way since he first picked up Pac-Man. Just don’t

ask him to play ‘casually’

hese days gaming can be like having a full-time job. It’s all about doing what you need to do to get promoted; you can’t progress to the next level until you’ve worked on your take-downs or improved your weak areas, whatever they might be. That’s something new that has come with contemporary gaming – the games have become so all-consuming and so well made that it’s a lot harder to be a casual gamer.

Take a game like Battlefi eld 3. If you’re playing just the straight campaign you’re only using a tiny fraction of what that game can do. In order to be able to progress and hold your own against other people in a multi-player version, you’ll need to have really put in the practice. I love it though – the game I’m really into at the moment is The Elder Scrolls V:

Skyrim, which is a role-playing game, so I take a console with me when I’m on the road for a stand-up tour and play that in my hotel room or wherever.

Sometimes in the green room at a TV studio or theatre there will be a PlayStation set up for you to play on to pass the time, but because I’m someone who is into gaming, I don’t want to use it in that environment. Because I think, ‘what’s the point if I can’t save it?’ A game is all about progression and if I can’t use my own identity and I can’t save the game to come back to, I prefer not to play it casually. That might seem ridiculous to some people, but it’s kind of a side eff ect of the contemporary gaming world to feel that way. Modern gaming has become very much about unlocking trophies that you can then build on.

I grew up in Swords, which is in County Dublin, and my fi rst experience of gaming was in the early 80s when I was about 10 years old and we got an Atari console for Christmas. It looks ancient now but that was a very cool thing to have then – state of the art! I remember that it came with a free game called Combat. We were each given a game of our own, too. I got Pac-Man, my brother got Asteroids and my sister got Space Invaders. It was instant obsession. We stopped doing anything else, even watching TV. We just played on our Atari. It was a solid week before we did so much as look up from it.

That was my introduction to gaming, and after that my brother got a Sinclair Spectrum 48k, which had games like Jetpac. It also had The Hobbit, which was one of the fi rst text-based adventure

games, telling you things like, “You are in a forest; go north”, and “You are now lost...” We never got anywhere close to completing that game.

This was in the days when games came on cassettes that you had to load onto the computer: you’d have to wait 15 minutes for the game to load and it could well crash as soon as it had loaded and you’d have to start again. It took a lot of patience to be a gamer back then.

My brother passed the Spectrum on to me when he got a Commodore 64. That was the next cool step up. The fi rst game we got really addicted to on that was called Elite (which we later noted was also the name of a type of condom). It was a space trading game. You’re fl ying around the galaxy, going from space station to space station, trading goods. You can be a bounty hunter, or a trader, or a miner who goes around blowing up asteroids, or a pirate blowing up other ships and taking their stuff . It was a non-linear game so it meant you could fi nd your own path and it was very immersive. It would seem slow by today’s standards, but it was genuinely very good and I played it an awful lot.

When I was about 18, I left home and I was gaming on Nintendos and Segas when I was at uni. I dropped out of my university course because I wanted to pursue something diff erent with my life and there was a period from about 1990 to 1995 when gaming kind of passed me by, but I came back to it when the fi rst PlayStation came out. That’s when gaming started to get really cool, and especially with the game WipEout. All of a sudden you had groups of friends coming back in the early hours of the morning from a great night out clubbing, still buzzing from their evening out, and they’d play WipEout. It had a soundtrack with acts like The Prodigy on it, and that really brought gaming into the mainstream and made it what the cool kids did.

I got my fi rst PlayStation around 1997 and by then I was making a living as a stand-up comic. I had a fl at, I had an income, I had a credit card, I was a grown-up. But I was also single, had no responsibilities and could get totally caught up in a game for days if I wanted to. I was doing a 20-minute comedy set in the evenings and at that stage in my career I didn’t even need to worry about writing more jokes. I was earning a living by doing this 20 good minutes that I had and life was just very easy. I was a young man without a care in the world and I had the perfect life to be able to play on my PlayStation as much as I wanted, basically. I sat in my messy fl at and played WipEout until my hand felt like a claw.

It’s fair to say that for a while when I was younger, I lost the balance you should have between enjoying gaming and also doing other things. But things have moved on in console gaming now. You can have a very rich online life nowadays that you couldn’t when I was a teen, so when my baby son is older I’ll defi nitely have to keep an open mind to that and appreciate that if he gets into gaming it will all be diff erent again.

Ed Byrne’s DVD Crowd Pleaser is out nowedbyrne.com

SAVE PROGRESSI N T E R V I E W S O P H Y G R I M S H AW | I L L U S T R AT I O N S T E V E W I L S O N


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It’s easier than ever to make and distribute

quality videogames – that must be good

news for independent developers, right?

Not necessarily, says Neon Kelly

INDIE ADVENTURES

INDIE

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imon Oliver didn’t mean to go indie. Sitting in the bright office of HandCircus, the independent studio he set up four years ago, he smiles as he remembers his first steps into the gaming world.

“I started work in 2000, doing bits and pieces for digital design companies,” he recalls. “Sometimes the work involved making little Flash games – games to promote TV shows, educational games, that sort of thing. I used to play a lot, but then I went to university and just stopped; the process of making these Flash games professionally made me think, ‘this is something I love doing.’ It made me remember why I loved those games so much.”

Suddenly enthused by the games industry, Oliver began learning everything he could about game development. He bought “a whole load” of game design books, picked up some programming and started working out how to make the transition from digital design to game design. But he kept coming up against the same problem. Everywhere he went companies expected him to start at the bottom, testing games for quality assurance – the lowest of the low in the development world. Convinced that he had skills he could transfer across from his design background, and believing that, “the best way of learning is to actually do something,” he quit his job to go freelance and spent every spare moment building a portfolio of game prototypes that (he hoped) would prove his abilities to the big game studios.

And then everything changed. “In 2007 the iPhone was announced, and suddenly here was this device that seemed to be ripe for innovation. It was multi-touch, which was unheard of at the time; it had no buttons… it seemed like a really interesting opportunity to make games. They announced the App Store, and then everything happened really quickly.”

These were the days before anything had been released for the iPhone. Nobody really knew what an ‘app’ was, there was nothing to refer back to, and practically no rules. It was a Wild West of game development – the ideal environment for somebody who had been forced to work outside the studios. Oliver decided to focus all his energies on his most promising prototype, and enlisted the help of Finnish illustrator Mikko Walamies. The two of them worked back and forth, “for a few weeks, maybe a month,” and the week before the App Store launched they put a trailer for their game online. They called it Rolando, and within a few days it had been picked up by US mobile gaming company NG Moko. Oliver had just become an independent game developer.

Trouble in ParadiseLooking back on those years, Oliver marvels at the democratisation of the games industry, and particularly the way that the technology used to make games has become so much cheaper and easier to use. The barriers to entry have melted away, and digital distribution via outlets like the App Store and PlayStation Network means that today’s independent developers can reach a potentially huge audience. It sounds like a recipe for

unparalleled creativity, but this democratisation of the games industry has created problems of its own.

Just as the music industry has been flooded with content now that virtually anyone can record, produce and release their own tunes, so the independent games industry has been deluged with new titles, meaning that, ironically, it’s now harder than ever for a developer to capture the attention of gamers.

But help is at hand. Unveiled at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, Sony’s Pub Fund initiative opens the door for indie studios looking to bring their endeavours to the PlayStation Network. Under the terms of the scheme, Sony provides additional funding for the creation of a new game, as well as assistance with the approval process, plus the publishing and marketing of the finished product. In exchange, the developers agree to give Sony limited exclusivity – ensuring that PS3 owners get new experiences that can’t be found anywhere else.

“While we allow any licensed developer to publish on PlayStation Network, often times development costs can get in the way,” explains Ted Regulski, Account Manager for Developer Relations at Sony Entertainment. “The creation of Pub Fund stemmed from the idea that Sony Computer Entertainment America could provide additional development budget to newer, smaller teams who have creative and innovative ideas, but might not otherwise have the footing to make their game a reality on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita platforms.”

In Regulski’s view, the Pub Fund programme provides studios with valuable experience in the realities of self-publishing. Sony’s money and support plays a crucial role, but this doesn’t come at the cost of the developers’ independence – they retain full ownership of the worlds and characters they create.

“Intellectual property [IP] is extremely important to independent developers, so by allowing them to keep the rights to their IP, we hope they create a solid base for the future of their company by building a brand. Ideally, we see the franchise continuing on the platform and even other platforms down the road. Whatever is in the best interest of the developer.”

Staying IndependentThe first studio to sign up to the Pub Fund was Guildford-based doublesix, renowned for their frantic shooter Burn Zombie Burn!. “I remember we were very excited about the scheme,” says Jim Mummery, Creative Director at doublesix. “From our earliest conversations with Sony, it was an appealing prospect. We were a small indie developer who suddenly found ourselves self-publishing our first game, and the Pub Fund made it possible for us to do that. Basically, Sony’s backing allowed us to take a little more time and focus on making the game we wanted to make, and helped us get it onto the PlayStation Network.”

Mummery is clear on the essential ingredients of a successful independent game: “Smaller, digitally distributed games stand

“Smaller, digitally distributed games stand out when they look and

play unlike anythingelse out there”


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out when they look and play unlike anything else out there; when they fill a gap and provide a different experience from the mainstream market… But digital distribution is now an established market with big players and larger budgets, and so it gets harder to get noticed, which ironically makes it harder to take risks that might reduce your audience.”

Mummery’s concerns are understandable in a world where the boundaries are constantly shifting. But both doublesix and HandCircus are looking to build on their success with the Pub Fund. HandCircus’s Okabu was released last October during Sony’s high profile Only on PlayStation season, rubbing shoulders with the likes of PixelJunk’s Shooter and Infamous: Festival of Blood, while doublesix has just released All Zombies Must Die!, the successor to Burn Zombie Burn!

“It’s got zombies, elements, crafting, searchable objects, gate quests, character quests, story quests, mutants, aliens, laser beams, flamethrowers, air raids, smart bombs and whole load of other stuff,” grins Mummery. “It is bigger, better and more

complex than Burn Zombie Burn!, but at its heart it’s still a game about killing a whole lot of zombies.”

As for the future of the Pub Fund, Sony has announced that over the next three years it plans to spend $20m on finding and nurturing independent developers. Montreal studio Minority’s Papo & Yo is already gathering hype as a potential Pub Fund star for 2012. And perhaps most excitingly of all, Regulski says that the Fund will, “A hundred per cent, absolutely without a doubt” result in new indie titles for the PlayStation Vita: “PS Vita will be one of our top priorities in 2012 and beyond, so of course we look forward to finding fresh new content that takes advantage of the hardware features.”

All this is great news for gamers, of course, because it ensures that a new generation of developers will be able to focus on doing what they do best.

“I think for me, and most of the other developers I know, it represents something more than just a job,” concludes Oliver. “I really can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Pub Picks

Five essential games that have grown out of the Pub Fund initiative.

Burn Zombie Burn!doublesixTake one man with a gun, a blowtorch, and wave after wave of hungry zombies. The result is a chaotic and worryingly addictive score-based shooter. And don’t forget the ever-important Big Red Button: depending on the stage, it might laser your foes in half, or make them perform a Thriller-inspired dance routine. Either way, it’s good.

EufloriaAlex May and Rudolf KremersThis minimalist real-time strategy outing is all the more impressive for being the work of just two developers and a composer. It’s an exercise in territory-grabbing: plant trees on your asteroid, then watch as they sprout flowers, which in turn produce laser-spitting seeds – the troops you use to subdue the enemy flora. A strange, but remarkably compelling game.

Joe Danger Hello GamesThis extremely polished release casts you as the eponymous Joe – a stunt bike rider who must work his way through a series of death-defying trials. This is one of those games where the inherent trickiness can drive you to the brink of insanity, and yet it’s so addictive you’ll keep on playing anyway.

Okabu HandCircusDesigned from the ground up as a co-op experience, Okabu’s playful nature is matched only by its endearing, cel-shaded aesthetics. Take control of a pair of cloud whales and help them to rid the world of the polluting forces that are spoiling the landscape. Lovely.

Papo & Yo MinorityDue for release later this year, Papo & Yo tells the story of Quico – a young boy living in a favela, who happens to be friends with a huge, pink monster. The beast is addicted to eating frogs, and unfortunately this results in him turning very nasty indeed. This looks amazing already, and the drug allegory should lend a rare poignancy to proceedings.

Simon Oliver in his Hoxton Square studio: “I’ve been working around here for 10 years. I share this space with a few friends who are in digital design, and we’ve had all manner of other people here. We’ve had a guy who designs shoes, one who makes music, another who works in film. Sometimes when you’re really into a project, it’s nice to see other people doing different things.”

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t started in 1999. PlayStation’s infamous Double Life advert only ran to one minute and five seconds, but its affecting first-person testimonies, delivered straight to camera by a cast of everyday oddballs, forever changed the way that videogames would be marketed.

“[Double Life] was quite possibly the first and truest example of modern ‘pull’ vs. ‘push’ game marketing,” says Scott Steinberg, author of Videogame Marketing and PR. “It’s epic in scope, yet elegantly captures every man’s desire to transcend the boundaries of mundane life, and to this day the piece remains nothing short of iconic.”

PlayStation continued to lead the way in 1999 with the creepy Mental Wealth, directed by music video veteran Chris Cunningham and starring an alien-eyed Scottish girl gamer. The the following year The Third Place by David Lynch took viewers into a bizarre Twin Peaks-inspired world of never-ending corridors (and a talking duck).

But trailers for games themselves took longer to change. Gradually they became more ambitious, more cinematic, more concerned with building narrative and atmosphere rather than showing gameplay, and last year they finally came of age. Boasting big-name Hollywood talent both behind the camera and in front of it, there’s no doubt that 2011 will be remembered as the year that videos and games finally came together.

REsistancE 3 goo.gl/bvPK

A lone wanderer hops a railroad train and meets a ragged band of survivors in this live action take on the Resistance universe. First-time director Henry Hobson makes great use of a Delta blues soundtrack and bleak American landscape to build the sense of foreboding, before the action descends into the darkness of a tunnel and the terror of a Chimera attack.

Hobson is better known for his work designing titles for films including Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, but the Resistance spot was so well received that he’s now set to direct a full-length zombie thriller under the guidance of Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov.

“Videogame promos are becoming less like long-form advertisements and more like accomplished short films,” says GamesTM writer Dave Scarborough. “Whereas the 80s and 90s saw directors make their mark in TV advertising and music videos, videogame advertisements now have the scope and duration to support more linear, story-driven showcases of talent. And that’s probably why Hollywood is starting to take notice.”

DEaD islanDgoo.gl/kToMf

Dead Island’s teaser trailer was one of last year’s most talked about pieces of videogame marketing, setting message boards buzzing without any big-name talent, live action or expensive CGI trickery. Instead it presented viewers with a brutal but affecting slice of action; a zombie attack seen in reverse. Beginning with an extreme close-up on the blank eye of a dead girl and following her as she twists back through a smashed window and into a bloody melee, it’s a masterpiece of calculated controversy and quite stunningly effective.

“It may be the best videogame trailer I’ve ever seen,” declared Wired columnist Jason Schreier. “Gorgeous, well-edited and emotionally engaging. The music is sombre and the visuals are utterly harrowing. It makes the oversaturated zombie genre seem appealing again.”

He also noted that, “everyone is hyped up about the short film, not the game itself,” and while Dead Island itself didn’t prove to be a classic, the trailer will always be remembered as three fantastic minutes of unadulterated zombie action.

UnchaRtED 3goo.gl/2lqkY

The Uncharted series is one of the most cinematic, story-driven games franchises, so it makes sense that the game’s makers should turn to Hollywood to help explain what it’s all about. Director Ed Zwick (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) was drafted in to produce a six-minute short, but this wasn’t about recreating the adventures of Nathan Drake in live action. Instead Zwick delivered a documentary that features talking heads shot in black and white discussing ideas of heroism, intercut with frantic examples of gameplay.

“I thought the best way to [discuss heroism] was to create a mosaic of interviews,” explains Zwick. “They were all people who I knew to be thoughtful and I felt that by using men and women, it would produce a more multi-dimensional and complex portrait.”

His stars range from talent like Sam Rockwell and Michelle Rodriguez to Amy Hennig, writer and director of the Uncharted series, and Nolan North, the motion-capture actor who plays Nathan Drake. It’s a slightly strange assembly of experts, and one that has given rise to speculation that an Uncharted movie is in the pipeline, with Sam Rockwell suddenly tipped to play Nathan Drake. Talk of a film may be nothing more than internet rumour, but even this element of the campaign is a savvy piece of marketing, inviting fans to fantasise about possible next steps for the game.

nEED FOR sPEED: thE RUn goo.gl/Y8ywm

Hollywood doesn’t get much bigger and brasher than Michael Bay, so the Transformers director was a natural choice for the new Need for Speed trailer. The result is presented as “a trailer though the eyes of Michael Bay”, and his influence is clear. There are the quick cuts, the sub-bass throb of improbable engines and an entire arsenal of bullets and blasts.

“When you think about it, Bay is the perfect match for the Need for Speed game he’s selling,” says Empire’s Ali Plumb. “Let’s face it, no matter what you think of Bay or his blockbuster movies, the man knows his adverts! It’s got loads of quick cuts, plenty of action, a voiceover, screeching tyres – sure, it’s not going to win any Oscars, but it’s solid work and it certainly makes audiences, including me, want to play the game.”

call OF DUtY: MODERn WaRFaRE 3goo.gl/2wI14

Call of Duty was always going to be the biggest grossing game release of the year, so it follows that its trailer should get the big money treatment. Sam Worthington and Jonah Hill are the superstars called in to represent gamers in a world of CoD, with Worthington’s The Vet offering sage advice to Hill’s n00b. The pair set off across battlegrounds taken from the game – New York, Berlin and Paris are all recognisable; even the zero-gravity aeroplane fire fight is in there – and as AC/DC’s screaming ‘Shoot to Thrill’ reaches its crescendo, n00b proves himself a worthy warrior.

But forget the explosions – the most remarkable feature of this trailer is its willingness to laugh at itself. It feels like a sign of confidence; CoD is so big that its marketers don’t feel they need to use their seconds telling the audience what the game is all about, so they can have a bit of fun instead. Gwilym Mumford, writing in the Guardian, isn’t convinced, complaining that “It’s all a bit sub-Michael Bay: production values that bring to mind those ropey made-for-TV films on SyFy with titles like Goliath Walrus v RoboSquid, with Hill and Worthington phoning it in.” But, he concedes, “this does feel like the start of something... How long before Sean Penn dons a Styrofoam Pac-Man costume and starts writhing around on the floor for his ‘art’?”

The fact is that this Call of Duty trailer is the only one that seems to have a sense of humour, but could that be the way games

marketing will go? Keep an eye out for this year’s batch of videogame trailers – Penn might not be the only one dusting down the costume.


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BELOW Kem wears Adidas 3 Stripe windbreaker (£50); Adidas 3 Stripe tee (£19)

BELOW Doja wears Adidas Iconic 3 Stripe hood (£42); Adidas Supernova long tight (£38); Adidas Response Cushion trainers (£75)Holly wears Adidas Cool training hood (£50); Adidas Supernova long tight (£38); Adidas Response Cushion trainers (£75)Chantel wears Adidas Supernova longsleeve tee (£32); Adidas 3 Stripe tight short (£24); Adidas Response Stability trainers (£75)

We put the PlayStation Vita through its paces with East London’s most promising young athletes

FIT FOR PURPOSEP H O T O G R A P H Y S A M C H R I S T M A S


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BELOW Doja wears Adidas Iconic 3 Stripe hood (£42); Adidas Supernova long tight (£38); Adidas Response Cushion trainers (£75)Holly wears Adidas Cool training hood (£50); Adidas Supernova long tight (£38); Adidas Response Cushion trainers (£75)Chantel wears Adidas Supernova longsleeve tee (£32); Adidas 3 Stripe tight short (£24); Adidas Response Stability trainers (£75)

Come the summer, Terrence McMillan Stadium in Plaistow will be home to some of the world’s most famous athletes as Team USA moves in for the duration of the Olympic Games. The Americans aren’t here yet, but when we visit on a cold winter’s night the place is packed; the Newham and Essex Beagles are one of the country’s most successful athletics clubs and they’re holding their Monday club night. Current stars include Mo Farah, Iwan Thomas and Christine Ohuruogu, and tonight the club’s younger members are running, jumping, hopping, skipping and throwing their way towards greatness.

It’s fair to say they’re more active than the average man or woman on the street, so when we decided to test the new PS Vita on some real gamers, we turned to them. As we unpack our bags the devices are met with excitement, followed quickly by confusion – the athletes aren’t used to navigating a handheld

FIT FOR PURPOSEconsole using touchscreens. But once they start swiping and tapping, they find their way around the games, and it’s not long before they’re getting into the gaming.

“There’s loads of technology out there these days, but this feels different,” says 400m hurdler Lennox Thompson. “The PSP is good and everything, but the PS Vita is way better. I definitely want one – if I had one I’d play it while I was on the coach or the train going up to Manchester or Birmingham. In the summer I travel to athletics meetings pretty much every weekend and having one of these would make the time go by!”

As you can see from the pictures, they had a great time (and we did too). Thanks very much to Elyzabeth and all the coaches and athletes at Newham and Essex Beagles – see you in Rio in 2016.

BELOW Kem wears Adidas 3 Stripe windbreaker (£50)Lennox wears Adidas 3 Stripe Essential full zip hood (£45)Jedidiah wears Adidas 3 Stripe windbreaker (£50)


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Emma Nwofor, 15Heptathlon

“It’s really interactive – you can connect with other people who have got the console too, so you can play together with your friends. I really liked that.”

Kem Ofoegbu, 19Triple jump and long jump

“I love it – I played ModNation quite a bit – it’s like Mario Kart but better! It feels quite a lot lighter than the PSP, so that’s a good thing too.”

Lennox Thompson, 18400m hurdles

“It feels really smart. I liked the go-karting game – I like my racing games. I like winning.”

Rihards Golsts, 19800m

“It’s awesome – I love it. The camera, the big touchscreen, the graphics… it’s got everything.”

Holly Thomas, 17Hurdles

“I’ve got a DS and it’s quite limited really – you can do a lot more with the PS Vita and it’s more exciting to play. I definitely want one when it comes out.”

Demi Bromfield, 16Javelin

“I really liked Reality Fighters – you take a picture of yourself and then you use your own face on your fighter, so you really feel like you’re in the game.”

“It’s really interactive – you can connect with other people so you can play together with your friends.”

BELOW Lennox wears Adidas 3 Stripe Essential full zip hood (£45); Adidas Essential 3 Stripe pant (£39); Adidas Originals Beckenbauer trainers (£75)Jedidiah wears Adidas 3 Stripe tee (£19); Adidas Essential 3 Stripe pant (£39); Adidas Originals Beckenbauer trainers (£75)Kem wears Adidas 3 Stripe tee (£19); Adidas Originals Beckenbaur trainers (£75)


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BELOWDemi wears Adidas Young Image suit (£65)

David Kail, 185,000m & 2,000m steeplechase

“The graphics are excellent and it feels like a real step up. The PSP was just you on your own, but this feels much more like you’ll play with friends.”

Brogan Harris, 17Javelin

“When we’re on the minibus going to events it gets pretty loud, but it would be even louder if we had a PS Vita on there as well – everyone would be wanting to get a go on it!”

Jedidiah Rimell, 16200m and 400m

“I reckon when it comes out it’s gonna be bangin’! It’s like an iPhone but it’s got loads of extra stuff for playing games – it’s electronical fun!”

Chantel Grey, 16100m and 200m

“The augmented reality was amazing – you could change the background and move around. It seemed like you were really there.”

Nakole Iddirisu, 19400m and 800m

“The front and rear touchscreens are both really impressive, and the whole thing just works. When I first picked it up it felt like it was maybe a bit too light, but after a few minutes I got used to it and it’s just right.”

Doja Atanda, 18400m

“It’s got front and back cameras, so you can take a picture of yourself and use it in a game. You can really play as yourself – it’s amazing!”

“It’s really interactive – you can connect with other people so you can play together with your friends.”

LEFT Emma wears Adidas Cool training hood (£50)Kem wears Adidas 3 Stripe windbreaker (£50) David wears Adidas Essential 3 Stripe tracktop (£40)

James Bramble drops into PlayStation Home and fi nds a place populated by the smart, the stylish and the outright weird

I L L U S T R AT I O N A N DY J . M I L L E R

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“you can be whoever you want

to be. you don’t have to limit

yourself to your size or your shape

or your gender. The rules are thrown away.”thrown away.”

ake a stroll around Home, PlayStation’s virtual social gaming platform, and you’ll quickly realise that this is a place obsessed with appearances. For some people that means dressing head-to-toe in designer gear, for others it’s about wearing their favourite band t-shirt, and for a few it means running around dressed as a drunk lobster.

This is where fashion and gaming meet, in a place that has done away with the rules and limits of the real world. And ironically it’s exactly that shedding of restrictions that has turned Home into a place where big brands and the most forward-thinking designers come to test their real-world ideas.

“I like computer games and I thought it would be a good opportunity to show my work in a new environment,

to a new audience,” says Jon Burgerman, a New York-based artist and designer who recently created a collection of animated streetwear for Home.

“It makes it a lot more accessible – you might sell a top for £100, which is kind of expensive, but you could sell a digital version of it very cheaply. From a marketing and advertising point of view you’re getting people to enjoy your work, and maybe the next time they see this cool thing they might be tempted to buy it, or at least enjoy it.”

Burgerman says he was also attracted by the fact that making clothes for Home gets rid of some of the biggest headaches of fashion design. With no manufacturing, distribution or environmental concerns to worry about, he found himself free to focus his energies entirely on the creative process. “It’s kind of the most environmentally sound way that you can create a collection of clothing,” he laughs, “…by not actually creating any real pieces of clothing!”

This ease of creation is essential to the success of Home’s fashion scene, since its users demand a constant supply of fresh products. Ali Bergstrom-Allen is Head of Production for Home, and says that she spends a lot of her time making sure there’s as much variety as possible within the virtual world.

“We’ve got really excellent customisation options that let you change your hair, your face, pretty much everything,” she explains. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for people to make a statement about who they are, but it’s diffi cult to have your own identity if you don’t have enough clothes to choose from.

“We want to get as much as we can in there, so for example now you can wear full-body outfi ts. That was something you couldn’t do for a while, but we’ve been trying to catch up with what the users want as quickly as we can, so now you can wear diff erent constituent parts or you can stitch it all together.”

A QUESTIOn OF TASTE

It’s a far cry from the early days of Home, when one’s sartorial choices were limited to far more basic options. In those early months it was all about t-shirts; relatively easy for developers to make and a safe bet with Home’s users, the t-shirt quickly emerged as one of the top-selling items in Home’s stores. It didn’t take long for real-world brands to spot an opportunity in this burgeoning world, and popular labels like Diesel and Billabong have sold virtual versions of their clothes in Home’s stores since almost the very beginning.

It’s easy to see the appeal for brands. As Burgerman says, there’s a sense of being able to try before you buy; the opportunity for users to put on a piece of clothing for a fraction of what it would cost in the real world. But that’s not to say users are expected to buy a Diesel t-shirt in Home and then actually dash out to the shops for the real-world equivalent.

Rather, having a presence in Home provides another way for brands to build a relationship with their customers and potential customers. That’s one of the reasons why you won’t always spot a piece of branded clothing in Home; just as we don’t always want to plaster ourselves with logos in the real


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world, the same is true in the virtual sphere and branded clothing bought in Home can often be subtle – discrete even.

And then there’s the question of taste. Trends come and go, and that’s just as true in Home as it is in the real world. Bergstrom-Allen says she remembers when the t-shirts and jeans of early Home began to be replaced by weirder, wackier outfits, “and then after a while people started saying, ‘we want more normal clothing back again!’”

Tastes change according to place too – just look at the ever-tricky issue of skinny jeans. Nottingham-based Lockwood Publishing makes a huge variety of products for avatar customisation, selling everything from girly bear costumes to lifeguard outfits. But it was their line of leg-hugging denim that really upset American users when it first launched stateside.

“We have a main client base in America and we quite often try UK fashion over there,” explains Lockwood’s Cathrin Machin. “I remember when, about two and a half years ago, we first brought out skinny jeans in America. There was absolute outrage, with pages and pages of discussion in the forum and people asking, ‘What is this? What is this style? I don’t get it!’ But then on the threads where users post pictures of themselves, we saw it slowly creeping into how they dress.”

Bergstrom-Allen says she also sees geographical differences in Home: “Europe tends towards the more traditional, normal looking clothes. If you’re walking around you don’t see that many people in crazy items. The US is very different; you drop into their hub and it’s a menagerie – it’s really quite amazing.”

But don’t be fooled into thinking that we Europeans are all buttoned-down models of respectability. Want to buy an adult-sized nappy to wear out next weekend? It’s yours. How about a nice pair of nerd glasses to go with your baboon butt? Suits you, sir. Because at the end of the day, the avatar you bump into could belong to a student, a fashionista or a chief executive, but they’re all gamers. And wherever they’re from, above all else they want to have fun.

PLAyInG WITH FASHIOn

That’s why you can’t always buy the clothes you want in Home. Sometimes items are only available as special rewards for completing challenges, or for simply being in the right place at the right time. (That drunk lobster outfit, for example, could be won by playing Oscar’s Lobster Mania, a game in which the player fired lobsters into an open mouth.) It’s all part of the gamification of the virtual world, designed to appeal to gamers and their avatar selves.

One of the most popular games in recent months was the Uncharted takeover of Home’s Adventure district, which provided a third-person adventure experience inspired by Uncharted: Drake’s Deception. It essentially allowed gamers to play Uncharted, but controlling their own avatar instead of the game’s hero, Nathan Drake. Players could win rewards within Home, but could also unlock special content in the main Drake’s Deception game.

It makes sense that gameplay should be at the heart of a world created by PlayStation, but Home’s creators are also keen that fashion should encourage interaction and sociability amongst users. Bergstrom-Allen explains:

“There’s a plethora of costumes that you can only get for a certain time or by doing a certain thing, and that means there’s a lot of kudos attached to some items. Pretty soon there will be the ability to find out what people are wearing and how they got it, which should spark conversation. So even if you were a bit shy about talking to people before, your avatar and your clothing will attract attention and hopefully draw people out of themselves, which is nice.”

This fusion of fashion and social gameplay shows a level of ambition that goes beyond simple brand tie-ups and the occasional purchase of a new pair of trainers. Yes, Home can be used as a great marketing medium, and yes, it’s incredibly easy to buy virtual items for your avatar. In fact in many ways it’s a marketer’s dream – most billboards are interactive, so all you have to do is touch them and you’re taken to a shop where you can buy the product being advertised.

But Home is also a place of creative freedom, where fashions can be experimented with and real world boundaries overcome. For Lockwood’s Machin, Home is a place where a diverse community comes together to try out different trends and ideas.

“I think that in Home people can be a truer version of themselves,” she explains. “Because you can be whoever you want to be – you don’t have to limit yourself to your size or your shape or your gender. You wouldn’t normally walk out of your house in a bikini, but in the digital world none of that actually matters – the rules are thrown away.”

GoodBytes

Describe your lookGoodBytes is wearing an open black shirt over a white t-shirt, with white jeans, black and white checkered slip-on Vans, classic Top Gun aviator sunnies and double friendship bracelets.

How did you choose it?It’s mostly based on what I wear in real life. I spend quite a lot of time picking out clothes as I like to look my best.

What does your look say about your avatar?It says that GoodBytes is relaxed and appreciates simplicity with style.

And what does it say about the real-life you?It says I’m bright, cool, stylish, realistic and relaxed.

whiteboy38rams

Describe your lookI am wearing a Killzone torso, Socom trousers, boots and helmet. The horns and claws are rewards from an X-Men promo and Neptune suite.

How did you choose it?I wanted a Manhunt look as it’s one of my favourite games. I also like post- apocalyptic films, like Mad Max and Escape from New York. What does your look say about your avatar?He likes Manhunt and Mad Max, and don’t spill his pint or he’ll slice ya up.

And what does it say about the real-life you?That I need help! And it probably shows that I’m a sci-fi and fantasy fan.

Getthe LookFive Home boys and girls talk us through their avatar style

Joanna_Dark_

Describe your lookIt’s the red dragon dress from Costumes, matched with the hood from the Sorceress costume and the yew bow, also from Costumes.

How did you choose it?I love fantasy and real-life clothes, especially if they’re fashionable and feminine.

What does your look say about your avatar?Oh my. I think others would need to judge that.

And what does it say about the real-life you?I do love dressing up in real life. I wish we had more opportunity to have fun with fantasy outfits other than at Halloween. Home allows us to express ourselves.

Tayler_Amaya

Describe your look Tayler is wearing the white Drey Muse outfit. How did you choose it? I wanted to wear something modern that was also very stylish. What does your look say about your avatar? It says minimum fuss, maximum style. And what does it say about the real-life you? I like to look nice and smart.


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Fritches

Describe your lookI’m wearing an Audi branded jacket from the Audi Terminal Store, with baggy jeans and brown and white shoes with black trim, all from Threads. And I’m carrying a PS Vita, which was an E3 2011 reward.

How did you choose it?These clothes are based on what I wear in real life.

What does your look say about your avatar?It says that I’m not too fussed about looking smart and prefer to be relaxed. It also says I’m into cars and gaming.

And what does it say about the real-life you?It says that I don’t know about proper high street fashion and I’m not bothered about it.

thursday More filming. Send camera crew out on what was described to them as, “a behind-the-scenes shoot in a glamorous location,” which is actually a four-hour trip up the M1 to Otley.

Reply to as many viewer messages as possible through our PSN account. Heartened by all the positive feedback; ever so slightly alarmed at the guy who’s taken the time to send us a photograph of his shopping.

Gather final few clips needed for episode. Spend hours playing through the week’s headline game in order to find a three-second piece of footage needed for a throwaway line of commentary.

Wednesday

Put the finishing touches to the last few scripts for voice-over recording session taking place in our London office, 15 minutes after the session has started.

Last week’s episode goes live on the Store. Scriptwriter Rob watches the user rating avidly for the rest of the day, entering a violent depression if it falls below 4.8 stars.

Piece together a full rough version of the week’s episode to send over to the guys at PlayStation for approval. Video editors race to have their edits completed first. The winner gets a biscuit, which, as office tradition has it, is entirely fictional.

tuesday Chase PR handling blockbuster title to confirm Game of the Week slot in an upcoming episode. Assured that B-roll of said game is, “in the post,” which from this PR usually means, “might as well be on the moon because you’ll never see it”. Start calling other PRs.

Attend weekly catch-up meeting at Sony HQ, during which we nod along as people say SOE, CPC and other acronyms that we have to secretly look up online afterwards.

Film interview with high-profile developer at packed preview event. Delighted to see media-savvy game reps have scoured London for the darkest, loudest location ever. Ideal shooting conditions.

MondayStart the morning by checking the YouTube comments for the previous week’s episode. This may induce fury, in which case stare at gifs of kittens for several minutes.

Assemble team for the weekly planning meeting. On the agenda: content plan for the new episode, itinerary of shoots and developer interviews, further investigation into what the green liquid that comes out of the drinks machine is supposed to be.

Confirm Lucy for the Wednesday voice-over session and get stuck into the scripts for that episode. Rewrite the same gag for half an hour before giving up and writing instructions for Lucy to make a weird noise instead.

You probably already know that Access is a magazine. It’s in your hands, after all, and that kind of thing is hard to miss. But did you know that it’s also a weekly 10-minute show featuring the latest games and taking you behind the scenes of the biggest events?

Access TV is available on the PlayStation Store every Wednesday, and then online every Friday at youtube.com/playstationaccess. Comedian Lucy Porter is the voice of the show, and six of us work behind the scenes in the production office in Bath to make the whole thing come together. This is what a typical week looks like. Sort of.

fridaySubmission day begins with an email from the guys at PlayStation, listing a series of mistakes they’ve found in the episode and asking us to fix them. Blame is silently apportioned to the guilty parties.

As the week’s final deadline approaches, tempers fray. The lunchtime game of FIFA is abandoned unfinished and one team member accuses another of eating a 16GB memory card containing crucial event footage.

After an excruciating afternoon of sound mix tweaks and watching video export progress bars, the finished episode is sent to the PlayStation Store team with minutes to spare. Everyone sighs deeply. Then starts planning for next week...

AccESSAllAREASNathan Ditum, editor of Access TV, gives us an insider’s view of how the show is made

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’ve always wanted to be a racing driver,” says Jann Mardenborough. “I know a lot of people say that – ‘oh, I want to be a footballer, I want to be a racing driver’. But since I was eight years old when I first found out you could race for a profession, that’s all I’ve wanted to do.”

The difference is that Mardenborough made it happen, taking the podium at the Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai in January. And he made it happen fast – last year he was a 19-year-old student who had never even sat in a racecar, let alone piloted one to victory against a field of professional drivers. Welcome to GT Academy, the competition that turns gamers into real-world racing drivers, and changes lives along the way.

GT Academy 2011 began in January last year with gamers hot lapping on Gran Turismo (“literally four or five hours a day for two weeks solid,” says Mardenborough). The fastest gamers from the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain were invited to national finals in May, where they were put through their paces in fitness tests and media interviews, and finally let loose in Nissan’s 3.7-litre, 323bhp 370Z. Driving under tuition from professional instructors, the candidates were gradually whittled down until just two from each territory remained.

That left 10 drivers eligible for the International Final at Silverstone in June. The four-day itinerary saw the best gamer drivers from across Europe going head to head in a series of ever more demanding challenges, all carefully monitored by head judge and Formula One star Eddie Irvine. Drivers were knocked out at each stage until just four were left to scrap it out in one final race. Mardenborough was up against drivers from France, Spain and Italy, and when he took the chequered flag, “I knew my life was going to completely change from that moment.”

It had taken him just five months to go from regular gamer to GT Academy champion, but the hard work was only beginning.

Steven Watson speaks to Jann Mardenborough, the Welsh teenager who went from gamer to professional racing driver in less than a year

He went home to Cardiff and had a couple of weeks to prepare before moving to Northampton, to begin an intensive training programme at Silverstone with top racing team RJ Motoring. A gruelling six months later he joined 2008 GT Academy winner Lucas Ordoñez, 2010 winner Jordan Tresson and US GT Academy winner Bryan Heitkotter, to make up the world’s first all-gamer car in Dubai’s formidable 24-hour endurance race.

“Our team manager sat us down and told us that we had a lot of people here from Nissan and Sony. They’d flown to Dubai to watch us race, so we wanted to put on a show for them to say thank you for the opportunities that all four of us have been given. We had a responsibility to look after the car and make sure it lasted to the end, and all four of us took on that role.

“We raced for 24 hours and we finished without a scratch on the car – there were more experienced drivers coming home with bumpers ruined and lights broken, but we didn’t touch one car. Everyone drove within themselves and we were really quick as well.”

Finishing third in class and 26th overall, the gamers’ success was testament to their skill and a vindication of the entire GT Academy programme, which first began as a seed of an idea from Kazunori Yamauchi, president of Polyphony Digital Inc, the maker of Gran Turismo.

“It’s been quite fascinating from my perspective,” says David Wilson, Head of PR for PlayStation in the UK. “We’ve always mooted Gran Turismo as being the ultimate driving simulator, so the question was, can we prove that by taking people who are really competent in the game and trying them out on the track?

“At the outset there was a fair degree of cynicism. It’s really hard for somebody to put themselves centre stage in the world of racing and it costs a lot of money. I remember speaking to the motoring press in those early days and nobody could believe that a gamer would be able to transfer their skills to the motoring domain, but we’ve won those people over completely. These days we’re almost seen as a legitimate route into the sport, because Jordan and Lucas have both done really well and we’ve proven ourselves as a team.”

But still, the race is far from over for Mardenborough. He’s had a taste of the racing life, and he says he’s determined to follow in the footsteps of Ordoñez and Tresson and fulfil his childhood dreams of becoming a professional racer. And that doesn’t mean he’ll stop being a gamer.

“I play for fun. I had a winter break over Christmas so I went and played a lot online, racing against other guys. They recognise my PSN tag and know that I was the recent winner, and that’s pretty cool… But it means I’m basically the target of the room!”

GT Academy winners (from left) Jann Mardenborough, Bryan Heitkotter, Jordan

Tresson and Lucas Ordoñez with their car at the Dunlop 24 Hours of Dubai.

About usAccess is published for Sony Computer Entertainment UK Ltd by The Church of London71A Leonard Street London EC2A 4QS

Editor Steven Watson

Art Director Anna Dunn

Sub Editor Liz Haycroft

Creative Director Rob Longworth

Editorial Director Matt Bochenski

Publisher Danny Miller

For SCEE Project Manager Carl Christopher-AnsariPlayStation Access Community Manager Michael ShillingfordExecutive Sub Editor David WilsonLegal Alessandro Cimashi and Jill Levene

no joking04 | Comedian Ed Byrne gets serious about gaming

ThE indEpEndEnTS06 | Keeping it creative with the indie game makers

TrAilEr SmASh10 | Videogame trai lers get the Hollywood treatment

UndEr ThE hood12 | What makes the new PS Vita so special?

SprinT STArT14 | We put the PS Vita through its paces with real gamers

in FAShion18 | Style gets playful in PlayStation Home

TV STArS22 | Take a look behind the scenes on Access TV

Boy rACEr23 | Meet gamer - turned-racer Jann Mardenborough

Thanks to Lucy Armstrong, Gary Aspden, John Booth, Darren Cairns, Mike Chetcuti, Adam Grant, Rosie Holden, Pam Lucktung, and Elyzabeth Shitta-Bey and everyone at the Newham and Essex Beagles Athletics Club

Printed by Polestar Group

The next issue of Access is out in April. Until then, keep up with all the latest Access news and events at facebook.com/playstationaccess, or on Access TV, available to download every Wednesday from the PlayStation Store, and every Friday on YouTube and iTunes

Playstation ACCESS Issue 2

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Transcript of Playstation ACCESS Issue 2