Lionhead are a British game company and more often than not this is reflected in their games, as well as their public identity. In this post I will be looking at how Lionhead use cultural references to build unique worlds and create fan-bases in Britain and overseas.
Almost all of their games are set in the UK or in fictional worlds resembling Britain's varying stages of development.
Theme park[10] was set in the UK[1] in the present, presumably 1994 when it was made. As the game progresses and once enough money has been made the player can move on to newer plots. Plots are located all over the world and have many different factors that affect gameplay.[1] A later DS version of the game by EA Japan included area-specific shops and amusements
"For example, we have traditional castle-looking attraction for Japan, a café that looks like a double-decker bus for England, etc. I am especially fond of the Coffee-Cup attraction that you will encounter in Brazil, which has a very Brazilian, carnival look to it." said Game Designer Toshiyuki Nagahara,[2] something I find only charmingly stereotypical and would personally enhance my gameplay experience. When playing
Theme Park World[11] (a later spin off, mentioned in the post covering Bullfrog, also set in the UK) my favourite part was unlocking new features and I always liked the idea that my theme park was somewhere in the UK when so many other games didn't attempt to ground any realism, let alone something so close to home. I found this comforting and quite special, at this age most of the other games films that created engaging worlds to me were set in the US or in fictional worlds, made by US based companies. Even the annoying park advisor of
Theme Park World would have been more annoying in anything other than his rather calming Scottish drone.
I remember feeling this again when playing
Black & White[9], 2001, the voice acting was a surprise when I first began the game - I wasn't expecting such heavy British accents. After playing the game a while I liked it, a lot! I felt I could connect more, and the starter Norse villages I made felt more... local. It was as if I were playing with a toy of an old Saxon village I had visited on a school trip, but I got to plan it from the ground up, also there was a massive cow or tiger... Another touch I loved was that every civilian in the game was named, to my understanding with the name of someone who worked on the game and their families (including Peter Molyneux), a creative way of showing the credits as well as equality among the Lionhead team. I personally found the cultural references very appealing and, as I stated before, in these games I found something most popular children's entertainment did not satisfy.
In an attempt to make
Black & White even more immersive you could set the weather conditions of the game to 'localised' which matched the weather conditions of the post code or zip code you provided. Although fascinated by this I opted out of the feature in fear that it would always be dull and I would never see conditions such as snow in the game.
The
Fable[12] series is set in a land named Albion, an archaic name for Great Britian.[3] Although all of the villages and names are entirely fictional the world heavily resembles Britian's varying stages of development.
This time the voice acting is taken a step further than
Black & White and (as briefly covered in earlier posts) a cast of contemporary British actors and comedians provide an intertextual level of popular culture. This is extremely popular among British audiences, and from web communities and online reviews seems to be popular overseas. The Observer[4] said the original
Fable had a
"very British sense of humour, in the style of Monty Python[5]
or Douglas Adams.[6]
"[7] and it at least achieved commercial success in North America, selling 375,000 copies during its first week.[8]
I already suspected that British cultural prominence helps form the Lionhead company identity and is a huge part of their appeal as a company and for their games. I had not expected to find that my personal experience of Lionhead and Bullfrog games was so affected by this.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_%28computer_game%29, Dec 2009
[2] http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=156590, Dec 2009
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion, Dec 2009
[4] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/, Dec 2009
[5] http://pythonline.com/, Dec 2009
[6] http://www.douglasadams.com/, Dec 2009
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable_%28video_game%29, Dec 2009
[8] http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/microsofts-fable-sells-375000-units/, Dec 2009
[9] Black & White, 2001, Lionhead Studios/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac
[10]
Theme Park, 1994, Bullfrog Electronic Arts, PC
[11]
Theme Park World, 1999, Bullfrog/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Playstation 2
[12] Fable, 2004, Lionhead Studios/Microsoft Game Studios/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Xbox
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