Robert Florence on the 'Golden Age of Gaming'

“I don’t really like my own company very much,” says Robert Florence, star of sadly defunct Burnistoun and the much missed games review show videoGaiden, when we meet to discuss the new gaming strand he's programmed at this year's Glasgow Film Festival. Don't worry, though, it’s clear from his Twitter history he’s found an outlet to distract himself in his quieter moments. Unsure which venue I mean for us to meet at, he throws it out to his 32K+ followers, and within the space of a minute has the answer, crowdsourced straight to his phone. Having a perusal down his timeline I notice that each tweet seems to be separated by only a few minutes, making me wonder if our meet-up is keeping him from something more important.

“I feel like Twitter is something that I needed when I was younger, I wish I’d had it," he says. "I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because it would've been a lot worse, I'd be tweeting more shameful stuff… but I find it really helpful. I don’t really sleep well, so it’s nice to know at 3am you can put a thought out and get something back.”

Do you think the dialogue on Twitter is different from that going on with the voice chat on services like Xbox Live?
"I love games, but I have a completely hateful experience of Xbox Live, and I say that as a white male. I’ve got a 5-year-old daughter, and I would never let her play online. I think gamers like things to feel a bit like the Wild West, but if you like things like the Wild West, you’re going to get a lot of guys in black hats.

"I think it feels like we’re on the brink of some kind of big conflict. Whenever there’s a piece on misogyny, 70% of the comments are disappointed and angry men, who are angry at their stuff getting picked at. I think things are going to turn a bit ugly. But I think [the online gaming community] are starting to self-police. We’re starting to feel shamed, rightfully shamed, about that kind of content."

How did you get involved with Glasgow Film Festival?
"I got asked at a party. GFF is different from a lot of film festivals in that it recognises that film doesn’t exist in a vacuum.I think whenever games get included in something like this, we should get behind it and support it, because one of the major issues I have is that video games tend to get ghettoised. When you have a festival being welcoming towards games, you need to embrace that. It used to be that video games were heavily informed by film. I think film is very informed by video games these days. A lot of the directors grew up playing video games.

"[Aliens: Colonial Marines] is trying to recreate sets and locations… from the film, trying to capture that atmosphere, and I think films have tried to capture that atmosphere and failed, so it’ll be interesting to see if a game manages to do it."

What separates good video games from films?
"Dark fantasy is a thing that gets ignored in cinema. For me, dark fantasy – I love Lovecraft stuff – is all about feeling alone in an unfriendly universe. It works against how video games normally work, you never really feel alone. In movies, there haven’t been that many that had that dark and depressing feel. Usually things that feel like that fail.

"There’s always a lot of conversation about storytelling in video games. I think, as a writer myself, that the fascinating thing about video games is that you can tell stories in a different way. If you don’t do that, you’re missing something.

"It’s why it’s always a bit disappointing to me, whenever you go to play the next Grand Theft Auto game, you know it’s going to feel like a lot of movies you’ve seen in the last 10 years.I like a movie to be a movie and a game to be a game. The interactivity can’t just be triggering a cutscene. It has to feel like you're creating your own story.

"The perfect model is something like Dark Souls, where the player is able to tell stories. The stories are really generated through your experiences. World creation is the most important thing in video games."

You wrote recently that you think we’re in a ‘Golden Age of Gaming.’ Do you still believe that’s true?
"I completely believe it. The amount of choice these days is unbelievable. There seem to be great games constantly appearing. We used to romanticise about ‘bedroom coders,’ where kids could just create games. But we’re back there."

Roger Ebert infamously said that games are not art. Do you think that’s a generational divide?
"I’m constantly involved in the conversation about games being art, and games being accepted. It feels like there’s a generation gap between the people having that conversation and the people just playing games. This younger generation, I don’t think they even consider it an issue. It feels like it’s baggage we carry around, where the generation coming up behind has grown up using iPads. I think games will be just part of the fabric of the whole thing. I don’t think the issue will be resolved, I think organically the debate will die.

"Sometimes you can get caught in a debate and then a few years pass, and it starts to feel like the ground’s started getting shaky. I’m 35 now, approaching 40, and it feels like your cultural relevance starts to fade. I want to feel as if I always know what people are into. But I can feel it; I can feel things I care about are starting to feel a bit old fashioned. I wonder if young people look at something [like the Oculus Rift, an upcoming virtual reality headset designed for gaming] and see something else. I constantly distrust my own feelings about stuff.

"I remember being 16, and I remember viewing people who were 35 as completely out of touch. That worries me. That worries me a lot. So, you talk about this debate, with games being accepted, and I think the bigger issue for me is me being accepted in this new world that’s to come."

What game would you recommend for people new to gaming?
"Super Hexagon – you should play it, it doesnae take long to play, you’ll only last about seven seconds. I’m terrible at it, but I’m fascinated by it."

And an underknown title that didn’t get enough attention?
"That’s a tough one… I know what it is – it’s Silent Hill: Shattered Memories on the Wii. Which is kinda the best Silent Hill game. Silent Hill 2 was a masterpiece. Even its flaws became part of how great it was. But Shattered Memories… I struggle to find much that comes close to it. Answering a ghostly phone call on the Wiimote, colouring the pictures in the psychotherapist’s office and then the house is coloured that way as well."

After Burnistoun, the BBC shows, all the writing, is ‘gamer’ still the title you most identify with?
"I’ve been writing comedy since I was 18, by profession I’m sort of a comedy TV writer. But I always come back to games. I kind of look forward to retiring at 45 and playing games for the next 40 years. I would happily just play games. And not just video games, but board games as well.

"There was a lot of drama last year about writing about games, and I remember thinking, ‘I cannae wait until I can just sit and play games, and enjoy them.’ When I did the BBC show about video games [videoGaiden], and I would go and film all day, and then go home and play games to review, I could feel the hatred for games seep in. It became work. I was feeling negative about games not because of the content, but the approach. I remember thinking I need to stop doing this. When it’s something you love, when that becomes your work, certainly if that’s being a critic, you can become quite an ugly person.

"I don’t want to lose this. If I’m going to relax in an evening I’m going to play a game, so I don’t want to lose the ability to do that. Selfishly."