Comic Book Guy: The Forgotten Festival

Amongst the jokers, the jugglers, the off-beat Hemingway and the am-dram society trying to make their mark, there is still more to be found in Edinburgh during the thriving August bustle. Look deeper, past the music of Folk and Opera, past the Cabaret Burlesque dancers stealing your gaze, a little further than the Ghost Tours and there you will find The Edinburgh Interactive Festival; surely a missing piece to the cultural jigsaw of modern day artists? It fits alongside all the other art forms (apart from the Film Festival who now go it alone in June) and is a perfect ingredient to the festival mix, isn’t it?

The Games industry is a juggernaut of financial revenue, consistently being compared pound for pound (or dollar for dollar) against the prize-fighting movie industry and frequently coming out on top. So lucrative a market is it that anyone who could diversify their medium into this field will do. Hollywood obviously didn’t waste anytime as, particularly, each new children’s film, from Harry Potter to Toy Story, will likely be accompanied upon release by a console game tie in. The comic book industry also takes their adaptations very seriously, and the journey from page to screen doesn’t just mean the big screen, but also one shiny HD TV screen for your Ps3 or Xbox to illuminate. With today’s strong market for games you don’t even need to piggyback a movie directly: games such as Batman Arkham Asylum sold huge quantities despite being released a year after The Dark Knight movie. Marvel also has independent game titles as well as bringing back retro classics (they are on the verge of releasing Marvel Vs Capcom 3 after a decade’s wait). So if the interactive media industry is as healthy as Wolverine, why then is the Interactive Festival so elusive?

This ‘festival’ lasts just two days and although it has some free public screenings, its advertising is minimal, its association with the Edinburgh Festival seems merely coincidental and ticket prices to the industry events are phenomenally high (£75 - £205). Once again the UK pales in comparisons to our bigger, brasher and bolder trans-Atlantic counterparts who provide the world with E3, a Gaming festival bursting at the scenes with show reels, exclusive footage, interviews and thrives on public interaction. This is surely is a missed opportunity for the Cultural Capital, hopefully this isn’t game over.