Bow Street Runner: Flash game tries to bring law to the mean streets of Covent Garden in 1750
Bow Street Runner is a Flash game from Channel 4 that plunges you into the grimy, crime-ridden streets of 18th century Covent Garden and asks you to join the goon squads who tried to impose order on the city. It's full of historically accurate, Deadwood-grade foul language and squicky details.
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Bow Street Runner is set in London's Covent Garden in the 1750s. With crime and vice running at very high levels, and before the organised police force existed in England, local magistrates formed the Bow Street Runners and began to impose law and order.
(Disclosure: My fiancee commissioned this game for Channel 4)
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Most interesting and cool! It's linked to a TV series called 'City of Vice[' which is well worth seeing or making an effort to see if you're not in the UK TV broadcast area.
Awesome!
Reminds me a lot of Dynamix adventure games, like "Heart of China" and "Rise of the Dragon".
That is one neat game. Only trouble is, a mouse would come in handy.
The most awesome thing about City of Vice is that you get to hear Ian McDiarmid (aka Chancellor Palpatine) swearing like a trooper. How much better would Star Wars I-III have been if Palapatine had dropped the occasional f-bomb?
Perhaps it's fun (me, I got stuck in the water trough), but please don't associate it with the words 'historically-accurate', or pay any attention to the preamble's view of C18th London. It's end-to-end entertaining tish.
Me, I'm a bitter historian, forced to rant because (a) people learn about history through TV fiction, (b) TV producers ignore historical accuracy in favour of a good story and (c) academic historians can't or won't do anything about this.
Cut out the flash bobbins and go straight to the stories:
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
I keep meaning to watch City of Vice - is it really Deadwood-grade swearing? I miss Deadwood...
I don't know, Chris, I take it for granted that TV sexes up the story for any historical drama. This has been going on since Homer, at least, through Shakespeare to the present day. Any history I think I learn from drama I mentally mark with a "provisional" tag, to be corrected if and when I research the period in question.
I don't know where the line is, but I appreciate drama that pays some attention to historical accuracy, just as I do when the science is done right in other fiction. It's not something I expect from a story, but welcome when it is there; after all, it's a drama, not a documentary. The two forms have different truths to tell.
As far as City of Vice goes, I'm taking away the knowledge that Henry Fielding started the Bow Street Runners, that he had a blind brother, and hints of the socio-political state of Britain in the 18th century (status of blacks, women and homosexuals, for example, and the politics of crime prevention). Dramatic stuff like Fielding's kidnap by "Tom Jones" I'm taking with a pinch of salt.
The audience for these shows aren't uncritical sponges, you know.
Great setting, soundtrack and acting. However, it was very linear, I found the tests of mouse dexterity almost impossible, especially as a sometimes jerky flash movie, and at the end, you have to present pieces of evidence you've collected, which was completely confounding -- the game kept rejecting the pieces I chose to present, and anyway, the pieces were just one word labels like "letter" and "note" and such, and I didn't remember exactly what they said. Oh well. Maybe I'll try again at some point, or the next episode will be easier to work with.
Nice story, but bloody awful gameplay. I hope I wasn't expected to patch up all 3 holes in the whore. The poor strumpet died under my clumsy mouse fumblings.
I can't get it to function properly at all. The sound won't work, and when it gets past the introduction, the game screen goes black and I can't do anything. Alas. I was looking forward to playing.
@ Chris:
The game was developed (like the TV programme) with the assistance of Hallie Rubenhold, an author and historical consultant who had published books on life in Covent Garden in Georgian London:
http://www.hallierubenhold.com/
She reviewed all the game scripts for historical accuracy during the game's production, and many changes were made to make sure that the content and situations were historically accurate and consistent with records of London in this period. Obviously some of the actual narrative is invented for the game, but all the period details and references are accurate.
Disclaimer - I'm the commissioning editor for education at C4 who worked with Alice on the project. We're taking extreme care with our gaming projects this year to make sure that when we refer to history/science or other educational material that we work with qualified experts in these fields. For example - we're developing an ARG at the moment that inlcudes references to genomics, so we're in discussion with the Wellcome Trust to work with the scientists at the Human Genome Project at the Sanger Institute. We believe that you can make an entertaining, exciting game without compromising on the accuracy of the educational content.
This was quite a fun little game, here are some suggestions from someone who enjoyed it as to make it even more enjoyable:
*Minor Spoilers Below*
1) A mute sound effects, but not dialogue option. I wanted the dialogue, but found the tearing paper sound every time I clicked to be repetitive. Or just leave out the tearing paper sound.
2) Some scenes are timed but give no indication of what the user is supposed to do (or what is even possible to do.) I even replayed the game to try and do some of these, and for example, could not figure out how to intervene at the house, despite clicking on everything I could see. Consider better instructions or a "one more try" option.
3) Have an option to turn off the manual-dexterity parts. Many people could not pass these because their cursor was too jumpy in the flash interface.
4) Most of all, the evidence part needs the most work. It was really not clear to me what was expected, and how some parts of evidence were sufficient and some were not. I "lost" the game because of this. On the first question I started to submit evidence implicating the suspect into the evidence box. This was wrong though, it wanted me to put the suspect himself in the evidence box. Huh? And why is the hair good evidence, but not the hat with the same hair on it? The watch vs the scrap of paper? Good arguments could be made for each of these, but only one is "right" and getting it wrong causes the player to lose. One way to resolve this would be to have several multiple choice responses that allow the player to make sure their thoughts are on track with what the game is expecting. For example, when it really just wants the suspect's name, just give a list of the names, not names and evidence together. For the evidence itself the possible answers would include mini explanations ("The watch, because it has the victim's initials and was found on the suspect's person"), some of which could be wrong, so the player can better articulate their meaning.
Despite the constructive criticism, I really loved it! Looking forward to playing the next episode soon!!
Well, now I can get the sound to work, but the game won't finish loading. This makes me sad.
Well, what do you expect if you hire an art historian as a historical consultant? Either she's not read (inter alia) Beattie's 'Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750', or she lost that particular argument with the producer. I lost interest in it as history after that bit about there being no effective police in London before the Fieldings. But (as a mate of mine who knows loads more about this period than me concluded), Inspector Morse isn't especially accurate about Oxford in the 1980s either. It's entertainment.
It's nothing personal - I've done this sort of thing myself, and I know the way that the balance of power works. It might be entertaining, but it ain't history, even if the buttons are right.
Thanks for all your feedback on our Bow Street Runner game and for helping us dig out all the bugs in the BETA version. Your input has been invaluable and the enthusiasm that we’ve had has really buoyed the team who are currently knee-deep in building the other four episodes. Episode one should now be totally fixed and is fully launched today so give it another go… and since you guys have already had a practise you should get through to episode two with no problems. In this fixed up version your esteem will be carried over to the other episodes… so if you want to be reminded when they’re going live simply leave your email address on the form at the bottom of the game page.
That’s it for now… good luck with stitching up the harlot!
To go to the game log onto: www.channel4.com/bowstreetrunner