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The story goes that one evening David Lee Roth walked backstage, plunged his hand into a bowl of M&Ms, drew out a brown one and freaked the hell out. Van Halen's rider specified that, among many other things, the band must be provided with a supply of chocolates in the band's dressing room. Article 126 in the contract, however, complicated matters. It read: 'There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.' The clause was slotted between numerous technical specifications. After Roth wrecked the dressing room, the M&M clause gained notoriety as the perfect example of unreasonable, pernickety rock star demands. In fact, it was a shibboleth. If Roth saw a brown M&M then he knew the venue hadn't bothered to read the contract carefully. It followed that they had likely also failed to notice a host of other, more important practical requirements.
In BigFest, perhaps the last first party Sony title for the company's under-appreciated handheld, you must contend with many more demands than merely picking out certain types of sweet. In your role as a festival organiser, you must not only book and cater to the bands, but also ensure the safety and entertainment of your guests. That means hiring roadies, installing lights and speakers, booking catering vans, organising toilets and even emptying the bins. You'll need to kick-out trouble-makers, sell relevant merchandise, clear trees and debris and keep one eye on the charts and another on the wellbeing of your visitors (directing, for example, people with sniffling colds to the hot chocolate tent). Big Fest combines the customer service tinkering of Theme Park with the social features of Farmville. The result is unfamiliar.
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