KEY
Bold:	Interviewer
Regular:	Respondent
[ ]:	Uncertain word(s)

Hello Daniel, can you hear me?
Hi [anonymised], yes, hi, how’re you doing?
Fine, thank you.  Sorry for the delay, I wasn’t actually aware we, you know, the interview was more from Geoffrey to me and I wasn’t aware I had to interview you now, so.
That’s okay.  
A good thing you contacted me.  
Yes. 
So thank you a lot for agreeing to be interviewed.  As we said on our email, this is an interview on your experience with games and what are your thoughts about games, how they influence people and society in general.  I will share some PowerPoint slides with you, can you see them?
Yeah, I can see that, yeah, all good.  
Okay.  These are slides just to help us guide our conversation, so I will share with you some key words like this, that you are free to use, you are not required to use them, but they can give you some help in some questions that may be difficult to tackle at the beginning, okay?
Okay.  
Do you have any questions about the interview? 
No, just more about what the output of it was, what’s the purpose of the interviews and what’s your kind of final objectives. 
Yes, this is part of a bigger project on the impacts of games on people and society, so we – in the first part of the project we did a little of bibliographic research to see the academic point of view and now we are conducting interviews with several people, so researchers, players, policy makers, educators, to get their insight on games; and then we will move on from that to try to find where there are mismatches and, you know, what we can gain from engaging more closely to people involved in games.  
Okay, sounds good.  
So I’d like to begin by asking you about yourself and your experience with games, so as a player what kind of games do you play and how much, and so on?
Yeah, so personally I’ve been playing games for a long time, I think I first played in arcades and so on, and then I guess now, I play anything, time permitting, that’s the restriction now unfortunately.  So the, having started with a PC, console, and less mobile I guess, so yeah. 
You do play also mobile, okay. 
A little bit, yeah, but not so much really, I guess if you count the Switch as my one app this year, that would be it.  
You said you play not as much as you’d like, how much do you play, how much time?
Probably, actually with the Switch more now, so I used to play, I guess I played an hour every evening, it’s the pressures of family life if nothing else, that’s really the restrictor, so I try and play an hour every evening, but I guess with the Switch and so on, the more mobile devices, I probably play a couple of hours a day.  
When did you start playing?
1980, no a bit later, ’85 maybe, yeah. 
Okay, quite a bit of time ago. 
Yeah, yeah. 
How old are you now?
Forty-five.  
So you’ve probably seen quite a bit of evolution in games, I’d say.
Yeah, but I mean fundamentally the core of them remains the same, they are fun, immersed and so on, but I mean increasingly now what we’re seeing is obviously the, I guess the more sophisticated ideas and topics they tackle.  I mean certainly [0:04:54] games, where you play a game, you get so immersed that you can’t help but take the kind of moral point of view sometimes or, but I guess they’re more explicit now, but at their core, you know, the things that I loved about games when I first started playing is still the same things I love about games now.  
Which types of game, you say you play mostly everything, but─
Yeah, so I guess more specifically, erm, what do I play, so I see more PC games, so I play [Movers 0:05:27], well I played one [0:05:29] those two a lot, so I play really games that allow a bit more depth of thinking, but also – I’ve played a lot Zelda recently, less arcade shooters I guess. 
So moving on, I would like to ask you, well you’ve been a player for a long time, so do you believe games had an influence on you?
Yeah absolutely, I think, you know, the whole point both personally and professionally [0:06:04] is the point that it’s not just; they do have an impact on individuals but also the culture as a whole.  I think some of my, I’ve had a fairly healthy mix of, you know, of films, books, whatever, but games has undeniably has had a big effect on, you know, how you see the world and so on, and I think that’s just increasingly so, I think people are acknowledging that, it’s just as a, as the way they express culture but also the way they actually influence how people do things, like e-sports and so on, the way that they’re actually, that’s influencing.  So yeah, absolutely they do have an impact on that. 
Can you give me an example of an influence you have seen on yourself by playing?
It’s a sort of basic level, games like playing Elites, from the first one, I remember playing it huddled round a BBC micro with my mates to the new one that gives you an understanding of, I guess physics and cosmology and so on.  I think games, you know, Civilisation, but also less so obviously profound but, I don’t know, those are two good examples I guess, but they have to be─  I think the point is, it’s not just games are explicitly about educating things, [See-it 0:07:34] is the obvious one, because you’ve got to get into, it’s a simulation of world history, you’re – about world history through that.  
But even, you know, I guess things like Call of Duty will also teach you about warfare and the moral decisions involved and things like that, to a certain degree, and yeah I don’t think, I think you – I always hate the phrase, serious games, because it seems completely wrong, the whole point about games is they are fun, but games do have a meaning to them and you can learn from them.  
You say you also play online, right?
Yeah. 
Did playing games change your approach to competing with other people, collaborating with other people?
From Change-It, no, I mean I think, I did play at other sports and so, but I think it’s the same, it’s the same human instinct to play and enjoy yourself.  
I’d also like to ask you, before you talked about how games are changing, but the core remains the same, the immersion and fun, what are the elements in games that help you find this kind of feeling, if you can find that?
So, that’s a good question, I mean obviously I think the look of them and the kind of, the constant adoption of the new technologies [0:09:12] yeah they do increasingly get more, it’s ones like lifelike, it’s about, you know, the different art styles that’ll be accommodated within that and so on.  You can get sort of, you know, Zelda you get these proper moments where you’re standing on a mountain top admiring the view as it were.  But also just, you know, a bit of problem-solving, the level of concentration required I guess, you have to – with games like [0:09:36] constantly you’ve got cognitive and so on, you’re making split second decisions on – well there’s quite a lot of, there’s decision making based on a lot of variables made very quickly, so I think that is an enjoyable thing to do and if you can make the right decisions at that speed it’s very satisfying.  
So you will say that the complexity and difficulty level of a game also helps immersion, is that what you’re saying?
Yeah, I mean but then, you know, you’ve got a game ─ I played a lot of the latest Mario Kart which has, in terms of control it’s not that difficult, based on making those quick decisions and the pest developments, so yeah.  I guess, yeah, it’s like that, that magic mix of getting the difficulty curve right just against accessibility, but I think I’m more inclined towards the, the slightly more complex games rather than sort of casual games.  
Do you think games have the potential for addiction?
No, I don’t, so we get a lot, we get asked a lot from Ukie, and we’re getting – yeah, we’ve looked into it from every different side, we never put our head in the sands about it, but there is no clinical definition of it, there’s no proven link to it at all.  I think that word gets banded around kind of, as a, in a different sense, so people say, is it a good way often, you know, that’s really addictive, so it means it’s actually really good fun and people love to play it. 
I think it’s easy because the games are so amazing, to potentially play too long sometimes, but that’s like anything that’s fun, and yeah I mean the cases we’ve seen that are, have led to kind of bad results there are, in most cases, some underlying other issues that are going on with those individuals.  So yeah, the games may be seen as a cause but actually they’re a symptom of something else, there are people who may have other bad stuff going in their life, sort of chaotic lifestyles and so on.  Not all the time, I understand, but yeah I mean, there’s no, they’re not addictive in that sense.  
I find it funny that you say addictive in a good way, because I actually saw some other advertisement for games that said, this is the new most-addictive game, so putting a positive light on this kind of, you know, ‘addiction’ is a loaded word, but negatively loaded usually.  So it was funny to see this reverse up with games. 
Yeah, there was a guy – there was also, I don’t know if you saw the, when the snooker world championships, there was an Australian snooker player who was over in the UK, at a kind of snooker world championships and amazingly the headlines said he’d been addicted to video games and it was affecting his snooker, and it was weird, because I thought it wasn’t so long ago where being good a snooker was a sign of a misspent youth, and now video games─  We got contacted by the BBC or someone about it, and I was speaking to a journalist and said, wouldn’t it be actually good if it said that, a story in five or ten years’ time saying, snooker’s really interfering with my e-sports career.
Yeah, it’s a kind of a culture thing, people blame games and they don’t understand it, and yes, you can play games for a long time, because they are amazing, but if you’re sensible you get up and go for a walk and so on every now and again, it’s fine.  
Moving to the theme of our interview, do you see any practical obligation of video games, by practical I mean using video games not just for entertainment but for a specific purpose?
Yeah, absolutely, it’s partly again, both personally and professional, so at Ukie we run an initiative called Digital School House, which is all about play-based learning, so that’s not necessarily about saying, right sit down and play a video game, it’s about, a lot of it’s unplugged, so it’s using kind of games and mechanics to teach people the basis of algorithmic thinking, encourage people to look at games in the way that are kind of a creative pursuit in their own right, and yeah, on top of that I guess just the─  I’ve actually for some reason, I’ve been looking at trying to find a traffic flow simulation thing and actually you can get it in City Skyline, so things like that where you can apply – but also just, there’s a simulators level, there’s the Dota , I mean you can’t win a Dota match without coordinating as a team and thinking about tactics, strategy, all that kind of stuff, so I mean there is, yeah, a game it’s like saying, can you think of any wider applications for books, it’s funny because a game can cover any topic, anything that a book but in a different, more immersive way, so yeah I mean games, the application of games is the widest human experience.
So you think also they could be integrated into school programmes?
Yeah, I mean we already do and that’s obviously off the shelf stuff, so an example of that, we run an e-sports school tournament which uses Rocket League to get people playing e-sports into schools as it were, between schools.  But as a result of that we saw that, not only do they obviously enjoy playing the game, but they’ve formed the teams, they’ve got the organisational structures together but needed to get an e-sports tournament together and teachers were saying that they had engagement with pupils who never normally engage in class through this.  They’ve got them into thinking about technology, so yeah, it’s kind of, you can use an off the peg games to have kind of knock on positive effects as well as saying, why you don’t play Civ-5, or it 6 now, to learn about world history, so yeah it’s the more obvious ways of doing it, but also just the whole act of playing a game can actually have lots of benefits as well. 
You mentioned you use off the shelf games, do you ever use games that were developed specifically for teaching something?
Yes, so we’ve worked with some developers on that, on bespoke products.  I think some of the risk of that is, I think it’s again that, it’s that problem of those two words that don’t sort fit together, ‘serious and games’ I think so many games are based on trying to get education outcomes that they’ve become boring and no one wants to play them.  So, but there are lots of good examples out there to be fair, but I think you can, yeah, I think you’ll see more of that to be honest as actually, just rather than kind of educationalists making games, you’ll get games labs making games that educate rather than the other way around, so you will see that I think. 
Do you know the term gamification?
Yes.  
Do you have any experience with gamification or any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean it’s not a term I particularly like, but I get it, it encapsulates a lot of what’s going on.  Yeah, I sort of hear it a bit less now, there was a lot of kind of advertising agencies thinking about gamification and they can gamify marketing processes and so on, and you know, it’s cool, I think there’s something very strong there about the sense that all humans learn through play and engage through play and that has been increasingly recognised I think in education, so it maybe still is on our board, it’s setting up, school is very much an emphasis on that, about how you can rediscover the benefits of learning through play, and I think you can still, there’s all the examples of the, there’s a video on YouTube that’s been around a few year ago, about the – they were trying to encourage people in Sweden to walk up the stairs rather than take escalator, did you see that?  So they put a piano keyboard on the stairs. 
Oh yeah, I’ve seen that. 
Yeah, that one, yeah that – I think you see sort of less of that, but I think it’s the principle of, you know, play is a way of engaging with people and getting them to learn things, getting them to change behaviours, there’s definitely something in it, but I’m not sure I’m that keen on the term.  
Moving on, do you see any ethical issues in the use of games, or in the message conveyed by games?
Yeah, I mean again from what we do here at Ukie we obviously get a lot of people still saying, games are evil, they’ll melt your brain and make kids go and kill people and so on, and – but there’s nothing, I don’t think there’s anything inherently, there’s nothing inherently within games that makes them, you know, there’s no link to real world violence and there’s no evidence there for it.  I think obviously, yeah, the point is though the games are, the games have the same ethical issues as any other content, so you’ve got games for adults, games for children, the more people understand that games aren’t just for children, I think there’s still that kind of thing going, well it’s a video game so any child can play it, I think there’s still of that there.  
So I think the industry does try and do its bit to make sure that’s addressed, but─  Is that what you meant in terms of the content and the way that games are made or-?
I’m sharing the key words with you, so you can get an idea what we are thinking about.  You’ve already touched upon the link between violent content and aggression. 
Yeah, but again, you know, on that there is no – all these kind of people sort of pop up every now and again and say, oh this is terrible and so on, and there’s two things there; and when you hear that parents send their kids to play, it’s like, well they shouldn’t be there, and I was – the approach I find is best is to go, did you notice what where someone’s tortured with some bolt cutters for example, they’re like, what; you say, well yeah that’s what your kid’s playing and that’s why they shouldn’t be playing it.  
But actually, on the other side of the coin, there is no evidence to actually, you know, if you play games you do not go out and kill people, you know, I think there’s still, despite what’s going on in the world at the moment, there’s still less violent crime in certain western societies than there has been for, well ever, and that is going down.  If it was the other way around, if more people are playing video games it’d be doing the – and there was a link to violence, it would have an impact upwards, so it doesn’t add up.  I know the clinical trials that are there don’t stack up.   
I think we see less of finger-pointing at the games industry for that; I mean looking at some of your other things that people─  One of the things we’re very keen on doing is the whole gender diversity point.  I think, yeah there is much more to do with that, I don’t think it’s restricted just to games, I think the text sector generally is, probably is bad diversity-wise, but it’s not like we’re saying, it’s not a problem, so there’s lots that we’ve done to inspire women and people from different backgrounds into the sector, and that’s an ongoing effort and I think it is changing more, despite [0:21:49] and so on, but we’re seeing more female developers, we’ve got a good representation of female, the senior games industry, women on our board and so on, so it is happening more but more needs to be done.  
But you think this is improving in general not just in your specific context?
Within the games sector?  Is that what you mean, is it improving generally in the games sector?
Yeah. 
Yeah, I mean it’s a long way to go but I think there are, there seems to be willingness at the senior levels to do something about it and therefore that can only, hopefully go in the right direction; it can’t get much worse to be honest with you. 
Another thing I was thinking, you say you use games for teaching and education.
Hmm-hmm. 
I was also thinking, do you see any obstacles or opportunities stemming from using games with people with disabilities?
Yeah absolutely, one of the people we work very closely with is Special Effect, do you know them at all?
Sorry?
Special Effect, it’s a charity.  
Oh no, I don’t know about it. 
Well just look at them because that will answer your question entirely.  So they’re a charity that uses games to help people with disabilities to play games and engage with people on a level playing field as it were.  So go to their website and look at some of the videos on there, I means they’re absolutely amazing, really inspiring; but again it’s the ability of games to – yeah, someone disabled to be able to play someone not disabled at FIFA or something and without any kind of hindrance to it, it’s amazing.  So there is absolutely a chance to do that and more of it.  
Is it UK based?
Yeah.  Special Effect, yeah. 
Moving more onto the entertainment side of video games, the general industry of video games.  How do you think of monetisation plans, like free-to-play games and EDLCs, I mean all those games that break away from the traditional way of selling games?
Yeah, I don’t think – there was a lot of debate about it, there still is, but you know, it’s unethical and so on, and we’re actually involved with the─  There was a regulatory inquiry in the UK about that, about how you sell, particularly to children, how you represent what you’re doing, where you’re calling it a game-free and then there’s all these stories about parents going, yeah they said they were playing a free game and then I’ve got a bill for five-thousand pounds and so on.  So it wasn’t – yeah, I think there were some, when that happened there were some examples of some unscrupulous games out there that weren’t by any mainstream reputable games developers about the thing, you know, all these things about pay-up or the picture of a kitten gets killed sort of thing, all these examples that were really extreme examples but never really had much impact.  But generally there is no issue with that I don’t think, if the price is right and you’re not misleading consumers then there’s no moral issue there, and that’s, I think, what we certainly tried hard to make the case for, that there needs to be – yeah, and there’s a willingness to be transparent about it, and ultimately if people set the wrong price, people won’t play the game.  
If the community decides it’s not a good thing and therefore doesn’t work, and at best I think that model delivers more and better content to people when they want it, you know the whole, the sort of place about DLCs sometimes, like why isn’t this part of the original thing.  What is it, Destiny Ships, they found that all the DLC was actually on the disk, that was a bit, caused some hiccups.  But yeah, it’s still that ability to provide more content to people at regular basis if the price is right and I think it’s that basically, you’ve got to make money from a game and not many games do make money to be honest.  So if you can get commercial model right, I know it’s a moral issue. 
So you believe, if I’m getting you right, that it’s actually self-regulating so, I mean if the, it becomes too greedy I would say (laughs) people would stop buying that kind of games and it will die out, and for games that are just able to deliver more content with that money they will thrive and continue to be evoked, right?
Yeah. 
Is that what you’re saying?
Yeah, I mean Clash Of Clans hasn’t stayed up there, top of the charts for three years because it’s charging people too much money, it’s got the model right.  But yeah, that’s not to say there is space for the traditional model on mobile as well, so you still see, a lot of games companies still make good commercial business out of the, yeah, pay-me-in, whatever you want to call it model as well.  
Yeah it’s still a console, the console is dominated by big paid for titles and I don’t see any sign of that happening.  I think, was it some research about how consumers value content and how they still think that the money, there’s no value for money.  So I think the music industry went through a lot of fuss a few years ago, going, people going, well why should I pay to keep Bono or whoever as millionaires, they’ve got enough, anyone can make a song, they devalued the art and creation in the song.  Whereas I think this survey said that they recognised how much effort goes into making a game and therefore they’re more prepared to pay for it, and actually that affects piracy as well. 
That effects, sorry?
Piracy.  
Oh yeah.  Moving to a more abstract level, how do you feel that games impacts society?  It’s something you’ve already said, but what do you think the influence of games is on society?
It’s going to be increasingly positive, as more and more people do it, more people just see it as a cultural pastime, like reading or watching a film, or reading a book, it’s just sort of become part of it, and I think it’s been really positive.  If you think about – my experience of games now and my experience of playing games with my kids it’s just, there is, I don’t see any bad effects at all, it’s all positive, it helps experience new worlds, their online connectivity, I don’t let them go online yet, but being able to get online and interact with people who you’d never normally play with, and just the act of playing games itself, it’s just a good fun thing to do.  It’s as wholesome as going out and playing football or something, it’s just a good thing to do.  
I think increasingly, the way that people tell stories and put cultural points of views across, use games as a, more of an explicit art form as well, become more prevalent.  There’s lots of games out there, you know, this debate around a game, is it a game or is it art, is it a game or a walking simulator, it doesn’t matter, these are all kind of coming from the culture of games and that’s what is driving.  
Before you talked about children and video games, I’d like to ask you if you think that access to video games for children should be regulated?  And if so, in what way?
Yeah I mean it is to a certain extent through age ratings, and in the UK we actually have a statutory, it’s part of the law about the PEGI age rating, so – but, you know, it’s up to parents to understand what kind of content is in a game, not to sort of think, oh well let them play games because games are for kids and then they found out there’s that torture scene in GTA or whatever.  But you don’t need to regulate any more than that, I mean a lot of it has to come – the main reason is that it has to be down to the parent ultimately.  
You can’t have a games institute representative to go to every house around the country and say, don’t do this, do that, and so on.  It has to be up to the parents to have the knowledge to do something if they need to, but also the tools they’ve got.  It’s up to industry to have trends and trials, put the right information out to, you know, not market games to the wrong age groups and that kind of stuff, which is all part of the PEGI guidelines; you’re not allowed to do that.  So as long as the industry’s holding up to its side of it, I think – yeah, it’s a shared responsibility basically, the parents need to have the tools to be able to make those decisions.  
How do you see the marketing of video games, I mean how they are advertised and so on?  Do you see problems with that, or opportunities?
Again it’s like saying do you see a problem with the marketing of books, it depends on the book and the people you’re selling it to.  So, you know, if you look at – the trailer for Everything that came out, the trailer, the marketing material is up for an Oscar, so what, you know, are you judging that against an advert for the latest Call of Duty, which will be [0:31:58] someone else, there’s no, I don’t think there’s any overarching trend of moral issue with advertising and in the UK, certainly there are strict rules about what you can, how you can and cannot advertise, you can’t mislead consumers, down to, you know there was a discussion we had with the advertising association about using in-game footage and so on, you can’t, you know, that whole thing you cannot claim that, that’s one or the other.  
And also, I mentioned earlier, so if you sign up to PEGI games companies cannot advertise a sixteen-rated video game to children below that, and I know that’s difficult, because of the way people consume content on every – you know, my kids, you can stop them seeing trailers for sixteen-rated games, you can do it, but as long as you’re always aware of what they’re looking at and so on, then I don’t think there’s a problem. 
Most games make, will err on the side of caution, will not be putting out, you know, extremely explicit content that could risk being seen by young people anyway.  But if you look at the trailer for Everything, it’s an Oscar-winning, it’s an eleven minute film in its own right, Oscar-nominated, sorry.  
Another thing we’ve already touched a little upon, but I’d like to talk about it a little more is innovation in games.  You say, okay, games have changed a lot in the last decades, but you say their core remains the same. 
Hmm-hmm.
But I’d still like to know, how do you see the change and how do you see the future of video games?
Yeah, there’s a lot of very smart people work in games obviously and it is, and by its very nature it is at the cutting edge of technology and culture, and level content creation.  So when I said their core remains the same, that’s kind of a pretty general term, obviously the technology and innovation does change and improve what they look like and how you can interact with them, so the core remains the same but there’s a lot around it that goes on.  
Yeah, so all these smart people they’re leading the way in development of IA, of VR and AR obviously, in business models, engagement with customers, engagement with the public through things like e-sports, I mean there’s so much innovation going on, it’s constantly changing.  
The thing about, again our friends in the music industry, I think the problem they had a few years ago was, over twenty-five years they just had one business model and one technology, they just had a CD, and that was it, that was all they did, spent twenty-five years on that; in that twenty-five years, when you think of different formats and technologies and so on, the games you had, we had to always be cutting edge, so it’s always going to be innovative, it’s always going to be more innovative than the other preceptors and I think we should take the lead in debates about how those creative industries and creative sectors have an influence on the world, commercially and culture. 
One thing that emerged from another interview actually, is that big evolution was in online gaming because technologically we couldn’t do much online gaming in the early days of video games, and then a big – to be more and more widespread and I guess that was a little bit of a change in the core, because it became more and more a social activity.  But I don’t know how you feel about that, do you agree or disagree?
Yeah, I mean – but the core thing of a game being, it has to be fun and engaging to play, that has to remain the same, whether it’s online or offline.  
I think the online element has had a lot – I remember─  The social element’s always there, I remember playing with Lee on the BBCB and we actually sliced together two aerial leads so we could put two tellies up to it, so you could pretend you were playing multiplayer, but it was a bit rubbish to be honest.  And then obviously, now I mean Doom, local networks play Doom, so it’s – it does add a new element.  I think things like Dota where you can actually hook up and play intense tactical team based, with masses of people you’ve never met and probably never will meet, or once you meet up you play with them.  Yeah it is a big change but that’s as much as a, you know, a cultural change about the connectivity, the internet brings generally; games is part of that, but yeah. 
How do you feel about VR?
I’ve got a VR headset. 
Oh, lucky you. 
I don’t use it as regularly as I did, that’s – I think there’s still a lot to be done on the content.  There was an interesting – so games are obviously leading the way on that, I think the best content ever is games and there was an interesting thing I read the other day, a survey that said, all these 360-degree experiences have been designed when Google tracked where people were looking, and seventy-five-percent of the people, even though they had 360-degrees possible, seventy-five-percent of people looked straight ahead the whole time.  So it’s like, well what’s – it’s like watching telly on a big screen.  
But I think games do that, there are some amazing games out there.  I think the technology is still, while accessible, I don’t use mine as often as possible because it’s hard to get all the kit out, all the stuff.  I’ve got a five, so I’ve got all the tripods and everything out, so I mean it’s great when it works, but, and it does work well, but it’s just─  It will be, I think when the more AR stuff comes and the headsets get even smaller, and it will undoubted have an influence, yeah. 
Do you believe it will open new opportunities also for learning and education?
What VR and AR?
Yeah, or do you see it more on the, just the entertainment side of video games?
No, it’s both isn’t it, this is the whole point about games generally, interactive entertainment, they can do both at the same time.  They have to be one or the other.  I think I actually found it quite, I did that, the Apollo Mission, it was a simulation of Apollo 11, the first one to land on the moon, and obviously I know about that, but actually the experience of being in the command capsule or whatever as it’s drifting round the moon, it’s a quite a, a profound experience you can only have in VR so that’s pretty educational.  But ultimately it was a kind of fun, interactive experience as well, so it doesn’t have to be one or the other, it’s like games generally.  
Moving towards the end of the interview, we’ve talked a lot about opportunities of video games, and also some potential problems.  What advice would you give to different kinds of people involved with games to make this situation better or even better?
Well we’d say to educators, we’re already doing, to start integrating games and some play-based learning into schools and also just to recognise that games are the embodiment of twenty-first century skillset that everyone needs.  So it’s that amazing blend of arts, creativity and story-telling with science, physics, with maths, and of course with computer science.  It’s a very – those are skills, we’d love everyone with those skills to go and make games, but equally they go on and build jet engines, or be engineers for bridges, or whatever, it’s that sense.  
I think for institutions, so cultural institutions and governments in building this to separate down some of the kind of prejudice that may exist around games, for say arts funding for example, recognise games as a very legitimate form of cultural expression and art in their own right.  A lot of the people we speak to say about funding, well why isn’t this organisation funding and so on, there’s nothing kind of in their, you know, their governance structure that’s stopping it, it’s pure ignorance sometimes, so it’s breaking that down.  I think developers and publishers just keep on making and selling the amazing games they are, they are – to create amazing stuff.  
One of the trends we’re actually seeing with, in the UK certainly is for small businesses, there’s a lot of people making amazing content but there is a shortage of business skills, so I think it’s also, if you’re making a game you’ve got to think about how you’re going to sell it, how you’re going to run the business required to sell it. 
Okay.  What would you say to parents, you talked before about the need for parents to monitor their children, right. 
Yeah, it’s not so much monitoring I’d just start playing games with the kids, it’s fun, it’s something you can do together, and you can beat them at [Snuz 0:42:03], not out of the game, and yeah just that whole thing about actually just not, don’t be scared of them, don’t just dismiss them as some kind of frivolous pointless pastime and actually look at what some of the benefits could be to it.  My son loves them, he’s already asked me, he’s five, he’s like how do you make these things, so just giving him an understanding about how that happens, is hopefully going to inspire him to think about those skills in the future, so yeah.  
Anything you want to add we didn’t touch up, or closing remarks?
No, I don’t think so, no.  There’s quite a lot to cover there, so it’s good.  Yeah, if I think of anything I’ll drop you a line.
That’s the end of the interview then, I thank you a lot for your time and your contribution, and if you’re interested I will send you the output of our analysis as soon as we have it, so you can see what are our conclusions. 
Yeah, if you could actually.  There’s one question about the interviews you’ve done already, is there other common themes within that?
Yeah, quite a bit.  I’ve mostly interviewed players and a very common theme amongst players is the toxicity of online interactions, which is something that you didn’t mention, but it’s a very, very common topic actually. 
Yeah, that’s interesting, I think there does tend to be – how to police that is a bit of a headache and how to do that.  I think you see – it’s interesting, some games have more toxic communities than others I notice.  You can play Overwatch for example, I don’t know if it’s just the nature of the game, or nature of the communications methods, but you don’t get the same, yeah it’s not as toxic.  
Whereas Dota is really, it’s almost part of the culture; I noticed when I first started playing I was like, I’ll get some real grief for not, not deliberately doing badly, but it’s─  But then I guess once you’re immersed in it, it’s kind of part of it and actually it doesn’t normally straight into toxic, and in that example, [0:44:28] I’ve been in probably just a handfuls of examples where someone’s crossed the line and they’ve been reported to by everyone in the game, that you’re going to go up and [0:44:36] so we’ve taken action, and they won’t be playing any time soon.  So that kind of thing does work, but yeah, I wonder if there’s anything interesting about the type of game, or the type of communication channels that makes things more toxic, or less toxic. 
Another quite common theme in the interviews is a kind of scepticism towards educational games.  Optimism for off-the-shelf games used for education, pessimism towards serious games, that’s emerged in quite a bit of the interviews. 
You can tell that from me as well.  That’s not to delegate, there are still some good examples, but to say, a lot of them just, they’re not fun, and what’s the point, it’s missing the whole point of what a game can do, and especially for young people; okay, hey why don’t you play this really serious game about something really boring or why don’t you learn about movement of trade through playing Civ or city, all the infrastructure required to build a city through playing City Skyline or stuff like that, so you don’t need to reinvent some of these things, some expert game designer’s already done it for you.  
Personally I have quite a bit of doubt also on the use of off-the-shelf games, because I mean there is some kind of paradox in using games for education in that it becomes, I don’t know in some way something you have to do.  I don’t know, I have some scepticism because there are some very well-regarded off-the-shelf games which for me personally are boring because they’re not my genre, and so I think if I had to play them, I mean if I had to play Call of Duty that’s not my kind of game, I would be miserable, even if it’s a good game.  
Yeah, I agree.  But there are some, if you’re given the choice between, I don’t know, learning about physics through looking at how a racing car behaves in cars or something, or would you like to just read a book about it, it’s things like that.  I totally agree with Call of Duty by the way as well, but yeah, there is a bit of a challenge there, but still it’s like, again it’s that example of, games, there are many types of games as there are books, or there soon will be, or topics for discussion, so there will increasingly be the right kind of game for the right kind of lesson and you can’t teach anything by games, but they shouldn’t just be dismissed as frivolous pointless pastimes basically.  
Yeah.  Okay, if you don’t have any other questions I think that’s it. 
Okay good, it was good, I always love to talk about games, so it’s good. 
Thank you again and I will send the article as soon as we have it. 
Excellent.  
Thank you. 
Cheers then, have a nice day.