 Hi, my name is Philip Burke and I'm from Tipperary Institute in Ireland and I'm founder of Computer Games Festival Games Club. I also lecture in a third level college at Tipperary Institute and the subject area that I specialise in is Games Design and Development. Okay, can you tell us about the game you're preparing for this conference and when are you going to announce it and what does it contain? Okay, so what we're doing as part of the actual workshops over the next couple of days is we're actually going to prepare a game around one of your desert animals, a gerbil and also a desert fox. And we're going to have the actual desert fox chasing that gerbil around the desert. And people involved in the actual workshops are going to help me prepare that game. So many teachers want to ask why should they use games and education? So what benefits can it have for them? Games really bring all the subject areas together. Everything from English, Arabic for preparing the actual stories for the actual games, right through to maths, science. Even art is very important, music is very important. These are all the important components of the game. So it covers all the subjects. So how can games impact children, their imagination, their motivation for learning? How can it impact them? I think when they actually have to solve, you know, creating games and creating good games is about actually coming up with innovative ideas. So I think that's the first thing is that it helps them to develop that process of becoming innovators. And also they have to develop their problem-solving skills as well because building games involves lots of things. Everything, as I said, like from storytelling, right through to the actual technology challenges that you might actually face in actually preparing and getting a game released. So you discussed the camera-based controllers and how they're used in games. So for those who didn't attend the session, can you elaborate on what they are? There are companies working on camera-based controllers. The most important one at the moment is a project called Project Natal. And already I believe there are games being prepared for this particular platform. And it's exciting from the point of view of it actually removes the actual need for the typical hand-based controller. And I'm really looking forward to actually seeing Project Natal released at the end of the year. So you discussed the 4D experience that the students went, experienced the 4D dimension. So what is 4D and how is it different from 3D and 2D? Well, for me 4D is basically using all your senses either to interact and play the game or that the actual gameplay uses your senses. An example of that is where my own students this year in preparing their game for this year's game swap is they actually used a neural impulse actuator as the actual game control. So essentially what happened was they were actually using their mind and their thoughts to actually control the character in the game. So also one of the points you discussed is the use of games in mathematics and how they relate it to matrix. So also can you briefly explain that? Everything in math is important from the point of view of games development. We mentioned everything from linear equations to write true to matrix and matrix transforms. Matrix transforms is the most important thing from the point of view of 3D games. And I think in actually if teachers can elaborate a little bit more to students from the point of view of what they're actually covering in math and where it actually relates to real worth situations like developing games. So I think students will actually begin to appreciate more how important mathematics is. Okay, so first student wants to develop his own game and fourth teacher wants to embrace games in education. What advice would you give to each sector or each segment of this? One of the things that we found very successful in Ireland is we as part of the games lab we run an event called the XNA Ireland Challenge. Not only do we involve students from colleges and universities but we also involve second level schools. And I've seen kids from 13 years of age come up with really innovative ideas as regards games and actually implement those. So do everything from preparing the music, preparing the art to actually programming those games. And one of the actual tools that really helps with that is a development environment called XNA Game Studio. So you also discussed the tips for designing a game. And there were really important tips regarding harmony, regarding audio and having kids not to be so involved with the game because they may get tired of it. So can you highlight on these points? It's important when you're actually coming up with your ideas for the games that you actually test those against as many people as possible. The longer you're actually involved in the actual process of creating your own game the less objective you become. So that's why it's really important to bring in new people all the time, look at how they interact with the game that you're actually playing and see that it continues to be fun. So that's one of the key things. And you asked about harmony as well. That is one of the most difficult things to achieve. It's that harmony between the music, between the actual gameplay and even just the balance of the game. Getting that actually right is a challenge and that's where you need feedback from as many people as possible. Also one type of game you discuss is role-playing games. So how are they different from the usual games we know? When I was actually talking about role-playing games I mentioned one in particular where we did a collaboration project with a local theatre who were running a youth outreach program. So what we did was we actually, during that summer workshop we actually built a game, a role-playing game and we also created a script for the game as well. And we combined both gameplay and actual theatre performance. That was pretty unique. I haven't heard of it happening before. Literally we had 30 to 40 people on stage and the audience were actually controlling the next acts and the next scene that would actually happen out on stage. So how important is audio to the game? Can we have games without audio and will they be successful? Audio, I suppose there's a couple of things. There's the music that you hear or the actual audio cues that you hear. I think it's an absolute component from the point of giving feedback to the user. They must understand place and time and one of the ways in which people understand place is from what they hear around them. I think one of the examples that we gave in the workshop today was if a conversation is happening on my right side I'd like to actually hear that in the earphone on the right. And all those cues build up to create that immersive gaming environment. So many students would think that if they create a game they would never compete with multinational expensive games. So how can a student make his game even though it's simple but make it unique? One of the examples that we mentioned in the workshop is what we participated in is an event called Global Game Jam which is run by the International Games Developers Association. And what happens as part of the Global Game Jam over 48 hours you actually build a game. So literally on 5pm on a Friday you get a team for a game. The team this year was actually deception. And then by 5pm on Sunday you actually have to have a finished title. So those type of events really focus on innovative gameplay. And getting as one of the actual keynotes Kyle Gabler mentioned it's getting that idea across to gamers as quickly as possible. So as quickly and easily as possible. So one of the tips you mentioned is for any game creator is to avoid expectations. So what did you mean by that? Sorry could you repeat that question? Yeah one of the tips for designing a game was to avoid expectations. So how can a game designer avoid an expectation? What does that point? Okay I think that's more to do with resetting expectations. So that if you're a small team well then you know you can't do you can't create a multi-million euro game. So it's to actually set expectations for the actual size of the team that you have and the time that you have available as well. So funny question you mentioned that Pac-Man is a game that has been played 10 billion times. So why do you think people frequently play the game although it's very simple and there are other competing games with it. So why is this game so popular? I think the people that really get into it. Pac-Man was one of the first games that appealed to both male and female. So that was one of the first thing that happened with Pac-Man. It's just a simple it's a very simple game and it can be actually played by a 3 year old or an 80 year old and they can they can get enjoyment. So that's the first thing. The second thing I think is everybody aspires to get that perfect score which I believe is 3 million, 333,000, 360 something like that. So everybody aspires to get that perfect score by completing all 255 levels on one line. So that's just one of those really rich and classic games. Thank you so much for this insightful interview and we wish you best of luck in the conference. Thank you very much.