Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Lecture to the Game Development Society, Leeds University Union

Leeds University, Leeds, UK

Since I was in northern England anyway for the Game Development Technology Workshop in Liverpool, I took advantage of the opportunity to address the new Game Development Society at Leeds University. This is a young but very energetic group of people led by the multi-lingual Toby Allen. Leeds University doesn't have a game program itself, but several other universities do and they're hoping to build up their membership through outreach to them (and perhaps persuade Leeds U to take notice). In addition to hosting meetings and an active bulletin board, they're also working on a game of their own, a fighting game that promises something very different from the ususal lineup of samurai and bare-knuckle bruisers. This is a group to watch.

I gave them "Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!" and took questions for about half an hour afterwards; after that we spent the rest of the evening in the pub talking about all kinds of things -- from the great Reform Acts that changed British democracy, to the merits of the brightly-colored new Windows XP interface. Oh, and games, too.