Game On Summary

Well the Game On event was quite different to how I imagined it. The event in the day was basically a load of consoles and arcade machines set up with key games from each gaming era to play on them... put it this way... I wasn't complaining ;)

I got to play on consoles I never thought I would see in the flesh (or plastic) and play them too including the Atari 2600 and even the first home game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. It was really cool! The only thing I was bummed about was that if we had gone just one day later we would have been able to play on a Nintendo Wii! They were setting up the area where it was going to be while we were there!? (I didn't have a choice of day though because I needed to see Professor Mark Griffith speak later on)

We were told we were only supposed to be in there for two hours when we went in. Three hours or so later, after I had crowned myself the official Halo multiplayer champion ;), I grabbed some tea and went back to listen to Professor Mark Griffith in the 'Gaming In Mind' presentation.

Again, this wasn't quite what I expected either. I was hoping he would talk about the effects of violent and sexual content on gamers, but instead he talked mainly about the effects of addiction in gaming. Luckly, this was an area I wanted to cover anyway, so I got quite alot of useful information. I also emailed him, and he sent me five papers he had written on the subject aswell. Considering, he is seen as one of the leading researchers in this field, I should be ok in this section of my dissertation at least :P