Dean Mohamedally is Professor of Computing Science at University College, London. His projects include many works for the betterment of the world through computing in many forms. He works with the UK NHS, IBM, Microsoft and Intel, among many other partners as part of his Industry Exchange Network Methodology. One project of interest to gamers is the MotionInput project, where Dean, his team and industry colaborators, including our very own John McNamara, have developed AI software that interprets movement in order to give control of devices to people with limb loss and other additional needs. This has opened up a world of gaming for them. Hear some fantastic stories from this project and how their tech can extend to later life gamers whose reactions and mobility are reducing. They have released an autism-friendly game that has lit up lives too - Superhero Sportsday.

As well as these projects, in this episode Dean discusses his love for beat'em up games, his love for Sonic, frustration with complexity in games that prevents players finishing them and how AI could assist us through games.

Some games mentioned this episode:

• Marvel v Capcom
• Street Fighter
• Streets of Rage 4
• Shinobi

• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Lunar Jetman

Also, we mention the Jurassic Park and Toy Story films.

Eric Lagel is a games producer who has worked in France, Canada and the UK, with Runescape, Crysis and Splinter Cell on his CV. He is deep into GTA Online and has sunk many, many hours in World of Warcraft. In addition to those games, we talk about his ideas for a magic shooter that will appeal more to older gamers, amazing story-focused games like Red Dead Redemption 2, and go off-brand to talk about Agile development and AI. John also gets to fanboi talking to someone who developed one of his all time favourite games, Splinter Cell.

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Terry Greer is a games design lecturer at Falmouth University and has 30 years of experience in the games industry. He worked at Microprose, Jagex and Blitz, on projects like XCOM and Runescape. In this episode, Terry tells us about the art of designing games, the high pressure environment of pitching games ideas for a studio and how students are learning to design their own game projects.

In the episode, Terry recommends the following:

FTL making of GDC talk Designing without a Pitch

Fallout London Team

Team FOLON's progress videos on their Youtube channel

Liz England - The Door Problem

Jennifer Scheurle - GDC lecture on hidden mechanics

Doctor Bounce student games project

Links to Terry's projects:

Terry's website - https://www.terrygreer.com/

Terry's novel - Jangada Trilogy

Some games we talked about:

Fallout London

Elder Scrolls 4: Skyrim

Ant Attack (Spectrum)

The Hobbit (Spectrum)

FTL

Elder Scrolls Online

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

Left 4 Dead

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