Feature: 'Postcard From The 2005 Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, and reporting from the recent EIEF, writer Ren Reynolds takes a look at the Scottish game development conference/showcase, commenting on some fascinating panels on games and education, humor in video games, and the difficulty of creating memorable game characters. The beginning of Reynolds' discourse deals with the EIEF's piquant, introductory speech from someone outside the game industry entirely: "The conference opened in good style with a refreshing keynote from TV and media veteran Adam Singer, who told the games industry in no uncertain terms to grow up. Good keynotes either make you feel warm and fuzzy, or snap your head back. This was definitely one of the latter. Singer blasted the audience, saying that games are a medium that is still under the cultural radar, and to be taken seriously it really has to try harder. He went on to suggest that there are three things that mark the maturity of a medium: stories, truth and eroticism, or, to put it another way: "An easy way to remember this is the three Fs - fiction, fact, and... you can guess the third." Winding up, in more ways than one, Singer got into lambasting mode, saying that the ongoing console hardware platform wars are huge barrier to mainstream acceptance." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).