Speakers

Brian Baglow has spent thirty years inside the UK games industry, and — depending who you ask — has been either remarkably persistent or completely incapable of taking a hint. He started as a writer, and is credited on the original Grand Theft Auto at DMA Design in Dundee, back when "games industry" was still a phrase people said slightly apologetically at dinner parties. Since then he's held executive roles across marketing, PR, business development, and production, worked with well over 150 companies as both an in-house executive and independent consultant, and generally been the person in the room who'd already seen the problem coming three years earlier and tried to warn everyone. In 2004 he founded the Scottish Games Network, Scotland's community and advocacy body for the interactive sector, which he ran largely unremunerated for the best part of two decades because someone had to and, frankly, nobody else was going to. That work culminated in Scotland's national Games Action Plan, which he authored and which achieved the genuinely unusual distinction — for a video games policy document — of cross-party parliamentary support and a full debate in the Scottish Parliament. He has since presented the Action Plan's thinking to civil servants, ministers, and anyone else who'll sit still long enough. He created and hosted Scottish Games Week, including the Scottish Games Awards, and has spoken at events ranging from SXSW London and Develop:Brighton to the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival — proof, he'd argue, that people outside the games industry are often far more willing to take games seriously than people inside it. Brian now runs More Than Games, working with studios on strategy and funding, and with organisations well beyond games — in healthcare, education, government, and finance — who are only just discovering that the games industry solved their engagement and motivation problems years ago, and simply never told anyone outside the building. He lives in Scotland, has a son who thinks his job is "something to do with computer games," and firmly believes that "fun" is not, in fact, a four-letter word — even in a boardroom

Presenting:

• More Than Games: How Interactive Design Is Already Solving Problems Outside the Industry (And Why Studios Should Care)