Tuesday, September 30, 2008

John Hopson's 2007 Keynote

John Hopson is a pretty cool guy. He has a PhD in experimental psychology, whcih in my books already makes him cool. Then it turns out, his PhD work was done in a lab where they study animal cognition. OK, that is even cooler, as well, the cool kids take animal cognition. Then we got to talking and realized we had read each others' stuff. I know that has nothing to do with game design, but it is, to me, an indication of the serendipitous connections you can make at FuturePlay.

Anyway most of you will know John from his work on a little text called "Behavioral Game Design" which applies the psychological literature to game design. See I knew I liked this guy...

John gave a keynote at FuturePlay 2007 which I recorded with my little iRiver (this year I will use a Zoom H2 which is MUCH better). So some of the audio is a bit shall we say messy. You will also notice someone (who I will not name...) picking up my recorder and looking at it and you will hear me say "That's my recorder" when she asks what she is holding....

John basically described his work at Microsoft, working with various studios to make better games. Tell me that isn't a cool job.

This talk should give you an idea of the quality of speaker at the conference.

I hope you enjoy John's keynote from the 2007 FuturePlay conference.

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