UKIE's Jo Twist - Part 1

Oh absolutely. It's all about relationship building at the end of the day. I'm a big fan of an evidence-based approach to policy. We have all the evidence we need, and we have the poster boys like Ian [Livingstone], who won't thank me for calling him that!

We need many, many more people like that. I look to our members and our potential members and those outside that as well, to find those new poster boys and girls, to be those ambassadors, the new legends that we can bring to government and say, look at what they've achieved, look at how fantastic this industry is.

I might be sounding Utopian in that, but I genuinely think that when government is presented with evidence and stories and reasons to actually make a change in policy, they'll do it.

The door is open, the campaign has done that for us. We absolutely do have a great relationship there now, and they trust us, but we need more rockstars, and there are plenty around.

It's like any industry I guess, but no, there's a new breed of government officials and industry people who are really taking notice of what's happening. Shoreditch... I hate the phrase Silicon Roundabout... but they've grown up with the games industry - you could argue that it's actually about sense and what's good for the country and the industry.

I might be sounding Utopian in that, but I genuinely think that when they're presented with evidence and stories and reasons to actually make a change in policy, they'll do it.

No. Our approach at Channel 4 Education was very much about finding the best people in the industry, who were usually independent developers, who were up and coming, supporting them and giving them a brief around a topic, which was usually what life skills we wanted to focus on for that year.

First and foremost the game must be fun. The game must be a bloody good game. We would work with the best people to do that.

For the learning aspect, games are learning systems in themselves and they're the best way, I think to help young people learn things and understand the consequences of the decisions that they make.

Even down to simple strategy games. You know in a strategy game that you learn, 'I'm not going to do that again, because that's not how I progress.' That's the same with learning in life. I considered games that we considered at Channel 4 Education to be complete metaphors to how you work your way through life, that was a key skill that we focused on. We didn't do curriculum-based education.

That's the really interesting part of games. They can be used in so many different ways in a formal educational environment to prompt or provoke young people into thinking about things that they've haven't before, or talking about things. The great example we had was The End, which we commissioned from Preloaded, which was about death.

That was based on research that kids and teenagers find it very difficult to talk about death, but it was a subject which preoccupies them and keeps them awake at night. The game was designed to be a fantastic platformer, but it also profiled you and asked you questions, provoked you into thinking.

Sweatshop was another example, from LittleLoud. It was about provoking the conversation about whether sweatshops are a good thing. I remember going to RPS and reading the comments thread, which I hate doing, usually, and all the comments were about sweatshops, they weren't about the game.

To see that on a games website was brilliant.

I was very passionate when I was at the BBC about public service content, and public service games, in particular. I was involved in some of the early OFCOM discussions and workshops about what the Public Service Publisher should be, and that turned into something else, but I do believe that there is a gap in the market for games with a purpose.

Unless you get a diversity of people making content you don't get the diverse content itself.

By that I mean, not games that are designed to be educational content, but games that are designed to be pubic service minded, so are taking risks with tackling subjects that you wouldn't expect to see in a AAA game. I think that's where the independent games developer community is doing some absolutely amazing stuff.

That's where there's going to be some real gems, and there are some already, but that's where there's going to be some real gems coming through. Phil Stewart at Preloaded did a really interesting blog post about games with a purpose and how they work with us to get the education messages across, but in a way that's just about the mechanic and not about facts that you're learning or anything like that.

When I was at the BBC it was very much about representing British culture and life, that was what public service TV content was about. Where are the games that do that? Apart from maybe The Getaway? [laughs]

But it does raise an interesting point and plays into another passion of mine, which is about diversity in content production generally across our industry. At Channel 4 we were very keen to make sure that the people who were pitching our content, producing ideas, were from a diverse range of perspectives and backgrounds.

Unless you get a diversity of people making content you don't get the diverse content itself.

Exactly. I think that's a really important area and something that we should be looking at.