Episode 23: Children & Games

Summary: Most of us probably remember with strong vividness the first games we played. Those wonderful adventures through time and space to worlds of jumping plumbers, rising boxing champions and raising electric rats for battle. These were the glory days before bills and realising the joy of exploding zombies, yet there are always other little tykes getting into videogames in an effort by parents worldwide to stop them drawing on walls (amongst others). For our 23rd Episode of The Game Engine Podcast we all attempt to regress decades to discover our inner child and discuss what specific issues occur when creating a game for the younger audience. Because despite once being a child, weve gotten old and hairy and still struggle to understand an audience that goes to bed before 9pm. Saul, Andrew and Paul are this week joined by two special guests for the topic: Paul Grey, a returning guest from Bubblegum Interactive, discusses issues they discovered in the development of their child-targeted MMO Little Space Heroes; and Sam Whitton, a new guest hailing from the forgotten country of South Australia who is a primary school teacher, avid gamer and brother to Saul Alexander (Whitton). Because news was sparse we also may have just spoken about games of the year, and not to spoil it but us Game Engine Podcast regulars might be of one mind. As always, feedback and topic ideas can be thrown at us via a baffling plethora of communications media: Facebook, Twitter , email (gameenginepodcast@gmail.com), and now Google+. Along with manually checking this website, you can keep an eye out for new ‘casts on our RSS Feed or by subscribing on iTunes.