GameCity's Iain Simons

I guess what we're trying to stress is ways in which the festival can be of help throughout the year, not just those four days in October. I think, if you're going to do something like this, it's important that it has some kind of legacy.

We're also doing a big concert event with James Hannigan, who's the composer for the Harry Potter games and Command and Conquer, in St Mary's church - last time we did an event there was in 2006 when Richard Jacques did a SEGA retrospective, which was fantastic.

We're also finally unveiling the Takahashi Playground plans and launching the charity Built together, and we've got Adam Saltsman, who created Canabalt. He's going to be doing a project over four days with the city's kids - they're going to be drawing assets for a couple of days then he's going to be turning them into a game - coding in a box, David Blaine style. That will be playable on the site on the Friday and Saturday.

Then we're building a bunch of lounges, in the town square, which will be decorated live by various artists. We've got Rex Crowle, from Media Molecule doing one, and Barbara Lippe from Papermint - various different artists will be decorating these living rooms which people will then play videogames in.

A ton of other stuff, with LEGO, 24-hour game jams, Guardian games for breakfast - and the National Video Game Archive, there'll be a second summit on Wednesday 27, which I think will be a key thing for the industry.

We don't really talk about it (the National Videogame Archive) much, but it is kind of a big deal, in terms of the projects that we do, we really want to talk to the industry more at the October event about what they can do to get involved with it. We held a summit earlier this year around the whole theme of digital preservation, with a lot of the stakeholders from around the country there - so the Tate and the Science Museum, the BFI, National Archives etc, and they've all gotten behind the NVA as the sort of policy leader for digital preservation in this sort of area.

So this is a key moment for the industry to get involved and participate in a broader cultural agenda with a real legacy - this is a permanent collection.

It's one of the things we find most difficult. Historically we've found it quite frustrating - it's something we find difficult to communicate to the industry - this is a public project, a civic project. It's about what games mean and contribute to people's lives. It's very important that it's not limited to how they feel when they play them - it's more about what the games industry can do in its broadest sense.

My broad frustration with the industry in the past is that, if it came forward a little bit more, was a little more human, it would be attacked a lot less. There's some amazing people work in the games industry.

In my experience the more that parents, and people who are suspicious of games are exposed to those people, because they're intelligent, insightful and creative people, because you can't make games without being those things, that tends to foster a whole load of understanding and, as you say, bridge building.

I guess that's why we try to do what we do, not because we're apologists for the games industry, but because it's really interesting, and the people involved are really interesting. At the end of the day, we just want to go to interesting events! [laughs] It's sort of quite selfish really.

We're really aware that this is a public event. The city part of GameCity is just as important as the game bit. So being able to build a playground and work with the NHS, they're really important things for us to be able to do.

I would love it if the games industry understood that we really are as open and benevolent as you say, as we attempt to be. I hope through our sincerity, and our actions, that we demonstrate that - we'd love to do more of those sort of projects, whatever they may be. There's a real place for videogames to participate in the world.

It's difficult to say this without sounding a bit like a pompous idiot, but I'll try, the opportunity for videogames to participate in modern culture, without feeling the need to say "we're videogames" and be defensive and apologise for being videogames, is often missed. There's no need to apologise.

Our position has always been: these things are interesting, and here's why, and move on from there. Not, these things won't turn you into a sociopath because of A, B, C and D - let's just get on with it, because any intelligent person can tell that these things are interesting.

I think we're edging there. I think it was an important moment, but I think the problem was that it was isolated, and in response to a particularly and inflammatory and typical kind of case. So I think it's a step forward.

I think when we're at the point where that sort of dialogue is happening around something like Angry Birds, and these things become part of everyday parlance, then we'll be closer. I don't want to subtract from it, because it was an important moment, but not attacking is not necessarily the same as defending. I think there's a lot of other dialogue which could and should be happening about that sort of game.

It's all about literacy, at the end of the day. Those things being promoted and explored at a policy level. The weird thing we've found, when dealing with things like the Archive, we're dealing with policy makers at DCMS level and big institutions throughout the country such as the Science Museum and National Archive.

Those guys are all completely fascinated and completely interested in videogames and see them as being incredibly valuable, but they don't necessarily understand them - I don't know where to point them to go to in order to understand them. I think there's an absence of entry points, which is what we're trying to provide, other than just being able to play them.

That absence of a real critical dialogue, and I don't mean that in an academic sense, but just a broader critical dialogue around these things. It's really growing, but I don't think we're there yet. So it's important to keep pushing. It's important for the industry to get over its paranoia, to a certain extent, in working with other agencies to help that come about.

Yeah. We did a thing with the New Statesman last year, which I write for quite a lot, NS were working on a supplement at the time looking at video games, and they sent out an informal email to their contacts - so this is Westminster circle journalists, civil servants and indeed MP's - asking them how many played video games. I don't think anyone responded to say that they did.

A second email was sent to the same people, telling them this was anonymous and that they wouldn't be named as part of the piece, and this time lots of them got back in touch and came 'out' as gamers. I don't have any of that correspondence available to me at the moment personally, so my reasoning for them not wanting to be identified as gamers is entirely my own: but my supposition would be that to be identified as a gamer (in 2006, at least) was incompatible was being a 'serious' civil servant or member of the Westminster set - be that journalist, MP or whatever.

So I can well understand why the industry would be suspicious and a bit paranoid about the media and parliament, having had the kicking it's had for the last twenty years.

I can totally understand that, but, in order move on, we've got to much more pro-actively build those bridges and have dialogues about things other than tax-breaks, which are really important - and that's not in any way to subtract from those, but there are other discussions which we should be having as well.

I think the problem is that a lot of the dialogue, at policy level, tends to only be about that at the minute - I think it's in danger of being a bit myopic. There's a lot of other things we need to talk about that are also important in terms of public understanding because the only message that people get that isn't about, you know, the new Medal of Honor, is about tax breaks and to do that is to draw a little bit too much attention away from the amazing things that are happening and the amazing things that are being made.