For today's podcast, we present an interview with Iain Simons, writer and live events coordinator of Nottingham's GameCity Festival. Besides serving as the co-creator of GameCity -- now going on to its third year, Simons is the author of three books: Difficult Questions about Videogames, BFI Film Guides 100 Videogames, and Inside Game Design -- part of which was recently excerpted on Gamasutra. He is a tireless advocate for the cultural significance of games.

In the course of conversation about the festival, which grew out of and evolved from initially more informal alcohol- and curry-fueled get-togethers, Iain speaks passionately about various subjects such as the role of game advocates as apologists of the medium, the lack of a human face to the games industry, and the reluctance of game publishers to discuss the process of creating games as opposed to promoting finished product. He also takes the comparison of games and cinema to task, particularly regarding what that analogy implies about the aspirations of the form.

He talks about themes that have been going through his mind recently, such as non-threatening entertainment, the removal of player-character death from modern game design, and safety and the permission to explore in-game environments.

He also discusses how to make games and game culture more palatable to non-gamer audiences. These include directly addressing the creative process of making games -- getting to questions that one might ask of any creator working in better known contemporary mediums.

Finally, Simons discusses ideas that didn't quite make it into his latest publication, Inside Game Design, and what factors defined which ideas made it into the book or not. He also shares some wonderful personal anecdotes about developer involvement with both GameCity and Inside Game Design. And he closes with Nottingham Trent University Undergraduate and Post-graduate programs' support of GameCity's latest project: an archive of early to current game artifacts and history.