KEY
Bold:	Interviewer
Regular:	Respondent
[ ]:	Uncertain word(s)

I’ll just explain a little bit before we start so you’ve seen from the invitation that basically we’re interviewing in the project different people are let’s say members of different stakeholder groups in the games and gaming, and gamification communities, so players, developers, policy makers, researchers, educators and so forth.  The idea being we’re trying to get some ideas about their visions of games, gaming and gamification within their own activity, their own sphere of activity, personal activity as well, but also in terms of society more generally.  So that’s basically what we’re doing and we’ll then be producing a report based on the analysis that we’re going to do of the interviews once they’re transcribed.  I think you saw in the waiver that you signed that they’re going to be made available but all of the transcripts and the audio recordings will be anonymous.  
By the way, the other thing is, when we put this data in the final research report we intend to put a list of the people who were actually interviewed, although they’re not identified in any data, do you, is it okay for your name to appear in that list, you can have it removed – that’s okay?
Definitely, sure, no problem.  
So what we’ll do is this, basically in the project so far we’ve identified a number of very general themes, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to ask you some questions based around those themes and as I do, I’ll show you, what theme we’re speaking about, I’m going to show you some slides, with the name of the theme.  I’ll ask you some questions about that, then when we conclude that, the questions on that theme I’m going to show you another slide, the same slide but with some key words appearing on it.  So these are key words that have appeared, let’s say, have come up during the project and so we’ll have a look at those and see if you think you’ve commented on those in the course of our discussion, or if you want add something about one of those, or I might ask you to add something in particular, okay?
Sure.  
So we’ll run these step by step.  At the end of the interview you’ll have time to add anything, make some comments about what we’ve spoken about, or about the interview itself, as you like.  
As far as the procedure goes, we just need to remember that we’re not making a journalistic interview, so you’ve just got as much time as you want to think about things before you say anything, you can change your mind, you can ask me to clarify things, or you can question, or you can also, if you want you can also refuse to comment or make a comment on any particular matter that we raise, okay?
Okay, I understand. 
Great, good, okay, well I’m just going to get the first slide of these general themes up for you.  
Yep, ‘you and games’.  
I’m just going to ask you start off, if you can introduce yourself, so if you could tell me who you are, where you’re from, how old you are, what you do, and what your experience of games is.
Okay.  So my name is [anonymised] I am from [anonymised] in Austria and I’m turning fifty this year.
Congratulations. 
Thank you.  And related to my position at the moment, the work I’m doing, basically I’m a teacher, I’ve been teaching for fifteen years in upper secondary, a business school where I teach IT related subjects.  So at the moment it’s working with social media, with e-trends, but also software development networking a little; and in this function, I’ve had a strong attitude towards working with digital media, using different platforms and we have a specialisation on one platform called Moodle where I have a company, currently eight people, developing for that platform, and so everything that I’m doing is related to using a digital media in an educational setting.  Using it in classroom work and how to motivate students to help them in their learning processes, using different ways of didactic so to speak; and one very good instrument we have is game as learning, or a gamification, working with gamification elements.  So that’s what I’ve been doing and now in the recent year, in the last year I have had the duty of assembling all e-learning networks of that exist in Austria and combining them into one, so actually now we’re the official function, being part of the Federal Ministry of Education where I’m kind of in charge of e-learning in 1,500 schools in Austria.  It’s becoming quite a big project and – so that’s my function at the moment and everything related to that, where we do a lot of communication and trying to implement strategies on how to use digital media in daily work and how to strengthen digital competencies of teachers.  
Now to your question related to my gaming experiences; well actually I started off very early, at the age of sixteen where the first text based adventures were out, I think these were one of the first games that were available to the public, I was in the United States at that moment.  That kind of, very fascinated me. 
Like MUD games?
Yes, right.  But during that time there was no real possibility of becoming a very heavy gamer, so actually I started in Austria with a TI-9/4A, it was a Texas Instruments where you would get code listings of games which were casual games, you would call them, where you would just then enter code, I would not understand a single line, but then finally upon clicking ‘run’ you would see that something would work (laughs).  And that’s the kind of, that got me started into the system.  
But due to my time limitations this is nothing that takes up a lot of time during a week for me, but I still have the connection, I’ve got a PlayStation and there’s one game I have played in the past which was called The Witcher and it’s a role-playing fantasy game, and of course related to what I do in schools I tried other games, but basically – for example, this year I don’t think I have done the total of more than twenty to thirty hours, the whole, since October with games and that, not so much anymore. 
Listen, could you just tell me a bit, when you mentioned about your GBL experience with teaching in the classroom, could you give an idea of it, about that context in terms of like age level and the sorts of activities?
Yes, so actually my students are upper secondary, so starting with fourteen/fifteen years to around twenty years of age, and there was one study that was being undertaken by the Danube University, games where I participated and the question was, how you would be able to introduce complex games into classroom work.  With this setting I tried to use different platforms and the basic idea, there was a game called, I think it was like Guitar Hero or something like that, where we told the students that they would be able to play this game, but before that they would need to form sort of a rock band and battle against each other, and that would mean that first they have to find a concept of being a band, find a band logo and do some texts in English, the whole process.  So actually all IT related aspects that were packed into this game based on accepting this idea, the players came then. 
So what you might call an entertainment game you were using in this particular case, if you’d call it that?
Yes, right. 
Has your classroom experience also included other types of games, educational games, serious games, gamification and so forth?
Yes, so this last project I mentioned took us over half a year, during this study, but what I always do is I have a small plug-in for Moodle it’s called Exabis Games and here are, there are like three different scenarios where you would be able to have information like from Moodle tests that come into a flash based object and students would then work on that.  So that was a small thing that I always use now and then, especially when we’re doing training, or related to a game of knowledge, and then the third part with really gamification elements, that’s what I’ve been trying, working with, like there’s a plug-in for Moodle called Level Up!, it’s kind of this plug-in you can associate different activities, sort of scores and of course Moodle itself has come mechanisms like a patching system, to have a few motivational settings, where students then develop themselves, so that’s about the fields that I work with. 
Good.  Thanks.  Well let’s, I’ll just bring up those key words I mentioned in the second slide here.  Sorry, I’ve just realised I have the wrong slides, for a different group.  So your experience then, let’s say more or less covers the three different types of games, if we could call it that, both entertainment games, educational games and gamification. 
Yes.  
The three types; here we go, sorry about this, now we’ve got the second slide up, which are the three types here, well these are, in this case also called serious games or learning games, whatever.  The three different types and you’ve mentioned the context and the experience.  Another area that’s mentioned here is the impact, how do you see the impact of these three different types of games or the use of these three different types of games in the educational sphere?
Okay, so let’s start off with the first one, for me it was fascinating by just giving students a vision of being able to play a game of the future, because actually the game, the process, when we did that was maybe the first time they got to play it, it was January or February we started this in September, it was to keep an idea alive, just by telling them that this is all preparatory work for such a long time.  
So for me it was interesting to be able to have the whole field of topics that I had to deal with being a teacher and that ranged from using Photoshop and WordPress installations and learning platforms to be able to pack all of that to one idea with a game based learning setting.  Actually the knowledge that the students gained, was gained, it was just by this method.  So that was interesting.  
For the second part, where I have those small casual games, this is like just a sort of an incentive, or a different way of learning; to give you one scenario, if I do a Moodle test and I say, you have to learn these fifty questions for art, it’s not so easy to motivate all of the students.  But by combining it with visualisation, in this case there were questions, the goal was to have a sort of a mini-Einstein, this then catapulted into the universe or dropped into the sea, it’s a simple setting.  But within one day, after giving them the test I already had two students that topped my high score as a teacher, just because they wanted to prove that they’re better than me.  That was a really cool experience.  
Gamification, as to working with levels and points, is I think very interesting but you could also see this critical to a certain extent because on one hand there is this challenge aspect all the time and you might lose different students with that.  So that’s one issue; and then you know, just like using Force, we have for example as an app, where you try to quantify yourself all the time.  Then it’s really a separation towards reality, and maybe that’s too much focus on the media than on the purpose, ideas to that. 
Right.  Well that actually brings us very, very nicely onto the next general theme, which I’m now moving onto in the slide, which is games and learning, looking at more specifically at the influence, the impact of different game based activities on learning and it seems, correct me if I’m wrong, that your, it seems the main thrust of your activities there is focusing on strengthening, motivation and engagement through these game based experiences, particularly through challenge, do you think that’s an accurate description?
Yes, actually there’s another platform and issue that I would like to add to this thought, because the motivational aspect is very correct, but there’s one more platform, the name is called Game Labs.  Gamelabs.at, I think was for an old Ministry of Education, it’s coming to years now, it was maybe eight years ago, or ten years ago, and the focus on that platform was to give students the game creation experience.  So actually it’s not only a question of motivation, but how you can produce a small, in this case it was platforms like mini-adventures, but structured dialogues that they used to, not only focus on the content itself, but on structuring to make them, give them a sense of how much effort we have to take to be able to create a game.  There’s a lot of preparatory work, we have to think about different scenes, you have to check that everything is, your copyright and licensing, you have the content, then publish, and so this is also an issue and this relates to my background as a teacher. 
I am part of a team that, it’s called Cooperative Open Learning, it’s an initiative, an Austrian initiative where we try to promote self-instructed learning processes in very open learning scenarios.  And especially for this, this is also related to gaming or using games to get students organised, structured, thinking about what they publish in digital media and using different methods.  
Actually I remember Game Labs, I remember trying it out some time ago.  There’s a screen with, I think, three different colours documents. 
Yes, yes. 
Yeah, I remember that.  So going back to the – you mentioned at one point there with challenge being perhaps a critical area of, in particular for gamification, do you think that might be true in other forms of game based learning?  And do you think there are other, or have you experienced other limitations apart from the added values that you’ve mentioned?
Yes, one result that came out of the study that we did was that as soon as you try to put students into the setting of having to play a game for learning there’s very, in a short time period a shift where they then start to dislike this thought.  For example, if you would say, okay we did not finish this game based learning set, so now you do it as homework, then gaming becomes homework and when gaming becomes homework it’s over (laughs).  So you have to be really careful about that.  
Now related to the challenge aspect, hmm, it’s always a question of how the teacher uses it.  Personally I don’t have anything against the challenge aspect to a certain extent, but you really have to be able to manage the school class to that extent that you do not exclude anyone; and that totally depends on the setting.  So challenge is okay, but this is something you really have to be able to deal with.  
Okay, so perhaps at this point we can now have a look at some of those key words in the next slide, related to games and learning aspects that have arisen in the project.  We’ve mentioned the different game types, and you’ve talked about the motivation and challenge and so forth.  In terms of impacts, we see knowledge, skills, attitudes; competition and collaboration, how do you see competition and collaboration in these experiences?
Okay, now for example really I think to Game Labs I would say that this has a very collaborative element which means that the setting is, we have several students working together to produce one adventure, so there would be one that’s in charge of the dialogues, one which is more technology savvy, would then probably work on gathering or putting everything online, getting together the data; so that iteration is totally perfectly fine if you have the software that allows this.  
Of course gamification, game-based learning is very often focused on just one person, so you really have to have, set things that allow for more.  
Competition, it’s also maybe a question of how you relate gamification elements to ratings, so that totally depends, if you take that factor out then it’s not that big of a deal.  I mean what I learnt as a teacher was, the first time during a Christmas hour, students asked me if I would like to play against them, I think it was the Age of some sort of strategic game, Age of Empire, and it took me about – and I like to play that game every now and then at that time, and it took them about five minutes until I was dead, and we tried it twice, three times.  Then I realised, okay, so the function of quickness, you have to take that out on my behalf, so you have to look at this when you do classroom work also.  What kind of games do you use that reaches most of them and where there’s not a big advantage to a certain group, because the quick finger.  So if you take that out, then competition is fine because then every- it’s kind of equal for everyone.  
Good.  What about the different skills and attitudes as well as let’s say subject knowledge, what sort of areas do you see that impacting on?
Impact, actually towards attitudes I’d rather see that on the teacher’s side, because to be able to implement a gaming scenario as classroom work means that you have to be open-minded because there are many things that might get out of your control and you have to be able to manage that.  So it’s nothing that is really a problem for students, I guess.  
Skills, yes, because that’s actually one of the functions of, for example, Games Labs, came up with this collaboration platform because we focus on the social and personal skills actually, because students have to work together and find a solution together.  So these are competence fields that are actually being worked on indirectly.  
Now serious games often relate to just gain of knowledge, I feel, or in very complex scenarios.  There is a certain of limitation, because it’s very specific to maybe a topic and so anything that opens that up is something where different skills might develop.  
Okay.  Great okay, I think that covers this part in terms of the general theme of games and learning.  So I think we can now move on to the next general theme, which is games and the individual, on the next slide.  So thinking now in terms of the sorts of influence of impacts that games in general may have on the individual, perhaps both in the educational context and outside that?  I’m sure you’ve acquainted with a lot of debates and comments in general in society, concerns or positive things about how games might impact on the individual, how do you feel about that?
Often the question that relates to that is on how much time an individual spends on gaming and that this might exclude that person from the rest of society.  And actually I think that, of course there are certain dangers related to that, but it’s not the biggest shoot because someone, each gamer, even if it’s a very heavy gamer has to reflect the results with someone else.  So this is the societal function I guess, so he has to tell his friends about his newest high score and where he did whatever, so for me, that’s not a big issue.  I see, especially in my school, that, I don’t know why, but I don’t have any association with ego-shooters, myself I would never play that because it’s too fast, it’s just my personal thing, I don’t really enjoy the games.  But I see that all young boys, I mean all, I think overwhelming, they have a time period where they all play ego-shooters, and they do not come out as shooters.  So that’s just a process, so for me, also this is an argument where I think, something where you just try to challenge, try to be better strategically than others, and so I don’t think that there’s a big danger related to that.  
What about the positives, more of a positive point of view?
From a positive point of view, I think that, let’s just stick to the strategic aspects you have to, by trying to excel in a certain game.  You have more focus on different strategies and especially with the setting that you have to try, that on one behalf you might experience with different characters, different situations of how to work something, on trying to develop strategies, this is something that’s strictly positive, because you go by different ways of solving a problem, and the problem is maybe dying [0:29:50].  And by coming up with these different problem-solving solutions this is something that, of great benefit.  So for me this is a very positive aspect.  
Of course there was, once a parent of a boy that, he was very heavily involved into Warcraft and she then said, ‘dear teacher, you have to understand that my son is playing Warcraft so much because he is such a social person, because he is, he has groups online that he is in charge of, so he sticks to that, and you have to acknowledge that’, this is sort of where the border is, because I understand this to a certain part, but of course often students, or kids just tell their parents anything.  And, for example, I had – we have note classes and when we introduced the concept of using notebooks in schools, immediately all boys had the biggest processors, the best notebooks, because they told their parents they need that for school, which was not the case at all.  
So you have to – but just, you know, we’re in a digital world to a certain extent and just devoting time into this brings you to a different competence level and security related to digital competences, and that’s also a positive I think.  
I’ll just move onto the next slide here and bring up some of the key words that have been mentioned in terms of games and the individual, and you can see, addiction that you talked about, let’s say two-sided debate or question of societal engagement in the game or around the game, and isolation.  You also mentioned the engagement and immersion factor, and also the problem-solving in terms of cognitive abilities and perceptions.  Do you find the same is true with things like memory and attention, in terms of perception?
Attention would mean that, in a positive way that you’re focused or?
Yeah, that could be, yeah. 
Yes, maybe, but I don’t really have an opinion on that.  I would not have seen this consequence, be focused yes, basically.  But I don’t know if this is something, within just a very short timeframe, or if it’s something that then essentially becomes part of your educational thinking with going towards problem solving.  
No, okay. 
I would not know that.  
How do you see immersion in this regard?  Is that key to the sorts of issues like addiction and skills like problem solving and so forth?
Can you give me an example what you mean with that, elaborate on this a little bit?
On immersion?
Yes. 
Being immersed in, let’s say a virtual game-based environment that either graphically, with graphics, sound, technology, or through say narrative as well, becomes an immersive experience let’s say, that engages a player quite stronger, or can engage the player quite strongly, does that make sense to you?  Or would you see immersion in a different way?
Hmm, yes, but only for a short time period.  So actually this is just like if you concentrate on playing music during a concern, you’re immersed in this happening, but if it’s within a defined period I feel this is perfectly okay and this is something you can always get out of again, because you have to be able to connect to the rest of your environment, and if this is established then it’s not a big of a problem.  Especially related to addiction, very often you have to look at the backgrounds, why youngsters sort of retreat and often it’s due to their situation, they have at home, and this is a different issue.  
Okay, fine right.  So I think we can leave then this particular theme of games and the individual and move onto the next one, which is games and ethics.  So I don’t know if in your experience or you have been aware of debates or concerns, or other aspects that have been raised regarding ethical questions in games.  
Yes, a little.  For example, playing the game that I have played The Witcher, you can always try to focus on the dark side, by for example, or other games where you steal, so actually this would be, for me, something which I do not relate on, I would never try to play a character to be on the dark side.  Now why would I not do that, because I want to be the nice palate, but of course I understand totally that youngsters during becoming grown-ups want to experience, experiment, and that they do this, and for me this is fine.  Of course you could then on one hand say, certain games make it easy for you to become a character that is very successful by just misbehaving, and this is an ethical question to a certain extent.  
But I think it’s just an experience, a form of experience that we now have available in society, the same thing as when chats, online chats were established, you would think that you have a nice blonde twenty year old on the other side, but it would be a fifty year old guy, experience with an identity theft.  So for the, actually I don’t think that it is a big problem.  
Of course one thing that also might relate to this is working and playing with stereotypes.  I had a discussion related to that, that certain games are produced of course for the people that want to play them and often if it’s related to young men playing games that there may be stereotypes in the games that have, for example, the role of women is always the one that has to be saved, yeah, and a lot of this rather pale character and with the backdrop, so this is right, this is an issue, a moral issue that maybe game developing companies should be confronted more with.  But that’s outside of my experiences really. 
Sure, so it’s not something you perceive and you’ve heard of that type of debate and comments, but it’s not something that you’ve necessarily identified with. 
Yes, right. 
Because you mentioned, yes identity, a number of times, so you’d see, if I understand correctly, a lot of the ethical questions related to gaming, strictly related to the question of identity of experimenting, identity or perceiving identity, is that right?
Yes.
Are there any other ethical questions or potentials that you think might be related to games, or that you’ve encountered?
You’d have to give me some hints. 
Okay, well that’s a good point to bring up the next slide with the key words about some of the questions that have been raised on an ethical level.  Now you’ve talked a lot there about identify and diversity, you talked about gender, there’s things like race and age, and sexuality as well coming with the stereotyping as you said.  There’s also, a lot of comments are often made about violence and aggressivity related to games and gaming, how do you feel about that?
Well I mentioned that before because that’s the negotiator thing where very many young, boys actually, I don’t see this very often with girls, experiment with that, but I do not see them becoming aggressive through that actually, I really have to mention that.  It’s not any game type I would identify myself with, but I don’t see that there is a very big impact related to the emotional stability, because again even boys with eighteen, twenty years, they want to go out and have friends and you will not get friends with violence and aggressivity.  So this is, one thing, this is maybe the number one statement that is always associated, especially when there are high school shootings in the United States or something like that.  But again I think it’s much more related to the social background than to games. 
Right, okay.  You’ve also mentioned things like an inclusion, you were talking earlier about the inclusiveness of a game based learning environment as well.  What about monetisation, are there any aspects of the financial side if you like of games that you see have ethical repercussions?
Yes, I had one of the first viral Facebook games many years ago when they introduced the APIs for developers where, in Austria, where we did some smaller games, Easter egg hunt whatever, we’ve kind of left that direction, but of course as a perspective of a developer was always the idea of how to monetise these apps.  We went to two developers, conferences, Facebook developers’ conferences in Silicon Valley and looked into these concepts and I think there is a bit of a dangerous part because, which is, but then actually self-regulated to a certain extent, because the mechanisms that in place for now can make it sort of safe, but of course to have games like World of Tanks where you would never be able to be at the top league unless you pay, you know, it gives you two different kinds of people (laughs), and this does have implications maybe.  But yeah, of course it’s not nice if kids use their parents’ credit cards to up their credits or trends where armies of Chinese youngsters develop and sell items for World of Warcraft on (laughs), it’s crazy.  Of course that also relates to a monetisation, but otherwise I think it’s just something that many companies that develop games aim for, but before buying it, and if they are in-app, buying functions integrated okay, that’s just the way our world goes in many different, other aspects that are not related to game based, to learning anyhow.  
Saying that, actually communicate, my students especially related to when you use something that seems to be free that very often there is data generated in the background to try to build up a social graph that then, you know, produces more information.  It’s always a question, if you know that ahead of time then you’re more cautious about that, this is part of a strong additional competence, so then that’s not a big of an issue.  
Good, so that probably covers it for the games and ethics topic.  So we can now move onto the next one, which is games in society, so looking in terms of, at a societal level what sort of influences, good, bad, positive, negative, whatever, you think games, gamification, gaming may have, or may be going to have on society?
Hmm, one thing which is always good is playing with identities, I think this is something that might be able to strengthen their personality.  So this is one aspect, the other aspect related to society is that when we see the digital divide becoming bigger and bigger and I think this might be an issue here because youngsters are so much specialised in certain fields, where others that do not have these possibilities might not ever be able to connect.  This is something which is not good, because this might lead to a sort of split in the digital divide in society, going through all levels and all fields and areas.  
So if it’s the games that do that only, or if it’s just digital media and using games as just a more and easier entry point it’s a good question that I would be interested in finding an answer, or study the results myself, for a simple – some things where I’m not too sure if that’s good development, but actually all the platforms that I’ve seen doing this have not succeeded so far.  This is when you go into augmented reality where you would see sort of Pokémon’s or whatever as an overlay to reality.  But actually just taking this last development or I think before that people had ingress, these are just short-term new ideas which are then not ever kept alive for a long period of time, and so I do not think that this is something that has such a big effect.  Gaming has a playful idea of gaming knowledge, it’s always good because this can even be done without any technology, so it’s, I think, even a basic function of learning, and I think we can keep it at this level.  
So that’s really interesting there, and I was just going to bring you back to what you were saying about the, perhaps what you see as the more short-term development or innovations such as augmented reality and so forth, as innovations that might sort of be as fads that come and go perhaps.  Do you think there are others that perhaps that might be more long-term, that you would define as innovations through games and gaming?
You mean like a virtual reality settings or something like that?
Yes, or other aspects of games and gaming that you think could have a long-term influence on society?
I think the problem is that most developments which are very high end are done by companies that want to develop a business plan gain money.  This is a different interest than society has, and because of this difference in interest a gaming company would never try to develop something that tries to reach the whole society where it’s sustainable because that would be too long-term.  So I do not think that, I mean the many nice aspects, Google Glasses for example to have, to enrich your surroundings with a lot more information, to quantify yourself, to match yourself, we have the start-up called Runtastic here in Austria, you must’ve heard of it, they have this app where you document your running processes. 
Oh okay, yeah.  
But it’s nothing that really it’s such a big revolution that you have everyone talking about that, and often it comes down to where you live and you have to connect it with your surroundings.  What they do, you feel committed to that actually, so I would not realise, I mean for example when there was a big discussion with the, what’s the mechanism for Microsoft, Connect?
Connect, yeah. 
And there was this big idea five years ago, what’s the output now, I mean it’s much too low that you could say this would be something dangerous.  I think there are many, the limits have been reached to a certain instance, so I don’t see anything coming that is so overwhelming that it has, it would have to have a very big influence to gaming itself.  
What about on a more, rather than technological cultural level, do you see any major influences in culture?
In the change of culture or opening aspects to different societies?
Yeah. 
I think, this is not something, that’s only related to gaming but to the globalisation aspect, as to the communicative globalisation aspect, this is something where now with gaming platforms you have, you see that other people in the same age group on the other side of the world do the same thing and I think this is actually a rather positive aspect.  My students tell me, as a teacher, that there are many platforms where there are some super gamers that, or gaming conventions that they really follow actively and YouTube and see all the tips and tricks.  
I have a son, he’s fourteen, who plays Minecraft a lot, and for me, it was a very good acceptance because having the pixel block structure as, I was used to 30 years ago (laughs) that sort of retro acceptance of the thing.  But I see a development, because it initiates the idea, motivation to look into something more closer and for example my son told me, you know, dad, something I’m very weak on is actually fighting in Minecraft, I always lose, but in getting down to the maths and creating something with commands, I’m the best in my class.  So actually just this thought, that’s the way specialisation starts.  
And if this is a trigger that a game can trigger this, this is totally positive, I think, and this is something that’s relevant to the whole society because we have possibilities, you know that of course there are big companies like Microsoft; now this is maybe the more negative aspect, even though I don’t have any religion towards any sort of technology, but when Microsoft says that they have, there’s still thirty-one competences that, or competence fields that potential new employees should have for Microsoft, and then they bought LinkedIn to analyse that solution and then now implement everything with Minecraft for education, then of course it has positives but also negative aspects because it’s now a question of teachers, how do we prepare students to become the best employees for Microsoft?  That’s one side, but on the other side the competencies are so that they would also require the competencies, so actually they’re the big companies that try to give input, but this does mean that this has an influence on society of course. 
Sure, it’s very interesting there that you come back to what perhaps could be considered an ethical question about the role of the educator and preparing, using these sorts of technologies or approaches to prepare students for society.  
I’ve just put up the key words associated with games and society that have been mentioned, and you talked about things like cultural and social change and game related innovation, is there anything regarding things like policy and marketing that come to mind?
Can you elaborate on this, policy, what do you mean?
How policy might, at a political level what sorts of policies might have an influence on the way games and gaming is actually progressed, goes forward in society, either in education or outside perhaps?
In education I would say yes, because this is actually the system I’m in charge of at the moment.  The thing is that the ideas that we had, we grew our network, it’s called the education from four-hundred schools to 1,500 schools at the moment, within six months.  The idea is that the communication towards the schools is, ‘please enter this network because that will help you develop your digital skills with all teachers and also for students’, so that’s actually based upon a policy at some federal level.  
Now the big issue is, how to stay clear of recommendations of any technology, because there is Open Source, there is Microsoft, there is Apple, in all of the big players’ pool and to be able to have entry points for each different school level and to have a sort of centralised system this is something I really have to take a very close look at, because for example we just used a central authentication mechanism, 65, immediately this rang up critics because we don’t want to focus on Microsoft, now actually related to who I am, I’m working a school that has many Microsoft products, because we’re commercially oriented but I’m an Open Source developer, my part, totally.  All my products, every development, all software development we’re doing is strictly Open Source.  We have a big project with [0:57:02] and it’s just because we only offer Open Source based solutions, and I love my iPhone, even though I think that Apple are really, they’re really bad (laughs).  
So I know all technologies and I try to combine them in a way that it helps, and I’m trying to communicate this Austria-wide.  But in terms of policy, this is something where, you know, if the State says, we will use Microsoft, that’s part of the policy, it’s very manipulative.  So this, and now I just have the issue of, with the licensing situation and Microsoft say, okay, dear State, give us some budget for your schools to play Minecraft for educators.  Now of course you can have a critical viewpoint towards that, but I mean at the moment the bigger question is, how to involve teachers and students in using digital media and this is still a bus net.  I think that if it comes to a point where there has been a great degree of professionalization and specialisation, then it’s a very good time to look at data [0:58:32] on trying to get the data and keep it, not with American companies but within your country and this is also a way of using, having a digital competence, to know what happens with every single – and then it should be influenced.  There’s still a long way to go. 
Okay, well that brings us really nicely up to the final and conclusive area that we’re looking at, which is, we’re asking people, interviewees to think of some possible suggestions that they would make to different players, different stakeholder groups within the gaming communities, such as policy makers, educators, researchers, players, families, and so forth; and you’ve just brought us one that it seems, if I understand correctly, that you’re, as far as policy makers go, you would recommend, you would suggest that they pay careful attention to a wide range of issues related to digital competency and sovereignty over data and control of data in implementing policies related to game-based learning. 
Definitely.  Most definitely, that’s the biggest issue.  And I think the part that we’re working on at the moment, which is not very well established so far, is to strengthen the digital competences of policy makers as well as in our case, all persons involved in the educational system.  So teachers that teach teachers, and teachers themselves, because if they have confidence in the using digital media then, you know, they know how to integrate, they know how to deal with different problems, a lot better than just trying to look aside because it’s not my world anymore.  And I considered what’s up because as I told you at the beginning, I’m turning fifty this year, and many, I know colleagues that already think about [1:00:39] at this time really, but retirement is not an moment at the moment (laughter).  
So I think we can always keep, and stay open-minded, so that’s not a real excuse, but so actually everything that is now being done to promote good infrastructure in schools, technical infrastructure that this cannot be the excuse and working with programmes that help teachers become better to learn, to have study programmes on many things around that we officiated, and courses that can be booked so they see how things work, how the mechanisms are to help them understand young people better, this should be the basic aim, because then aspects like gamification or something you can experiment with, but you can because you are able to.  
Okay, so it’s giving the educators the possibility in that sense to be able to implement that sort of approach.
Yes, but also proactively, not only there is the possibility but, and not forcing them, but showing them the benefits of digitalisation itself and that it does make sense to know how to use things appropriately and this is something which is important for all, and if they know about this benefit then that’s [1:02:22].
Well let’s look here at, I’m just bringing up that final slide with some of the stakeholder groups, educators, researchers, parents, developers, policy makers and players.  Coming to the developers in terms of a suggestion, I think you made a suggestion, if interpreted it correctly, talking about innovation and changes and engaging players.  If I understood what you meant it sounded like you would suggest developers not concentrate necessarily so much on technological development in terms of implementing quite elaborate sophisticated technological solutions, but perhaps more on the game, the play experience, have I interpreted that correctly?
Yes, basically, very true, of course coming back to my game scenario, or to the games I play sorry, taking The Witcher, when I relate to fantasy then I had to come up with, to be able to create my world when I was seventeen, that if I would have this game available I know that I would have had the same process as many other youngsters, just working into that system for hours and hours and days and days.  So of course this is nice and other companies will keep on concentrating on that, but on the other side there could be also an aspect where you could integrate everything, more into a whole idea; for example, taking competencies that students might gain during their playing experiences, and if there is an educator that they have gained this competence why not generate a badge for that.  
So actually looking also, or considering learning processes as being part of gaming and considering this would mean that this would be a, maybe a new idea to game developers to involve more, even policy makers, educators, into this process.  I think this would be a very interesting field for that.   
Now related to the target group of players, I think the need to keep having a gaming experience – you just mentioned the word ‘serious game’ this is something where the fun part is taken out, just by the wording, and so this is something that has to be, you know, this is a difficulty, it has to be implemented at low level that this is not, this is a learning game and this is the rest, which is the fun part of the games that you have to integrate it on a broader front I think in the forum.  That would mean that developers would have to [1:05:47] with teachers on that, and with the focus not to create serious games, but to create games that enable learning processes that can be for a benefit to teachers and students. 
Great, okay, I think that’s a really, really good point to conclude on, a very interesting point.  At this point I’d say, if we conclude here, I was wondering if there’s any questions that you might have about, or comments that you might have about what we’ve spoken about, things you want to add, or comments or questions about the interview itself?
Well what I would be interested is on the research that you’re doing, on the result, what the research question itself is and what loops of implications are related to the answers that are given.
Okay, in general terms I suppose, to generalise, it’s that the idea is to try to get a handle on the sort of perspectives, the different sorts of perspectives and assumptions that different stakeholder groups we’ve mentioned, be they players, researchers, developers, parents and that, have about games, game play and gamification; and how those sorts of assumptions then play out into the gaming echo system if you like, what sort of impact those sort of assumptions and perspectives and framings have on the actual ways that games progress. 
So the idea is to analyse it, we’re analysing not just through interviews like this that we’re doing with you, but for example doing analysis of the European Commission’s policy statements, their calls and so forth related to games and gamification, and game-based learning, so analysing that sort of content, how the ideas, the assumptions underline the sort of measures that they are trying to promote in taking games and games in education forward, what sort of impact that might have.  
So these are the sort of general research questions, also the relationship, I think you may have gathered that I asked you a couple of times about relationships between things like entertainment games in society and culture, educational games, games in education, gamification, also the sorts of horizons if you like that might be brought in the sense that there is some consideration perhaps the sorts of ways that games and gaming is being addressed by the Commission, but also in the marketplace, might be fairly limiting in some respects, that there might be other ways, for example, through things like artistic expression, cultural expression, that they might also be bound to a certain extent to the sort of stereotyping that you mentioned there, and how that impacts on the way games and gamification develops.  
So they’re the sorts of, just roughly the sorts of questions that we’ve posed ourselves through the project and the idea is, through the analysis of the interviews, literature, the European Commission policy and so forth is to try to distil some recommendations if you like, or scenarios, let’s say to outline some possible directions, some scenarios of possible directions that perhaps might broaden the dialogue, broaden the exchange and broaden the horizons of – and hopefully make the potential for games that are seen for having, in education, in society in general, as the sort of potentials you’ve mentioned there, that they can be realised more effectively, that’s the hope.  
So, which brings me to another point, two more points about the follow-up to this interview; number one is obviously, we’ll let you know when we’ve produced the research project, the deliverable, that will have the output from these interviews contained in it, which I stress again will be anonymous but will be contained in that.  
The other thing is in July, in Brussels, there’s going to be a one-day event, it’s being an un-conference, to give the idea of gathering together representatives from these different stakeholder groups to thrash out exactly some of the things that you’ve mentioned to me today.  I was wondering whether you might be interested in taking part in that, if you’re available.  
When would that be?
I can’t recall the exact date off the top of my head, its July, its mid-July, it’s either the 12th or the 19th.
I would carefully say, yes.
Okay, so you would be interested. 
There are some appointments I have where I could not – if you would be able to provide me with the date. 
Yeah, 12th I think it’s on. 
I would be very interested, because this is something that I’ve related to in the past years, I’ve made some developments and I have tried to experiment with that and have successfully implemented scenarios with students.  So I know that this is working, but of course I also know as we did in the interview, there were so many different groups with different interests, and to find the strategy of recommendations, that’s a big issue, but it’s something that, where communication of experts on that field would be very interesting.  Also I might be able to take some of these things back to Austria as recommendation at a federal level, because this is part of my job at the moment. 
Right, okay, well when I send you back the participation certificate and the links following the interview, I’ll also include the details about this event and you can see then if it does fit into your schedule, and if you think you’d be interested, then I’ll pass that onto the partners that are organising the event and hopefully they can take it from there.  
That would be great. 
Okay, well again, thank you very much, it’s been a really, really great interview, very, very interesting.  A little bit frustrating for me because there are so many things I’d like to sort of stop and talk to you about through the course of the interview, but of course we’re analysing this from your point of view, so I’m unable to do that, but I really hope we get an opportunity later along in the project, or outside the project as well, because I think we seem to have, there’s a lot of very common territory we’ve covered, things like the Game Labs and game making and so forth that would be really interesting to take up, so thank you very, very much again for your time.  
Thank you very much.  One more, last question, a personal question, you’re in Italy?
Yes, I’m at the Institute for Educational Technology.
But you’re British or?
Australian.  
So how does an Australian stay in Italy, that’s cool. 
Yeah, well I normally respond saying, what is the usual reason why an Australian ends up living in Italy and it’s probably for love, so that was the case, my wife is Italian, so. 
Okay. 
And food too, yes, I don’t pray, I eat and love (laughs).  So that’s the reason why, yes, so it does puzzle people sometimes, but it’s interesting to have something a bit different to be puzzling sometimes.  It can be very puzzling for me I can tell you (laughs). 
Very nice, very nice.  Thank you very much.  
Thank you very much again, all the best with your work and we’ll certainly be in touch.