I was at the Power to the Pixel Cross-Media Forum with the London Games Festival earlier this week and McGonigal’s work came up in three separate talks. She’s truly an influential thinker. Her oft-quoted stat is that by the age of 21, people in a tech-driven society will have played 10,000 hours of games – the same amount of time spent in 8 years of American school. If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success you’ll know that 10,000 hours is the magic number distinguishing plebian performers from the real virtuosos of basically every skill under the sun. What skills are we learning from games? How to blaze guns down corridors looking for shiny things, I reckon.

McGonigal hopes to change that by using our leisure time to do good while still keeping things fun. She’ll be speaking about productivity at on 24th October. Watch the TED talk below for a preview, then get your tickets for Jane McGonigal on Productivity at The School of Life:

See you there!

We also got to interview Gearbox Software’s Steve Gibson which you can read in full on the London Games Festival blog.

Randy Pitchford (Gearbox Software’s CEO) briefly outlined the long development history behind Duke Nukem Forever, which I’ve covered in this post. Plot-wise, the game takes place 12 years after Duke Nukem 3D (natch!) and Duke is the richest, most famous guy on the planet. He owns his own casino and a hotel and he has an incredible Penthouse suite. Life is pretty awesome for Duke. He also has women all over him ;-) However, the aliens are back and have convinced the leaders of Planet Earth that they come in peace. Really they are here to steal all the women to breed a new alien race. It’s time for Duke to step in.

Finally, we got to play the demo. As it turned out I’d already seen about half of it as Gearbox had previously shown it in Amsterdam and at last month’s Penny Arcade Expo. The footage below is from Amsterdam:

Look at 2 min 13sec where Duke is battling a giant alien in a football stadium. Gearbox have made some changes to this sequence; in the demo it was set at night, in torrential rain but still in the stadium. The graphics look much better in the current demo than they do in the leaked video. At 1 min 33 secs you can see Duke’s falling, single finger salute animation, which also happens in the demo. In fact it was the last thing I saw Duke do. ;-)

Randy also mentioned that the second part of the demo (level 15) was about two-thirds of the way through the game. Given that there is still some time to go before the games release next year, I wouldn’t bother working out how many levels are in the game, based on this comment. As we all know with Duke Nukem Forever, things can and frequently will change.

I’m not going to give you a blow by blow account of the demo – no need to spoil the game events for you. However, after playing the demo twice, I came away feeling very encouraged by the whole experience. It was everything you would expect from a Duke Nukem game. There is urination, naked women, swearing, graphic violence, at least 1 vehicle to drive (much easier to control than Halo’s Warthog), a nice array of weapons and crapton of aliens to kill.

I am going to talk a bit more about the weapons. I managed to find and use this little lot:

• Devastator
• Shrink ray
• Railgun sniper rifle
• M1911 pistol
• Shotgun
• Ripper
• Pipebomb
• RPG

The devastator gun, which is shown in both videos, is used to take out the big boss alien in the stadium. In the demo it is also the first weapon you get to use, if you exclude the poo throwing in the bathroom. It’s a pretty effective gun with a high rate of fire and a thirst for ammo. Fortunately, the repeated ammo drops kept this gun purring nicely ;-) The shrink ray was great fun to use, turning all the aliens into teeny, tiny little monsters that you can just step on or squash with the your weapon’s melee attack. As soon as you’ve shrunk an alien they try to scamper away as quickly as possible but they don’t get far. Hehe. *Squish* The railgun sniper rifle is as destructive as you’d imagine, basting off heads, legs and arms with gay abandon and it had a kick-ass zoom sight. Definitely my favourite weapon in the demo.

The M1911 pistol and the shotgun are as devastating as ever, i.e. M1911 is rubbish when trying to shoot anything more than a few feet away and the shotgun is great for blowing up piggy heads at close range. The ripper acts very much like a mini gun, with a very high rate of fire and bullets that spray everywhere. The pipebomb works like a remotely detonated grenade, but this time the remote detonator is your car alarm key fob with authentic “bleep, bleep” sound. Nice little touches like this are what makes Duke Nukem Forever a really fun experience. Finally, the RPG is wonderfully destructive (surprise, surprise!) as I used it to blow up significant parts of the level (huts, foliage, more huts) as well as several unsuspecting aliens. There wasn’t much left of them after this.

The only downside of the demo was that the beer button (left on the d-pad) wasn’t working and I didn’t see a single beer in the demo. No beer for Duke, just violence, swearing and women.

So the weapons are awesome, the graphics are pretty tasty, the humour is incredibly crude making me laugh out loud on several occasions, and it was fun to play. Pretty much, this demo and the ridiculously awesome new trailer (just wait till you see it!) have made the wait for Duke Nukem Forever all the more excruciating!

Events for Gamers:

The Eurogamer Expo has just gone, as was a Ben 10 preview event in Leicester Square.

• 7th October: The BAFTA Annual Video Games Lecture, this year by Media Molecule.
• 8th October: Sony PlayStation Game Runners. Click on the Game Runners tab for the details.
• 9th October: Busy day with the unconference BoardGameCamp, and Nintendo’s Wii Party at Chessington. Sorry, tickets for both of those sold out weeks ago so check out Citizen Game’s first ever public game review instead, featuring FIFA 11 and Pro Evo 2011.
• 16th-17th October: GAME and Gamestation are hunting for Britain’s Best Nintendo Gamer with the winner being crowned at the Golden Joystick Awards.
• 27th-28th October: Upcoming shooter Breach will have a residency at GamerBase in London. Gamers will have a chance to face off against all comers to see if they have what it takes to survive in the adrenaline-fuelled game of guns, traps and destructible cover.
• 30th-31st October: The London MCM Expo, featuring a games expo.

Industry Events:

Games Invest and the GamesAid Eurogamer charity party were also on during the weekend.

• 7th October: Duke Nukem Forever will be shown to the UK for the first time. Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2 launch is on the same day.
• 11th October: Preview of Activision’s upcoming helicopter combat game, Apache Air Assault
• 12th-15th October: Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum will showcase the best international stories that can span a combination of film, tv, online, gaming, live events, mobile.
• 14th October: The Games Media Awards will recognise the best in specialist and mainstream games media in print and online. Sadly, we were not nominated :( Perhaps next year?
• 21st October: SpecialEffect, a charity to promote access to games for disabled people will hold a session on accessible gaming.
• 27th October: TIGA are running a session on self-publishing: Advice on selling and marketing to your audience
• 29th October: The Golden Joystick Awards will honour the games voted by for by us gamers
• 4th November: The London Games Conference will close out the festival with a theme of “Survival And Profit In A Changing Industry”

I’ll be at most of these, blogging for the games festival itself and you’ll get plenty of coverage here at The Average Gamer. I’ll also be tweeting with #lgf10. Follow us on @TheAvgGamer and say hello if you’re at any of the events!

Dark Energy Digital’s Pete Jones and Senior Creative Designer Rob Hewson will discuss the game in detail and give attendees an insight into Hydrophobia unavailable anywhere else, as well as answer questions from the audience, adjudicate an amazing competition and present fantastic prizes.

They’ll be there as part of GameCityNights, a series of after-dark monthly events that brings together developers, students and players in a celebration and exploration of videogame culture – with prizes.
Every month a brilliant headline speaker comes to Nottingham to share their thoughts, passions and give a unique insight into their work. Previous featured speakers include Chris Downey and Ben Ward from awesome multiplayer racer Blur, and the crew behind the Doctor Who adventure games. Nottingham is clearly drawing a good crowd.

Book your free tickets for GameCityNights 8 and be sure to swing by our games events site to find out what else is coming up. (Yes, yes, I’ll fix the ordering soon. Just use the map to find your local events for now)

In other events news, October is jam-packed with games stuff. Not only is Nottingham holding GameCity 5 from the 26th October, the London Games Festival is kicking off this weekend with the Eurogamer Expo. I’ll be there on Friday, in my new Average Gamer T-shirt. Say hi if you see me :)

What are you most excited about for October?

• Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
• Brink
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
• Crysis 2
• Dead Space 2
• Def Jam Rapstar
• Driver: San Francisco
• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
• Fallout: New Vegas (squee!)
• FIFA 11
• Gran Turismo 5
• Heavy Rain Move Edition
• Hunted: The Demon’s Forge
• inFAMOUS 2
• Killzone 3
• LittleBigPlanet 2
• Medal of Honor
• MotorStorm Apocalypse
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
• Raving Rabbids: Travel in Time
• Saw II: Flesh & Blood
• SOCOM: Special Forces
• Sports Champions
• The Fight: Lights Out
• The Shoot
• Vanquish

Saturday tickets are already completely sold out. Best get yours ASAP if you plan to be there. Eurogamer Expo Tickets – £8

Tickets are on sale now from the South Bank Centre’s website priced £19.50, £25 or £32 (plus £1.50 booking fee). Or you can call 0871 663 2500.

According to the press release the concert will be:

Hosted and conducted by co-creators Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, the prestigious Philharmonia Orchestra and a choir will perform live alongside exclusive video footage and music arrangements, synchronized lighting, solo performers, electronic percussion, live action and unique interactive segments to create an explosive one-of-a-kind entertainment experience. Guests will enjoy game demos, a cosplay contest with exclusive prizes for the best outfit, game competitions and meet-and-greets with Tommy Tallarico, Jack Wall and other leading industry names.

Video game music to be performed includes:

• Halo
• Final Fantasy
• Sonic
• Warcraft
• Zelda
• Myst
• Retro classic arcade medley – including Space Invaders, Duck Hunt, Pong and Tetris

I’ve never seen a cosplay contest before, so that should interesting if Weefz’s previous cosplay experience at the Final Fantasy XII launch is anything to go by.