The Culture of Games and Science

Tomas was interviewed by new PC games site PCgamesN recently about our work at the Wellcome Trust and how it fitted the organisations overall strategy:

What [The Wellcome Trust] want is, and it's back to that point about science and culture being together, they want to see content where the science sits naturally. Like, one example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, it's not a Wellcome project but it's a great example of where cutting edge science has informed the content of a mainstream game, and I think it's a better game as a result or having that scientific credibility and yet at the same time the game play isn't compromised at all, it's a brilliant game.

It's not always about the money, although the funding is an important bit of what Wellcome does, it's also about the scientific expertise that are on offer, the ability of Wellcome to work with people to bring ways of operating that just wouldn't happen without their help.

They have this massive untapped resource of scientific minds to be used to inspire, if you're doing a game and it has some sort of DNA aspect and you though “Well I'd like to know a bit more about this”, we can put you in touch with a scientist. Wellcome also looks at games in regards to education, especially what they call 'Informal learning'. So Wellcome's interest in games is pretty wide reaching, which is why it's important to be strategic about it because there are lots of areas it can touch on.