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I t's great that there's a Bafta award for video games, but it's not necessarily the best way for the games industry to validate itself – it should work out for itself why they're OK," says Iain Simons, director of GameCity, Nottingham's citywide celebration of video games.

Simons has a mission.

Fed up with knee-jerk assumptions about the insalubrious proclivities of the keyboard and console community, he has put together, for the second year running, an almighty symposium designed to delight the converted, convert the incredulous and connect all the above to just what it is that makes gaming more successful than recorded music.

"There is," says Simons, who also writes games reviews for