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PHILIP TAN: My
name is Philip Tan.

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I'm a research scientist
here at the MIT Game Lab,

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and I've been teaching
various game courses here

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at MIT for about 10 years.

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Every night I play StarCraft
for a couple of games,

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just to help me calm
down and get to sleep.

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So that's kind of
my regular ritual.

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Otherwise, lately,
I've picked up

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this game called Desert
Golfing, which is just

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kind of endless
golfing on the iPhone,

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which is strangely soothing,
yet maddening at the same time.

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Right now I'm actually working
with Blizzard Entertainment

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to try to create different ways
for players-- for people who

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are interested in StarCraft--
to spectate a game being played

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by professionals.

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So we're about fixing.

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I'm really looking forward
to what the students end up

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making.

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They usually impress
me with some sort

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of far-out-of-left-field
approach to the problems that

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we put forward to them.

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And this year we are ramping
up the design challenge,

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so I'm interested to see
where they go with that.

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Outside of this class,
I'm pretty much focused

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mostly on my four-year-old
kid and relearning

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what fun is, actually,
through her eyes.

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I'd like to just see a lot
more different kinds of games

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about a whole bunch
of different things.

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Right now I feel we're
right at the cusp off

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like a Cambrian explosion
of different ideas.

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Tools are out there.

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The knowledge is getting
out there-- with this idea

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that anyone can make a game.

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But I feel that
there are still a lot

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of social and systemic barriers
to prevent people from getting

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every idea into distribution.

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So we're still
constrained to a small set

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of genres-- familiar genres.

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We see a lot of those games.

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I'd like to get a greater
variety out there.