Technology - Interview with Eamonn Fitzgerald

Welcome, Ayman. Your latest English 4.0 column is about gaming and e sports. First question for David's benefit. What is the difference between a fortnight and fortnight? Let's begin with a fork nice, which is Spell it if or tea in i g h T. It's a British English word that means 14 days or two weeks. So, for example, if we go to Liverpool and we meet my cousin Helen and we ask her, can we have a drink with Jurgen Klopp? And she calls him, and she says he's very busy at the moment, but he'll see you in a fortnight's, which means he's see you in two weeks from now. The other word for it. Nice, which is spelled F or T n I T E. E. Is the name off a very popular video game. And as to where the name comes from, there is some discussion some people believe. Thus in the first version of the game, when you had to build Ford's to keep out zombies and you build them at night, it was the combination of Fort and Nice that led to the creation of the word for it. Nice other people say the game is simply so addictive that when you start playing, you don't stop for a fortnight in your column. You say that fortnight has some 250 million users worldwide. Why is it so popular? Three words. The first word is Platform. Fortnight is available on Windows, Mac OS, Android, IOS, Xbox, Nintendo and so on. This cost it be games, the creator of foreigners, a lot of money. But if you want to be available to a mass audience, then you must have your product. Whether it's a napper game on as many platforms as possible, the next word is network. And in my column about Fortnight's, I mentioned that whether it's in private life or in professional life, having a good network is very important today and the first version of Foreign Night. You could play with the network off four people in the second version. Ah, 100 people. So it's very important to be able to make networks pay to extrapolate them in gaming. And that's what fortnight does. Third word free fortnight is free. That's a magic word. Now you can purchase in app, as they say. That means you can buy tools and devices to make your game better to be more successful. But the game, the basic game is free and our gaming and e sports the same thing. Gaming means playing games. And since the beginning of computing, computer scientists have played games. But it was only in the 19 eighties, when computers became popular at work and at home, that playing computer games became a mass phenomenon. So, for example, you had games like Tetris and Pacman millions and millions of people play them. And then in the nineties you had the emergence of video games, and now we have superfast chips in very powerful computers and phones that allow people to play games. East Boards is a short version off electronic sports. And as the games have become more complicated, we have seen the rise off professionalism not just in the design of the Games, although many of them have budgets equivalent to Hollywood movies but also in the storytelling and in the layout of games on and the colors and in the Graphics. And out of this has come an entire culture off playing sports e sports for money, and in July in New York the fortnight World Cup takes place on the prize. Money is $30 million. Final question. One person who will never play fortnight is Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor. Why is that Young Archie was born on the sixth mean he is the son off Prince Harry, the Jew off Sussex and Megan the Duchess off Sussex. And when he was asked in April about Ford Nice, Prince Harry said that game should be banned. Why? Because he said it's addictive, and I mentioned this quality earlier. Theoden Shin element on all the gamemakers, employs scientists and psychologists to place elements in the games that stimulate parts of our brain parts that are stimulated by alcohol or nicotine or cocaine on this is what makes them addictive. So we have the situation where many, many parents are in a dilemma. They simply don't know what to do. Should they give their kids these devices? Can they monitor what the Children are doing? Can they stop something games, or can they limit the amount of time they spend playing games? But there is an alternative argument to be made. When young Lionel Messi started kicking a football, his parents didn't say stop he was passionate about the game. I think his parents today, the parents off the great footballer Leo Messi are very happy that he continued to play football on. And who knows in the future, where young Archie Smith are young? Angie Smith are the missus off East boards and they will be able to make their parents very happy. Very proud, Andi. Perhaps very rich. Thank you very much. Ayman. You're welcome.