Geekdom beckons

It's official: one of my sons is a geek and a second is working his way to geekdom as I write. At this moment Robert (right) is somewhere over the United States on his way to San Francisco where he's among the speakers at the Flash Gaming Summit. This is his session, Rob's on the left. Some of Rob's games have been nominated for an award but that's secondary to the opportunity to network with others in the gaming capital of the world.

Anyone who reads my blogs will know I'm a Flash Games fan and that's not just because my sons are working in this fledgling industry, it's because so much talent is clustering around these games - young people making their own way with none of the strictures of corporate graduate training schemes.

They're making this industry up as they go along and it's growing at quite a pace. A lot of the games are great fun to play and they cost nothing for the player. The financing model depends on advertising.

On an evening, as an alternative to a book, the web or TV, I often sit down with a Flash Game, like this one, for example, from the Pastel Games fold of Mateusz Skutnik whose Sub-machine and Daymare Town series of games have set the standard in point-and-click puzzle games.It's not clear yet where John, our eldest - who has left the film industry - will settle as he learns his coding. He's pictured here in his Wimbledon flat. He's shared with us some early work and the results look promising. Games creators tend to favour either the arts side or the coding side and some do both. Both John and Rob are good at art and maths and this works well in gaming as both skills are important.

So this this is a big weekend for Rob. At the very least he's going to come back inspired. He plans a visit to Alcatraz. There could be a game in that.

Rob's stateside visit means there's one game he will miss this weekend. I'm taking John and their youngest brother George to Twickenham for the England v France Rugby Union match. George (pictured here with the silver rabbit he won at the annual Christmas fan-the-kipper tournament) is not a geek. He was dissecting a squid at university this week. I'm not sure what that makes him - a future mad scientist?