Children enter virtual reality as The National Science and Media Museum hosts Yorkshire Games Festival

The five day event started on Wednesday and has seen some of the top figures from the industry take part in workshops, and lectures.

Over the weekend the museum hosted a number of family events that saw thousands of children come to try out some of the most state of the art pieces of gaming technology available.

The festival started last year as a way of showcasing Yorkshire’s increasingly prominent role in the gaming industry.

The keynote speaker was Mohammed “Iki” Ikram, who grew up in Manningham, and now lives and works in Santa Monica as a top 3D generalist and VFX artist. He has been been involved in hit games including The Last Of Us and the Uncharted series.

Among the groups showing off their games this weekend were York Based New Moon Studios, who were inviting children to take part in a team Virtual Reality game. Andy Nye from the group said: “Everyone is loving it, the kids are very competitive.

“It is an amazing event, it is great that this is happening in Yorkshire. Sometimes we don’t should loudly enough about how good the industry is here.”

Bradford based Impact Gamers is a group that uses game design to help children learn coding skills. As well as holding regular coding sessions, they also work with young people who have difficulty in school. They were also at the festival to show off the work they do.

Part of the group's offer is taking young people who may have been in trouble at school or with the police, and help get them back on track by teaching them how to create their own retro computer games.

One of the team, TJ, said: “Having their games showcased at a major games festival has made these young people’s day. In the build up to the festival they were so excited knowing they would be showing their work to other people.”

A team from the University of Huddersfield were to give children a go of their Hyper Party Ware game, which allows people to take part in basic games in a virtual reality world. Chris Vickery said: "We worked on this game in our final year. It is a bit like the Wii Sports for virtual reality. It is a good waay to introduce players to VR.

"The North is becoming quite a good place for games development. It is great that there is a festival like this to support and promote the talent we have up here."

The weekend also saw a live action role playing game taking place through the city centre, and a WiFi Wars event yesterday that involved an audience in the Pictureville cinema competing against each other on their phones and tablets.