A MAJOR Gaming Festival will once again be held in Bradford, and a pioneer of the industry will be one of the guests.

After two successful editions, the Yorkshire Games Festival will return to the National Science and Media Museum in February.

The first guest to be announced for the five day event is Jeff Minter of Llamasoft fame - the UK developer behind a number of classic 1980s games and who is still active in the industry today.

The event will run from Wednesday February 6 to Sunday February 10 and will play host to a number of firsts for the festival, including a brand new partnership with BAFTA designed to foster games development amongst the industry’s youngest and brightest stars.

During the festival BAFTA will host a range of events to promote the BAFTA Young Game Designers competition, which aims to inspire the UK’s game creators of the future by giving young people the chance to design and make their own game.

Previous years have seen thousands of people descend on the city for the festival, which has featured talks by industry insiders as well as school workshops, mass gaming events and family activities based on some of the most popular children’s games today.

Mr Minter developed classic 1980s games Gridrunner and Attack of the Mutant Camels, Xbox Live Arcade’s celebrated Space Giraffe, the PlayStation Vita game TxK. Most recently he worked on the mind-bending PlayStation VR title Polybius.

he will be giving one of the keynote talks at the event, speaking about his incredible 30-year career, the landmark games and technology and the making of his forthcoming game Tempest 4000 for publisher Atari.

He is the first major name inked in for the event, with further announcements expected in the coming months.

According to Festival Director, Kathryn Penny, 2019’s event will build on the foundations of last year’s extravaganza, which saw 9,000 attendees head for National Science and Media Museum - a 15 percent jump on the inaugural year’s figures.

She said: “It’s amazing what the Yorkshire Games Festival has achieved in just two years - 2017 really felt like a landmark year, with the line-up of acclaimed speakers helping to cement the festival as a crucial event in the games industry’s calendar.

“We want to continue inspiring people just starting out in their careers - or, indeed, students still studying their craft. I know the new partnership with BAFTA, plus talks from Jeff Minter and many other industry luminaries means we’ll be doing just that.”