Dungeons & Dragons to Serious Games: Stu Armstrong

Meet Stuart Armstrong, the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge IPT Industry lead, and an active member of the challenge since 2006.

Stu has been an avid gamer since the Dungeons & Dragons basic set, and even created his own Multi-User Dungeon in the late 90’s. Since then, Stu has been playing a variety of online Massive multiplayer games including Star Wars Galaxies and Eve Online, and is a keen follower of the emerging culture of game play. He has been fortunate enough to combine his passion for gaming with his passion for delivering exceptional training and education for organizations worldwide.

In his role as Chief Technology Officer for QinetiQ Training, Stu provides advice and support to various organizations and governments on the impact of emerging technologies on training and education policy. Through his work, he has introduced the concept of Serious Games to the UK military training landscape and has developed numerous novel training applications from the technology. In particular, the fielding of two Urgent Operational capabilities based on games technologies has helped save UK military lives in current operations.

Stu started his career at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (then part of the UK Ministry Of Defence) in 1999, developing defense simulations, and then joined QinetiQ when it was privatized in 2001. Since then, Stu has been responsible for the practical exploitation and application of many simulation technologies in support of a wide and diverse military user base.

Stuart became a QinetiQ Fellow in 2013 based on his work on serious games.

Aside from his leadership role with SGS&C, Stu is the chairman for the pan-industry research program into commercial technologies undertaken as part of the UK’s Synthetic Environment Tower of Excellence, the supported the US, UK, Canada & Australia technical co-operation on commercial technologies. He has also chaired numerous NATO working groups on the use of emerging simulation technology.