Colin Anderson, Denki

An avid computer games enthusiast since the days of the Atari VCS2600 console, Colin Anderson graduated from Heriot-Watt University in 1993 to join computer game developers DMA Design as their first full-time audio designer.  This was a position he was keen to take as it utilised his 3 passions: Science, Software and Sound.  It soon became apparent that Colin also possessed an aptitude for management and this was quickly put to the test when, having only being with the company 18 months, he was given charge of setting up and running DMA Design's Audio Department.  The Department he set up has gone on to become one of the most widely respected audio facilities in the industry winning numerous awards and critical acclaim for innovative use of sound in titles such as Body Harvest, Space Station Silicon Valley, Grand Theft Auto and Wild Metal Country.  This culminated in a BAFTA award for Best Interactive Audio  (GTA: London 1969) and Colin being appointed to the Microsoft Audio Advisory Board where he was involved with the hardware and software design for the Xbox console.  The department he created still carries on this tradition of excellence today as the in-house facility for Grand Theft Auto developers, Rockstar North.

Frustrated by the continuing difficulties of improving interactive audio and realising that many of these issues were rooted in poor development practice Colin left DMA in 2000 to take the position of Managing Director at Denki, a "Digital Toy Company".  From the outset, Denki's focus was to establish better ways of creating digital toys and games for the next generation of entertainment platforms such as Mobile Phones, interactive Digital Television, online PC and other mass-market devices.

Denki is the creator of the multiple award-winning Denki Blocks! puzzle game; winner of 'Overall Best Game of the Show' and 'Best Handheld Game of the Show' at the European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) 2001.  Denki Blocks! was also nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2002.  The game illustrates the company's strategy of creating Intellectual Property and exploiting it across multiple new technologies. 

During recent years Denki has focused on interactive television development and has established itself as a leader in the production of games for this emerging platform - routinely taking products from paper concept to completion in less than 10 weeks.  The quality and significance of this work was recognised by the games community in 2003 when Denki received an Industry Excellence award for its pioneering work in this field.  The company now supplies around three-quarters of BSkyB's interactive games in the UK as well as several other major international broadcasters.

Having firmly established Denki as a leader in the emerging field of interactive television games, Colin is again actively investigating other alternative game markets to find new ways of bringing Denki's particular brand of interactive entertainment to non-traditional markets.

Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory

Tameem Antoniades after working for five years at Sony Cambridge as a programmer and designer, co-founded Just Add Monsters Ltd (JAM) in March 2000. JAM was bought by Argonaut with Jez San joining the board and Tameem directed the design of their first game, Kung Fu Chaos for Microsoft Games Studios. Since mid-2003, he has been directing the design for a next-generation game, Heavenly Sword during which time he and the original co-founders of JAM bought back the company and reformed as Ninja Theory. Heavenly Sword is now to be an exclusive title for PlayStation 3 and is published by SCEE. Tameem believes in the potential of games as an entertainment art-form to rival film, theater and literature and that next generation platforms provide the first real opportunity for developers to address this challenge.

John Broomhall, Independent Audio Director & Consultant

John Broomhall is an independent Audio Director & Consultant with twelve years' experience in videogames, a number of senior management roles with major videogame publishers under his belt ( MicroProse, Spectrum Holobyte, Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames ), and over fifty published titles to his credit. His career, which also includes working as a game producer, encompasses many global hit titles such as the hugely successful X-COM series; Sid Meier's Civilization/Colonization; MechWarrior 3; B17 Flying Fortress 1 & 2; Superman & American Idol/Pop Idol . Broomhall has chaired several BAFTA Interactive Audio Awards and regularly speaks on game audio at seminars and university lectures. He also sits on the European Developers Forum & Edinburgh International Games Festival steering committees, the MusicWorks advisory board, and writes a monthly column for well-known industry magazine, Develop.

Paulina Bozek, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Paulina Bozek is a senior producer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s (SCEE) London Studio.  Her recent work has included producing the innovative and highly successful SingStar series.  Paulina started her career in games at UbiSoft in Montreal, Canada, working in PR & Communications.  She then moved into development in a project management role for UbiSoft’s online gaming portal: GameLoft.com. She joined SCEE London Studio in January 2003, working in the prototype departments and was appointed as producer for SingStar shortly afterwards.  She holds a Bachelor's degree in cultural studies and an MSc in media & communications from the London School of Economics.  Paulina was awarded the BAFTA Interactive New Talent Award in 2004.  SingStar was awarded the BAFTA for Originality in 2005.

Charles Cecil

Revolution

Charles Cecil has been a key figure in the interactive entertainment industry for over 20 years. In 1982, to subsidise himself at college, he started writing adventure games for the publisher Artic Computing. His titles included ‘Inca Curse’ (published in 1981), ‘Ship of Doom’ (published in 1982), and ‘Espionage Island’ (published in 1981). During this time, Charles was invited to join Artic Computing as a Director.

After completing his degree in 1985, Charles set up Paragon Programming, a development company working primarily with the major British publisher US Gold. In 1987 he was approached to head the development team for US Gold. In 1988 he was poached by Activision to manage their European development studios.

In 1990 Charles set up Revolution Software. Revolution quickly established itself as Europe's leading adventure game developer with a string of successful titles, all of which have been critically acclaimed and commercial hits. Clients have included Sony Computer Entertainment, Disney, DreamWorks, Virgin Interactive, Sierra (Vivendi), UbiSoft and THQ.

On the strength of considerable critical acclaim, Revolution’s first two original titles, ‘Lure of the Temptress’ (published in 1992) and ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’ (published in 1994) went straight to number one in the GALLUP charts in the UK and topped charts across much of Europe. The next titles, ‘Broken Sword – shadow of the Templars’ (published in 1996) and its sequel ‘Broken Sword 2 – the smoking mirror’ (published in 1997) both, in turn, received awards as the best adventure of the year as well as the best adventure to date. Sales of these titles have exceeded one million units each.  ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘Road to El Dorado’ were both released late in 2000 and the PS2 version of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ was released in 2001. In 2002 ‘Broken Sword’ was published on Game Boy Advance. 

The third game in the Broken Sword series, ‘Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon’, was released in November 2003 on PC, PlayStation2, and X-Box. As well as receiving reviews of 9/10 from Edge, 9/10 from Official Xbox, and 87% from PC Gamer, the game was nominated for 3 BAFTA awards and Best Writing at the Game Developer Conference in 2004.

Charles is currently working on the fourth in the Broken Sword series, as well as the game of ‘The Da Vinci Code’.

Charles has a particular interest in the narrative aspects of Interactive Entertainment and how this medium will develop with advancing technology. He co-founded and remains a Director of Games Republic, an alliance of game developers, and is a Board member of Screen Yorkshire, the regional agency that supports film, television and interactive entertainment in Yorkshire. Charles is on the advisory panel of the Edinburgh International Games Festival and regularly talks at events and to mainstream press about creative and commercial aspects of the  video games industry.

Tancred Dyke-Wells

Kuju Entertainment

Tancred Dyke Wells’s nine year career in games has continually interleaved art and design roles, this schizophrenic behaviour ultimately leading to his current role as studio creative director at Kuju London.

After four years working in Television, Tanc joined the games industry in 1996. He worked as both a character artist and designer on BiO/Sys, published by Take2. This little-known but innovative game combined the adventure and simulation genres.

After a spell as creative director on the unsigned title Mission to Mars, Tanc moved to Intelligent Games in 1999 where he worked primarily as a lead artist. Tanc then joined Kuju as art lead on Reign of Fire. His contributions to other titles included principle character artwork for Konami’s The Regiment.

Most recently Tanc conceived the original prototype which was commissioned by Nintendo as Battalion Wars. He went on to direct the art and design of this unique mixture of action and tactics. Battalion Wars has recently been scored 90%-Star Game by NGC Magazine, 8.8–Editor’s Choice by IGN and 9/10–Star Game by Cube.

Andrew Eades

Relentless Software

Andrew Eades after gaining a degree in computer science from the University of Bristol in 1991, went on to code chess, bridge, backgammon and similar games for Oxford Softworks.

Andrew then joined DMA Design in Dundee to work on the Lemmings franchise and R&D software development for Nintendo¹s groundbreaking Nintendo 64 console.  After a long stint at Virgin Interactive Entertainment's London studio as lead programmer creating a multi-product football game engine, in 2000 Andrew left to pioneer a Broadband Browser for Surfcast during the dot com era.

Andrew then spent time freelancing for games developers and becoming development manager of 3G network operator, three, and project manager at Symbian.

Returning to video games with Computer Artworks in Brighton to lead their DJ project. In 2003, Andrew co-founded Relentless Software with David Amor. Relentless has developed DJ: Decks & FX, worked on EyeToy and Singstar and developed a new million-selling franchise, Buzz!: The Music Quiz, for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Andrew joined the board of TIGA in 2005.

Caspar Field, SCi

Caspar Field enjoys a three-sided view of the games industry, having worked in a journalism, development and publishing. Having spring boarded from running a student magazine to become Deputy Editor at Edge in 1997, he moved on to launch DC-UK for Future Publishing in 1999 before shifting over to a producer position at Argonaut Games. After shipping Xbox online racer Carve in 2004 he took on a fresh challenge at SCI – now Eidos – working with Pivotal Games as their publishing producer for Conflict: Global Storm, which released on PS2, Xbox and PC in September 2005. An avid gamer, his much-abused thumbs are currently battling through Advance Wars DS and Far Cry: Instincts.

Mike Gamble

Miles Jacobson, Sports Interactive

Miles Jacobson is managing director of Sports Interactive (SI), the sports management simulation specialist, originally the creators of the Championship Manager series of football management games and now the company behind the new smash hit football management simulation, Football Manager.

Having enjoyed a successful career in the music industry (with Food Records and Universal Music), Miles transferred a long-standing love affair with Sports Interactive and gaming in general into a career change when he joined SI in 1997, initially as business consultant before assuming his current role in 2001. He gave up his other interests and became full time at Sports Interactive in 2002. He was also responsible for acting as a music consultant on more than 30 computer games, including the first 3 Gran Turismo European releases.

2004 will be recognised as a watershed in SI’s development: the company ended its long-standing relationship with the game publisher Eidos and, as a result, no longer has any involvement with Championship Manager. Instead, the SI team incorporated its award-winning code and database into a new game, Football Manager 2005, which was released on November 4th by SI’s new publisher SEGA (immediately becoming that company’s fastest-selling game since records began). The latest version of the game, Football Manager 2006, was released on October 21st 2005, and became the second fastest selling PC game of all time in the UK, with over 100,000 units sold over the counter in the first weekend.

In addition, SI has taken its expertise into new fields for the first time, with the release of its first non-football game (the ice hockey management simulation NHL Eastside Hockey Manager, which was first released in July 2004) and the announcement of its first baseball game (Out Of The Park Baseball, due in 2006). They have also recently announced that the Football Manager brand will be coming to PSP & Xbox 360 in early 2006, and have a few other announcements up their sleeve for titles to be released in 2006 and beyond.

Miles lives in North London and is currently carrying out a study into the long-term effects of sleep deprivation.

Chris Keegan, Climax

Chris Keegan has been in the games industry for over ten years and since first, reluctantly, stepping up to such high-level languages as C and C++ rose through the programming ranks to the giddy heights of technical director before finally yielding to the inevitable and taking the role of VP of development at Climax's Handheld Studio in London.

Chris' first published title after some years of working on projects that never saw the light of day was B-17 - The Mighty Eighth (PC-Zone Readers' Awards "Flight Simulation of the Year" 2001). These aborted projects, although frustrating, afforded Chris excellent first-hand experience working on failing large scale software projects. Such experience these days is vital.

Since joining Climax Chris has enjoyed sticking his oar in, asking awkward questions and generally "getting in the way". As well as guiding technology development, Chris is involved with the development of project management processes to ensure that games developers never have to suffer under the yoke of the endless crunch whilst at the same time are able to create innovative and exciting games.

William Latham, Games Audio

William Latham is CEO of Games Audit Ltd, which is an Operational and Technical Due Diligence Company focussing on games companies and related sectors. Games Audit clients include Banks, VCs and City Investment companies. Clients include ITI Techmedia, Add Zero Ltd and Imprimatur Ltd. William is also Running Stream Professor of Creative Technology, at Leeds Metropolitan University.

From 1993 to 2003, he was CEO of Computer Artworks Ltd, which after initially working with the Music Industry for 2 years, then focussed on producing computer games for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Employing around 90 people, hit games included the award winning ‘The Thing’ (PS2, Xbox, PC) for Vivendi Universal which was a number one hit in the UK and Germany. The game is a sequel to the cult John Carpenter film of the same name set in Antarctica. Other Computer Artworks products the PC game Evolva for Virgin Interactive and Organic Art for Warner Interactive and Mattel. Other clients included Microsoft, Nokia, Atari and Sony Computer Entertainment.

Originally trained as an artist at Oxford University BFA (79-82) and The Royal College of Art MA (82 to 85). William is well known for his pioneering work with IBM (87 to 93) in evolutionary art and computing at the IBM UK Scientific Centre in Winchester. He is co-author of the  book “Evolutionary Art and Computers” published in 1992 which covers the work during this period with the mathematician Stephen Todd. His award winning organic computer animated films were shown at SIGGRAPH and many computer graphics events around the world, and he had major art exhibitions, touring the UK, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong and Japan for four years. During this period his work received much press and TV coverage and a number of IBM patents emerged from this work.

David Lau Kee, Criterion/EA

David Lau Kee holds a BSc in operational research & mathematical statistics and a PhD in computer science. In 1988, he co-founded the European research labs of one of the world’s largest electronics companies, running a number of research programmes and becoming general manager of business development. In 1991 he began investigating interactive 3D graphics on consumer electronic devices, a research project from which RenderWare was derived. This led in 1993 to the establishment of Criterion Software, which David co-founded and leads to this day. Presently, David is CEO of the Criterion Software Group, vice president and general manager at Electronic Arts, and vice chair of BAFTA Games.

Jamie Macdonald, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Jamie Macdonald started his career in the entertainment business at the BBC running various new technology projects across TV and Radio. This initial foray into the media world was followed by an extended period in Italy, Bavaria and the south of France where he managed global software projects for Digital Equipment Corporation, played a lot of Doom and lost whole weekends to Civilisation.

In those far off days, that was enough to get into the games industry and on returning to the UK in 1995 Jamie was asked to join Criterion Software to head up their newly-formed games initiative. He grew Criterion Studios into a highly talented and effective team of 45 people and delivered their first 3 games for PC and Dreamcast.  He then moved into a broader role in which he was closely involved in the early planning, staffing and R&D for RenderWare. 

In 2000 Jamie joined NTL as their content director where he was responsible for producing all the output for the NTL digital interactive TV service. Following a helter skelter 18 months in the TV biz he decided to go back to his first love of videogames.

SCEE’s London Studio was formed in late 2001 with the amalgamation of the Soho and Camden studios. Jamie joined in December 2001 as its first director and has been responsible for introducing and establishing such major new global franchises as EyeToy, SingStar and The Getaway. In January 2005 Jamie was promoted to vice president, development and is now responsible for both London and Cambridge Studios.

Jamie is married with two young sons and lives in Battersea. 

Kevin Malakoff, Buena Vista Games

Kevin Malakoff is a technical director at Buena Vista Games Europe, the video games publishing division of The Walt Disney Company. At BVG, Kevin is responsible for technology strategy, technical relationships with development partners, and technology contracts in Europe. Since becoming a professional video games developer in 1996, he has worked in technical roles in the US, Japan, and the UK for companies including LucasArts, Pulse Entertainment, and Argonaut Games. As an active member of the UK industry since 2001, Kevin has written a monthly column “Spare Cycles” and article “Gone is the Game Engine” for Develop Magazine. In his spare time, Kevin is reading for his executive MBA at London Business School.

Peter Molynuex, Lionhead Studios

Peter Molyneux is one of the best-known names in the international world of computer games. He co-founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987 and created a new genre of computer games, “ the god game” with the release of Populous. Since then Peter has been responsible for a string of massive selling games including Powermonger, Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper. Cumulative sales of his games are now approaching the ten million mark worldwide. In 1997 Peter left Bullfrog Productions to form a new games development company Lionhead Studios. The company has released two games Black & White in 2001 and Fable in 2004, cumulative sales are already over 3 million copies. Autumn 2005 saw the release of Black & White 2 (PC), The Movies (PC) and Fable The Lost Chapters (PC and Xbox) Lionhead now numbers over 200 employees and is working on four new games.  Peter is recognised as one of the computer games industry’s most articulate and eloquent speakers on the subject of the development of computer games. He has recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of Abertay and was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. Peter was also awarded an OBE in the 2005 New Years Honours List for services to the computer video games industry.

Jonathan Smith, Travellers Tale

A former games journalist and editor at Future Publishing, Jonathan Smith is development director at TT Games, where he was responsible for the production of LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game. Jonathan’s currently working on a number of new titles, all of which promise to be amazing.

Algy Williams, Babel Media

Algy Williams is managing director of Babel Media, which he founded in 1999.  The company now employs over 200 people with offices in Brighton, Montreal, Los Angeles and New Delhi.

Algy has extensive experience of game development, graphic design for print and television, live action, computer and traditional animation, special effects, programming and audio. Before entering the games industry, Algy was managing director of CAL, one of Europe's leading television design and postproduction companies.