BETA | TOP UK GAMES DEVELOPERS
CHRIS LEE ACTIVISION
PHIL HARRISON LONDON VENTURE PARTNERS
THE CO-FOUNDER of FreeStyleGames and Media Molecule now has one of the most important games dev roles at Activision, where his is VP of European studios. Lee started out in sales and marketing for middleware firm Criterion, where he ran key parts its global Renderware business for over five years. After acquirer EA wound up the software, Lee went solo with FreeStyle – he later helped a band of ex-Lionhead developers strike out on their own to form an indie called Media Molecule, and land a publishing deal for a then-unknown platformer starring a boy made of sack-cloth.
Students: Don’t rush or take short-cuts – take the time to get a fully rounded education and applicable qualifications before focusing on games. Don’t jump straight into a half baked ‘video game design’ course at 16 or 18 – it’s not a short-cut to recruitment into the games industry. You don’t need a degree, and places like Escape Studios are excellent. Just spend time learning and mastering a craft. If you’re starting your own studio – double the number you currently have in your cost and overheads line for the first two years and make sure the business can still survive. You will spend twice what you expect in setting up the business. Publishing contracts are always a month further away from being signed than you think. And if a publisher hasn’t green-lit your concept/pitch within a month they’re not going to.
JUST IN case you don’t know, Phil Harrison is a bona fide games industry luminary. He started out as a game designer and graphic artist, he made the leap to management as head of development for Mindscape in the late ‘80s, moving to Sony as the firm began work on its first games console. Harrison’s star ascended in line with PlayStation, culminating in an role leading Sony Worldwide Studios. He championed and signed key first-party projects including the likes of LittleBigPlanet and SingStar. He left to play a part in the restructuring of Atari, before setting up London Venture Partners, a new investment group for disruptive game tech.
Invest in yourself and your future career: go to conferences, take advantage of student discounts, network and meet people. Be confident: identify people you want to connect with, and reach out to them. Some will be too busy – but, hopefully, some will help. Business networks like LinkedIn are better than Facebook in this regard. Subscribe to every news group you can and read every news site, every day. You can learn a lot from news about the people, the process and the fabric of the industry. This knowledge will prove invaluable. If you’re going to form a studio, hand-pick your leadership team and divide up the responsibilities. You cannot be excellent at everything, even if that comes as a shock to some people, so share the load. When you’re building your first product, schedule the point at which you will abandon a bad idea. Failure is good if it’s done cheaply and quickly. When building a company in the industry today, your first decision is your metrics and analytics tools strategy. You will make better, faster and cheaper product decisions as a result. Find a mentor – someone you are not related to, and not an immediate manager, for advice in good times and bad.
MARGARET ROBERTSON HIDE&SEEK ORIGINALLY AN historian, Robertson has had a varied and respected career in games that has taken her from journalist to development director via consultancy work. In games she started as a freelance writer, before scoring a role on Edge and swiftly ascended to become its editor. She left to become a consultant, working on projects of all sizes, including some of the games commissioned by Channel 4. Most recently she joined Hide&Seek, a game design studio which uses public spaces and digital platforms to make ‘interesting games for interesting people’. 24 | FEBRUARY 2011
MILES JACOBSON SPORTS INTERACTIVE WHAT BETTER proof of Jacobson’s stature in the UK industry than his recent OBE? Jacobson has run Sports Interactive for ten years, overseeing its continued growth and dominance of the soccer management genre. He’s also hugely active with key charities and a proud supporter of Watford FC. Most impressive has been the way his studio has been virtually unharmed by the regular shifts in the PC games market, while also confidently trying new things – the studio’s latest push has been onto iPhone with commercially powerful handheld versions of FM.