Amy Pearson
Lead Artist
Mediatonic

I’ve worked at Mediatonic for nearly 8 years and feel very privileged to have been part of the company’s development over that time. Most recently I’ve been (pre-production) Lead Artist on Fall Guys, Lead Artist on Yahtzee with Buddies, and I’m currently leading a new team on another homegrown IP.

I was Art and Animation Game Dev Hero for 2019.

Alex Darby

Alex is technical & design director at darbotron ltd, has been working in video game industry since 1996 as a programmer, designer, & educator, and is a member of BAFTA. He’s lead a design department, been a technical director, helped found 3 companies, co-created a range of critically acclaimed post-graduate courses in videogame development, and was a co-creator of the DJ Hero franchise. He is also, apparently, still slightly in shock about and profoundly humbled to have been awarded the GameDevHeroes Programming Hero in 2019.

Caoimhe Roddy
Producer

Caoimhe is an indie producer, most recently known for working with UK publisher Chucklefish on titles such as INMOST and Eastward. She’s also director of Girls Game Lab and previous winner of Game Dev Heroes Production Hero Category in 2019. She’s passionate about creating an inclusive games industry and helping small teams achieve the seemingly impossible.

Lily Zhu
Product Lead
Splash Damage

Lily Zhu is a Product Lead at Splash Damage and has over 10 years of industry experience. Lily’s current role is heading up Splash Damage’s brand-new Stadia First title, Outcasters. Before joining Splash Damage Lily graduated with a BA in Interactive Animation and then went on to work at Ubisoft to bring Assassins Creed to mobile. As an MCV 30 under 30 award winner, Game Dev Heroes Leadership Hero winner, mentor and passionate diversity and inclusion advocate Lily is a role model in the industry. When not in the studio Lily can be found making cosplay armours.

Shivani Lamba
Founder
Brightlobe

Shivani Lamba is a creative technologist and the founder of Brightlobe, a VC-backed game studio and children’s health startup.

Matt Pelly
Head of Development Support
Hutch

I joined the games industry back in 2006 as a tester on a 3 month contract at EA Games. 14 years later, I am still here and have been fortunate to gain experience working on console, Facebook, and now mobile games.  A large chunk of that time was spent working within QA for a number of studios at EA including Bright Light, Playfish, Criterion and DICE.  Over the past 7 years I have been at Hutch where I was charged with building the QA and CS departments and scaling them alongside the needs of the company and our growing slate of games.  Most recently I have transitioned to more of an operations role and am now Head of Development Support which encompasses QA, CS, localisation, the tools and technology development team, and maintenance of our legacy titles.

Haley Uyrus
Head of Brand Communications
Tonic Games Group & Mediatonic

Haley currently looks after the marketing at Tonic Games Group and Mediatonic (Hatoful Boyfriend, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, Murder by Numbers) across their four studios in London, Brighton, Leamington Spa and Madrid. Previously she’s worked on over 35 indie titles at a boutique games PR agency, and as an in-house marketing manager on Sunless Skies, Sunless Sea and Fallen London at Failbetter Games. Haley also is a proud Limit Break and NYU Games Incubator mentor, Game Dev Heroes award winner and is a co-founder of the UK Games Marketer London meetup.

twitter.com/absintheuse
uyrus.com

John Campbell
Technical Director
Triangular Pixels

John Campbell is the Technical Director of award-winning studio Triangular Pixels and BAFTA Breakthrough Brit for 2019. In games development since 2004, and VR/AR since 2012, John has had experience on a variety of PlayStation hardware and VR devices, and works at the bleeding edge new platforms solving the tough technical challenges VR brings. With a background in gameplay, systems and networking he specialises in new user experiences and interactions.

John is currently working on Unseen Diplomacy 2, a VR game using non-euclidian geometry.

triangularpixels.com
unseendiplomacy2.com
https://twitter.com/OrangyTang

Lesleyann White
Principal QA Specialist
Failbetter Games

Lesleyann is an award-winning quality analyst at Failbetter Games and a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit for 2019.

She has worked in games since 2012 on popular RPGs such as RuneScape, Fallen London, Sunless Sea, and its critically-acclaimed sequel, Sunless Skies. Having also worked as a software tester outside of the games industry, she’s an advocate for better working conditions for games QA, and is keen to raise the profile of the vital work they do within the industry.

https://twitter.com/Fuzzlette

Sam Hughes
Audio Designer, Remedy Entertainment
Founder, The Sound Architect

I’m Sam, a sound designer and voice actor currently working as Audio Designer at Remedy Entertainment.

I’ve always loved video games and their audio since a young age, so to be a part of this industry is amazing to me.

A few years ago I founded both my website, The Sound Architect, and Game Audio North, an event for people in the North of England to meet up with other audio professionals of all levels and learn from/teach each other.

I was overwhelmed to win the Game Dev Hero for Sound previously, it’s one of my happiest moments, so I am very honoured to be on the judging panel for this year’s awards.

Emma Turner
Head of HR
Outplay Entertainment

With over 15 years’ experience in the games industry, Emma leads in all areas of talent management at Outplay. Over the last 9 years, she has helped Outplay Entertainment transform into the UK’s largest independent mobile gaming studio, developing a creative and progressive culture for the studio to thrive within and assembled a  large and diverse team of the industry’s top talent.

Adam Campbell
Managing Games
Azoomee

Managing Games at Azoomee, Vice Chair at BAME in Games and member of BAFTA, Adam is an industry pro with a career spanning nearly a decade.

Tamsin O’Luanaigh
Co Sec & Talent Director
nDreams

Tamsin O’Luanaigh is co-founder and Talent Director of nDreams, an award-winning virtual reality studio, dedicated to high-end games and experiences.

With a strong background in running support teams for tech companies, Tamsin (alongside Patrick O’Luanaigh) set up nDreams in 2006. Together they have grown the company in to one of the world’s leading VR specialists with over 70 full-time studio staff. Tamsin oversees a number of areas of the business including Company Secretarial; HR; Recruitment and Operations, her focus is firmly on the people, process and culture of the company.

As a passionate champion for diversity and inclusivity on a wider industry scale, Tamsin was recently named as one of GI.biz 100 Women in Games and is involved with G into Gaming (winning their inaugural Diversity Award in 2018).

She is also a proud mum of two, a Limit Break Mentor, a Trustee of Into Games and an Ambassador for Autistica Play.

Harinder Sangha
Operations Director
Sumo Digital Leamington

Nick Duncombe
Head of Recruitment
Playground Games

Nick Duncombe leads the Recruitment function at Playground Games, an XBOX Game Studio and one of the UK’s most pre-eminent AAA developers. Nick joined Playground in 2015 during the development of Forza Horizon 3 and has helped the studio grow to over 250 employees.

Since joining Playground Games Nick has been responsible for hiring the best video game developers from around the world and most recently the recruitment drive for Playground Games second AAA studio who are developing Fable, a new beginning for the legendary franchise

Ed Perkins
Director of Mobile Publishing
Square Enix

I’ve been in the games industry for over ten years now, having worked on AAA console, web and mobile on both the development and publishing sides.  I currently head up mobile publishing for Square Enix, and alongside building a new team and games I’ve been pushing hard on diversity, charity and wellbeing initiatives externally and internally, starting Pride support at the company three years ago.

We are No Brakes Games! A small team of developers passionate about creating quality games for our players, built on the phenomenal success of Human: Fall Flat, from our studio in sunny Tenerife.

We’re all about collaboration, expression and fun in our work and we’re always excited and ready to celebrate the incredible talents of others in our creative industry.

nobrakesgames.com

Ian Goodall
Managing Director
Aardvark Swift

Ian entered the industry as a consultant for Aardvark Swift at the turn of the century and hasn’t looked back since. Since becoming Managing Director in 2010, Ian has revamped Aardvark Swift into the award-winning, industry leading video game recruitment agency that it is today.

With a passion for developing the UK’s graduate talent, Ian founded the Grads in Games initiative which aims to strengthen links between academia and industry. The initiative’s Search for a Star challenges recently hosted over 1000 students who signed up to develop games and game-ready assets, alongside over 30 studios who signed up to support the initiative.

Account Manager
Games Jobs Direct