Last night we crowned our 2021 Game Dev Heroes! It was an awesome night and we’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone who attended for making it such a great night!
Thank you to everyone who has helped make it happen this year, from the huge support we’ve received from our event partners at Splash Damage, Creative Assembly, Creative England, Square Enix, Etch Play, Aardvark Swift, Games Jobs Direct, Analog the tireless work from our team of judges, and of course the several hundred of you that sent in nominations for your game dev heroes.
We received almost 600 nominations this year and creating the final shortlists was no easy task, let alone choosing the winners. There are a huge amount of talented and valued people working across the games industry, far more than appear in just our list, so it’s a privilege that we can bring more attention to many of those people behind the games we all love.
With so many nominations this year, the shortlists this year were packed with amazing people, genuinely causing a lot of tough decisions for our judges. For many of the categories it was close right up to the final votes.
And so… the winners of Game Dev Heroes 2021 are:
Art + Animation Hero 2021
Laura Dilloway
Lead Environment Artist, Roll7
Game Design Hero 2021
Edd Coates
UI/UX Designer, Game UI Database
Sound Hero 2021
Chel Wong
Composer & Sound Designer
Programming Hero 2021
Chris Marlow
Principal Gameplay Engineer, Rare
QA Hero 2021
Steph McStea
Production Hero 2021
Katrina Garsten
Senior Live Producer, Turtle Rock Studios
Writing + Narrative Design Hero 2021
Khaya Ahmed
Writer, FRAG Games
Marketing + Community Hero 2021
Lisa Schaeffer
Community Manager, Netspeak Games
Unsung Hero 2021
Reese Wright
Senior Producer, Robot Teddy
Founder, Save Point Social
Leadership Hero 2021
Des Gayle
Game Director, Altered Gene
Progression Advocate 2021
Leon Killin
D&I Consultant, Balance Patch
EDI Manager, Sumo Group
Thank you and congratulations to everyone, from all of us at Game Dev Heroes. We’ll be looking at our winners in more depth soon, showing you just why they mean so much to people, and why they have truly deserved their awards.