Peter Akrill: Travellers Tales, Codemasters

Position: Programmer
Worked on: Bionicle Heroes, LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones

Peter graduated from Bolton University in 2005, getting a First. His lecture was about the programming side of the industry. While I’m not a programmer, I found it interesting to see how they contribute to a game, how they operate in a studio and the problems they encounter.

While his lecture was mostly about programming, he did give some very sage advice about game content. He explained that players will notice a poorly finished feature in games, but they won’t notice a missing feature. He stressed the importance of polishing existing features before adding new ones.

An unexpected part of his lecture was how to stay healthy during crunch times. He told us to expect stress and long working hours during these times, and gave us some great advice on staying positive and healthy, advice which I will surely use myself.

David Bramhall & Vicky Rowley: Sony Evolution Studios

Position: Q&A (David) HR (Vicky)

David began the lecture with his journey through the industry; he started as a Q&A tester at Sony for the WRC series. After that, he worked on LEGO Indiana Jones at Travellers Tales before moving back to Sony and working on Motorstorm Apocalypse.

David then talked about the roles of different departments in the company, namely Artists, Designers, Animators, Producers and Q&A. Both David and Vicky explained the importance of these different departments and how they worked together to make a finished game.

Vicky continued the second half of the lecture by going over how to contact studios and what they expect to see on the application. CVs and covering letters were discussed, and how they should be built differently depending on who they were sent to.

Finally, they closed the lecture with an open questions session, which David used to hurl chocolate bars at us.