Video games have always been a passion of mine, from my early gaming years playing Ocarina of time and Doom; to more recent games like Halo, Dragon age and Goat simulator. For me it was a natural progression from nerdy gamer to nerdy game designer.
I did my main university studies back home in New Zealand, and ended up with a Master in Business in Marketing. My thesis topic was on video game marketing online and gamer’s perspective of FPS marketing specifically. For the last two years I have worked for a research group which specialises in video game research here in the UK. I am part of a small team which conducts studies for many of the big publishes (Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sega, NCSoft, etc) as well as a big syndicated project which we do twice a year. The syndicated project surveys over 14,000 gamers on a range of gaming topics like virtual reality, console usage, purchase intention and game reviews.
Train2Game has been fantastic in helping me progress in my epic quest to get into the game industry. The course has given me three key things: Focus, Networking and Confidence. It’s structured so I know what I need to do next and it gives me regular milestones so I always feel like I’m making progress.
I have met more fun, interesting and helpful game industry people on the course in the last year than I have in the previous 3 years trying to go it alone.
Finally one of the biggest issues I think many people have trying to get into the game industry is confidence and not thinking your work is good enough or that you don’t have enough skills to start talking to developers. Train2Game has shown me that I do in fact have the skills and that talking to potential employers is part of the learning process.
Current achievements:
- Won ‘Most innovative game’ at 2014 T2G Game Jam with Horatio the Hamster rolls into town. I was team captain and game designer for Basement Games.
- I make the best ANZAC biscuits.
