The Fellowship – Siobhan Reddy

Dreams weaver and 2021 BAFTA Fellowship recipient Siobhan Reddy

SAM HENDEL

WORDS BY CHRIS SCHILLING | PORTRAIT BY SAM HENDEL

SIOBHAN REDDY HAS ALWAYS been encouraged to dream a little bigger. Paying tribute to her feminist mother and a “very, very influential” older sister, she recalls a happy childhood where “there was nothing that we were ever told we couldn’t do.”

Pushed to express herself creatively, Reddy became fascinated in her teens by the overlaps between different mediums. Until then, she admits, games were behind theatre, music and film on her list of interests; they were a fun way to bond with her siblings, but nothing more. As studio director at Media Molecule, Reddy has overseen a string of projects that are colourful, welcoming and whimsical. Yet, it was the darker tone and cinematic flourishes of Shinji Mikami’s Resident Evil that really captured the imagination of this horror-loving teen, convincing her that her future lay in games.

Born in South Africa and raised in Australia, Reddy moved overseas once more, arriving in the UK to realise her ambitions. She successfully applied for an entry-level job at Perfect Entertainment, best known for the Discworld series, before moving to Guildford’s Criterion Games, where she worked for seven years.

“Fiona Sperry had taken over the studio,” she recalls. “And the whole focus of Criterion changed from making ‘example games’ to having the goal of making a game that sold a million units. I was lucky to be able to witness that and be part of that happening.”

As part of the bustling games hub in Guildford, Reddy had a large circle of friends with whom she enjoyed discussing shared passions: music, comics, architecture, cinema. Even so, by her mid-20s, she found herself tempted to move away from games. “I was still at the point where I was thinking, if I’m going to make a big career change, now would be a good time to do it,” she notes. “I’d always been really interested in theatre, so I thought maybe I could apply myself to that.”

But then Lionhead Studios alumni Mark Healey, David Smith, Kareem Ettouney and Alex Evans decided to found Media Molecule, and Reddy’s head was turned once more. “They were not just some friends who wanted to start a company, they were brilliant – they had a lot of expertise, a lot of experience and I loved the games that they made,” she says. “What they wanted from me was somebody who could ship things.”

That’s a typically modest assessment of Reddy’s role at the studio. The regularity and enthusiasm with which she credits her peers bespeaks a generous nature that has proven key to Media Molecule’s success. She’s played a crucial part in establishing a healthier and more inclusive studio culture – in part, motivated by her time at Criterion.

“It was an accepted thing for us to be there pretty much every weekend and late at night, and I saw the detrimental effect that that had on all of us,” she says, breaking into a wry smile. “The irony of Burnout is not lost on any of us.”

She concedes that it didn’t happen immediately for Media Molecule, with its award-winning debut LittleBigPlanet, a groundbreaking platform game powered by user-generated content, proving to be “a lot of hard work”. But since then, she’s been keen to establish a better work-life balance for her fellow Molecules, while ensuring everyone is free to share ideas and feels like their voice is valued. “Maybe this is just romantic, but it’s about that general feeling of a collective,” she explains. “You know, people are important. Everybody’s important. It’s not quite true to say we have a completely flat structure, but at any level people contribute to the culture and to the products we’re making. That’s always been a big driving force.”

That very spirit was a significant factor in the development of Tearaway, the delightful 2013 PS Vita adventure that epitomised the player-focused creativity, visual tactility and what Reddy calls “playful anarchy” that runs through all of the studio’s games. And while a small team of around 15 staff worked on that game, everyone else was helping develop the studio’s most ambitious project to date. Unveiled in 2013, Dreams gradually took shape throughout the PlayStation 4 era, finally emerging last year as a collaborative creative toolset of unprecedented scope: it’s a platform not just for making games, but also music, art, sculpture and more.

Reddy credits Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida and Michael Denny in particular for their support throughout Dreams’ long development (“Being part of PlayStation Studios has afforded us the ability to double down on creative gaming and innovation, and we’re very grateful for that,” she says) though that would be to undersell her part in bringing it to fruition. It was a tricky balance, she says, between allowing leeway for experimentation and turning those innovations into something tangible. “One of the jobs that I really love is being able to look at what we’re doing and help plan how we turn that into the best version of what it is.”

As studio head, Reddy seems to instinctively know when to get out of the way and when to rein things in; she believes the role of editing in games is vital, acknowledging that plenty was “left on the cutting-room floor” during Dreams’ development. Getting to really know the game in its last 12 months of development, meanwhile, afforded her the rare opportunity to flex her own creative muscles. “I got so much joy out of it,” she beams. “I feel sad that I haven’t actually been as engaged with that side [recently]. But that’s just because of all the stuff that I’ve been playing.”

With games producer Des Gayle at BAFTA's Young Game Designers Awards in 2019

BAFTA/SCOTT GARFITT

That realisation in turn led to the formation of a curation team, which is now helping to spotlight user creations – from comedy skits to photorealistic forest scenes – to bring more eyes to them. Dreams, she says, is “a constant work-in-progress”, and she applies the same description to the studio’s own culture. As a persistent and vocal advocate for women in games throughout her career, Reddy recognises that her own work towards greater inclusivity and diversity is an ongoing effort. “It’s like a garden,” she says. “Culture is not this static thing that you arrive at. It constantly needs tending and growth and new ideas. We’ve got a lot to learn and we’ve got a lot to do.”

If Reddy’s self-effacing response to the Fellowship speaks to her recognition of the studio as a collective, perhaps the most fitting testament to her accomplishments to date comes from last year’s recipient of BAFTA’s highest honour. In a 2017 interview, Hideo Kojima said he was inspired by a visit to Media Molecule the previous year, and sought to recreate its atmosphere when founding his new studio, Kojima Productions. “Inside it felt less like a studio and more like a club where like-minded people were assembled,” he said. “It was like a home.”

That speaks volumes about the way Reddy has helped recapture the freewheeling spirit of her childhood within the studio she runs. “I feel like I grew up seeing a lot of great role models around me all trying to find their voice and not fit into one particular way of being,” she says. “If there’s anything that I want to represent, it’s that there’s no box for people. There’s no such thing as one way of being, or one cookie-cutter mould for how we should be.”

It’s only fitting, then, that Reddy’s career has brought her to a point where she’s now helping to pay it forward – to set budding game creators, artists, musicians and architects on their own creative journey, via a platform that can make their Dreams come true.