11 minute read
Critical Path
LIVESTREAM EVENT 4pm November 25th
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WITH THANKS TO
Join us for an inspiring livestream awards on November 25th at 4pm
We’re very excited to announce that we’re just ONE WEEK away from the awards. And we really hope you can all join us on the day to celebrate the contribution of women to the UK’s games industry.
This year’s event will be livestreamed. We’re working with game event production experts ADVNCR on the awards this year, and you can watch the event with us at www.womeningamesawards.com.
We’re super excited to have two incredible hosts for the event, with Charleyy Hodson (Xbox) and Elle Osili-Wood (BBC), both of whom had made our shortlists before coming onboard for the event. We’ll also have some special guests in the studio and joining us remotely.
Our shortlisted nominees, opposite, will also be joining us live. A big thanks to all of our judges for putting in the time and eff ort to choose our winners. You can read about our judges’ take on the state of play in the industry for women on page 26.
Finally, we’d like to thank our sponsors for this year’s event, without whom it would not be possible: Rare, Facebook Gaming, Unity, EA, ADVNCR, Amiqus, Creative Assembly, Hangar 13, OPM Jobs and Splash Damage.
WOMEN IN GAMES AWARDS SHORTLIST 2020
Rising Star of the Year – Development Sponsored by Creative Assembly
• Hannah Rose, Bithell Games • Inês Filipa Brasil Lagarto, Lab42 • Jasmine Moore, Sumo Digital (Nottingham) • Jessica Sham, TT Games • Julia Shusterman, Sports Interactive • Vicky McKelvey, Supermassive Games
Rising Star of the Year – Business Sponsored by EA
• Christie Moulding, Team17 • Emily Horler, ReedPop, UK • Emma Withington, Bastion • Eva Poppe, Unity • Shazina Adam, SIEE • Katie Laurence, Ubisoft
Creative Impact of the Year Sponsored by Facebook Gaming
• Anna Hollinrake, Mediatonic • Helen Kaur, Rocksteady • Jess Hyland, Wonderstruck • Julie Savage, Supermassive Games • Karoline Forsberg, nDreams • Lily Zhu, Splash Damage
Technical Impact of the Year In association with Made with Unity
• Amy Phillips, Media Molecule • Anastasiia Tsaplii, Bossa Studios • Cheryl Razzell, Polystream • Michelle Chapman, Sumo Digital • Mohrag Taylor, Creative Assembly • Nareice Wint, Lucid Games & Party
Llama Games
Comms Impact of the Year Sponsored by Splash Damage
• Amy Hughes, Square Enix • Charleyy Hodson, Xbox UK • Haley Uyrus, Mediatonic • Taylea Enver, Frontier Developments • Sola Kasali, EA • Zuzanna ‘Zee’ Inczewska, Team Adopt Me
Businesswoman of the Year Sponsored by Amiqus
• Gemma Johnson-Brown, Dovetail Games • Korina Abbott, Neonhive • Maria Sayans, Ustwo • Nusrat Shah, Exient • Tina Lauro Pollock, Brain and Nerd Ltd • Lauran Carter, Liquid Crimson
Journalist of the Year
• Elle Osili-Wood, Freelance journalist and presenter • Jessica Wells, Network N • Lara Jackson, GameByte • Louise Blain, Dialect/Freelance • Vic Hood, TechRadar • Vikki Blake, Eurogamer & NME
Career Mentor of the Year Sponsored by Hangar 13
• Caroline Miller, Indigo Pearl • Korina Abbott, NeonHive • Melissa Phillips, Silver Rain Games • Romana Ramzan, Glasgow Caledonian
University • Tara Mustapha, Code Coven • Anisa Sanusi, Limit Break Mentorship
Games Campaigner of the Year Sponsored by OPM Jobs
• Cinzia Musio, Splash Damage • Fey Vercuiel, Studio Gobo • Lauren Kaye, She Plays Games • Marie-Claire Isaaman, Women in Games • Michelle Tilley, Sony Interactive
Entertainment • Roz Tuplin, Games London
Outstanding Contribution Sponsored by Rare
The recipient of this award will be announced
WWW.WOMENINGAMESAWARDS.COM
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Award Sponsor (Businesswoman of the Year)
Award Sponsor (Rising Star – Development) Award Sponsor (Career Mentor of the Year) Award Sponsor (Games campaigner of the Year) Award Sponsor (Creative Impact of the Year)
Industry Voices
MCV/DEVELOP gives the industry a platform for its own views in its own words. Do you have a burning hot take for the world of games? Get in touch!
Covid-19 Is Changing the Gaming Industry for the Better
Paul Grant, Pivot
COVID-19 has forced a number of changes in the industry. First off, let’s talk about working from home. A topic I discussed with Maria Vasilchikova, a Women in Games Ambassador and HR Manager at Unbroken Studios. The Unbroken Studios team in Los Angeles are currently WFH and have been since mid-March, and Maria told me that their WFH policy has worked out well.
This didn’t surprise me. The request for WFH has been growing throughout the industry for some time. Pre-pandemic, I found that the studios who’d implemented WFH initiatives were much more successful in hiring talent. Talking to people at various studios, many feel like they’re more productive.
Unbroken Studios have found this especially true for engineers: “We did observe immediately that engineers were more productive. We had metrics to prove it,” Maria said.
However, WFH hasn’t been easy for everyone. Maria explained that many of her team with families had struggled. Childcare and schooling difficulties make it hard to devote time to work.
To support people that were struggling WFH, Unbroken Studios decided to make sick policy unlimited straight away. Maria explained: “We don’t want people to be worried about sick time or let work get on top of them while they’re dealing with things at home. So, we offered unlimited sick time and that’s worked out really well”.
Even for people without families, WFH can be tricky. Artists and designers thrive off collaboration, which is harder to achieve in zoom calls or teams meetings.
It’s for these reasons that there’ll always be a plan to return to studios. This is something that Maria joked to be talking about with her leadership team every single week. And it’s not just WFH where we’ve seen the gaming industry adapt (and possibly evolve).
When the initial COVID-19 wave hit, there was a great deal of uncertainty. Marketing plans and deadlines had to be moved, meaning that contracts had to be changed.
However, both Maria and I agreed that a lot of publishers and a lot of large gaming organizations have embraced these challenges, using their own platforms to feature their content.
Maria even went on to argue that it will make companies think twice about attending these events in the future.
“Maybe we don’t need GDC or PAX to be successful. Everybody’s got their own way to feature their own content. That means they’re not subject to the dates that are set by these events. They’re not subject to the costs, incurred with these events.
“I haven’t seen any data specifically comparing the two, but I suspect that they’ve had more success with this model.”
I think the events are still needed because they offer a chance to interact with the consumer directly and are one of the very few times that studios have time to network. However, they carry a lot less impact that they did ten years ago.
If anything, the success that we’ve had taking everything online during COVID-19, should drive these events to comeback stronger. They will need to try harder than ever to convince studios and consumers to attend. And that can only be a good thing. Overall, the way that the gaming industry has adapted has been amazing. I’m excited for the future because I really do believe that in the last six months we’ve seen the gaming industry evolve and change for the better.
Paul is a recruiter at Pivot Search specialising in programming and engineering helping the largest international brands in video games find top talent.
Fostering a nurturing environment for mental health and wellbeing amidst a pandemic
Andrea Wearmouth, Double Eleven
The fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic has completely upended our way of life at every turn. With all it has thrown at us, we want to ensure that all of our staff at Double Eleven are getting their social and emotional needs met during this trying time. To do that, we’ve set up a series of practices that cater to the wide gulf of situations our employees may have found themselves in during this pandemic.
One of the biggest hurdles is that of raising children while working remotely. Raising kids requires a ton of work even outside of a pandemic, so we as a company were quick to remind the wider team to show empathy and compassion towards their parenting colleagues. We told everyone to expect delayed responses and variable availabilities as typical “working hours” became a more mercurial concept.
Others on staff have found themselves on the opposite end of the spectrum by living alone. To help those in such isolated situations, digital support bubbles were erected within the company to ensure people could virtually buddy up with colleagues.
Another group this has been a challenge for has been those who started at Double Eleven in the midst of the pandemic. Since lockdown, we’ve hired around 40 full-time employees and this number is still growing. To ensure that this onboarding goes smoothly, all of our recent recruits have regular contact with their team leads, ensuring that they still receive the same level of mentorship, feedback and engagement as they would pre-Covid.
As a company that has expanded significantly over the last year, it’s important that our efforts to support the wellbeing of everyone grows in line with that. Some teams have ‘sanity chats’ every morning, where teams get together and talk about what they’ve been up to outside of work.
While we miss the post-work rounds of drinks and football games during lockdown, technology has made it easy to keep that social element. People are creating and running weekly quizzes, D&D has continued remotely, and online gaming has made for many impromptu social gatherings.
Prior to lockdown we would meet for monthly team lunches, encouraging people to mingle with folks outside of their department. Nowadays, we still meet for virtual monthly lunches and the company kindly picks up the tab for everyone’s meal. Another small gesture is having the company cover everyone’s tea, coffee and biscuit expenses in lockdown, retaining our creature comforts from before.
Internally, as the HR & operations supervisor at Double Eleven I have been talking to every single member of the team, checking if we make their work-from-home lives more comfortable.
We know that people are dealing with this in different ways, so we adapt what we offer on an individual basis. We’ve even reconfigured larger teams so that everyone gets regular one-to-one support from the person who oversees their work on a daily basis. We’ve always had an open door policy as a company, encouraging people to talk to their manager so they can collaboratively find a solution. We acknowledge that there are people who do not feel comfortable talking face to face, and prefer the anonymity of external resources, so we offer information to help with this. Talking therapies and other counselling are available for those who want them, and our team is able to help guide anyone through the referral process, ensuring that they get the help that they need. Double Eleven is constantly looking for better ways to work during the Covid crisis. Some of these practices have been so effective that we may continue them after the pandemic is over. In the meantime, localised spikes in cases and the use of national contact tracing will continue for the foreseeable future, so we have a working group that meets weekly to discuss how the tide is turning. If there’s anything 2020 has taught us, it’s that we must take things one day at a time, as we can only predict so much. Ultimately we will do whatever we need to in order to keep our people safe, and ensuring that they have all the mental health support they could want is our top priority as we navigate this troubling era together.
Andrea has been with Double Eleven almost five years and is their HR and operations supervisor. She continually supports the team with her focus being on staff wellbeing and work-life balance.
