Some of our UCLan Games Design Success Stories.

Steph McStea Team17 QA Analyst · 2017 to present · Wakefield

Graduated from MA(Hons) Games Design 2017. Prior to her Masters Degree she completed the BA Hons in Games Design (again at UCLan) to a First Class standard.




You can see some of her student work on her Tea and Monsters Blog and website.


Steph is currently working as part of the QA team at Team17 and she loves it!





Steph has a high profile in the industry because she makes herself visible by getting involved in activities and networking. In her spare time Steph enjoys volunteering as an artist for Girls Make Games and further developing her forum: StudentGameDevs.co.uk.

Steph created StudentGameDevs to act as a hub/community for those studying Games Design and for those hoping to pursue a career within the Games Industry.
Something that she found when she was studying for her degree was that while there’s a lot of passion for our industry, there didn't seem to be much communication amongst students outside of their own universities.

The aim of StudentGameDevs is to try and bridge that gap between university courses and the students studying within them, giving potential for new Indies to be created, and for new connections to be born.



If you have any questions about StudentGameDevs, or wish to know anything about the site and the ideas behind it, please do feel free to contact Steph @teaandmonsters on Twitter, or through private message on-site.


Interesting to see that through her active networking she has some great followers on Twitter, including Arthur Parsons, Head of Design at TT_Games Ltd.




All Steph’s hard work paid off when she was named in the 100 rising stars of the UK Games Industry! Check out the interviews with the winners of this year's GamesIndustry.biz 100 in the link: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/top100/2018/s

Steph is also an Ambassador for Women in Games (@WIGJ).

The Ambassador program created by Marie-Claire Isaaman, CEO of Women in Games, will act to grow the membership of the organisation, helping the organisation to expand both its reach and scale. This will help Women in Games to achieve its strategic goal — to double the number of women in games — over the next 10 years.







Women in Games have also been super encouraging to Steph. In Sept 2016 Steph was among the women selected in a jam packed ceremony featuring 30 minutes of awards and presentations to honour and recognise some special people and the winners of their Student Competition.
Winners of the Student Competition were awarded by Debbie Bestwick MBE along with Helen Kennedy,
Head of the School of Media, at the University of Brighton:
Read Steph's post about the event here.

Victoria Goldsmith

(Alumni working as 3D Artist @ PlayStation London Studio graduated in 2011. Vic has written a guide about getting into the games industry.

https://www.artstation.com/lowpolyfish/blog/LQOV/breaking-into-the-games-industry

https://lowpolyfish.com/resume









Here’s a snippet of Victoria and her friend, Steph Brookes talking about games when they were on the course in 2009.

https://gamescourse.blogspot.com/2011/03/games-by-girls-at-uclan.html

Twitter https://twitter.com/lowpolyfish

Sarah Akers is an Alumni of the BA(Hons) Games Design course at UCLan 

and a 3D artist.

Sarah’s recent experience is at Paw Print Games Ltd in Chester as Lead 3D Artist.
During her 2 years in the game industry, Sarah, has been responsible for art direction, managing fellow artists and working within all spectrums of 3D and technical art. 

In 2016 Sarah spent 13 weeks as a 3D prop Artist at WHITE PAPER GAMES Ltd. in Manchester in a part-time internship. She designed, modelled and textured a variety of game ready props for their upcoming title, Occupation. She was able to experience first-hand what it's like to be involved in independent games development.







White Paper Games







Sarah has a keen interest in advanced shader creation and she’s passionate about developing tools to enhance workflow. She loves fun, “pick up and play” multiplayer games and creating fitting art to go with them. My goal is to create solid, cohesive visuals that aid gameplay and look fantastic! :)
Sarah worked on Blood Zombies for PawPrint Games in Chester!

BLOODY ZOMBIES

TEAM UP. BASH BRAINS. SAVE LONDON.
Bloody Zombies is a co-op brawler designed to be played with any combination of TV and VR players. Fight across the ruins of London using carefully refined Free-Form Combat, taking down a terrifying variety of un-dead with an expanding special move-set. Created for 1-4 players, Bloody Zombies is also enhanced with VR - using its unique viewpoint to help the team overcome obstacles & discover secrets in the game. Out 2017 on P­­C, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and also supports HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR headsets.

Sarah worked on Border Patrol as lead artist and art director at Paw Print Games. It is currently available to demo on Steam.
As a fully motion controlled, room scale VR experience, Border Patrol requires you to interact with various objects and tools in order to process each robot that comes to your booth. The primary goal was to create a fun and light-hearted experience that gives the expected feedback to the player to ensure they feel fully immersed in another world.
Her responsibilities included:

· Overall art direction and research & development
· Exploring different artistic and technical ideas considering the limitations of VR
· Task and time management for art team
· Modelling, texturing and lighting environments
· Particles and VFX
· Shader creation
· Working to keep art consistent across various platforms including PS4 VR

Alex Haddow-Mendes. Find his portfolio here! www.Alexhm.co.uk 

Alex is currently Technical 

Designer at Team 17 Software Limited




A Level Designer, Technical Designer and Games Designer. He recently graduated from the Games Design course at UCLan with a First, where he says he “learned how to create games as well as how to be a fully functioning human being.” J
He has been designing games since he was 12, creating modifications for the Source Engine. Also using games that allow user generated content; like LittleBigPlanet or Halo’s Forge mode. Where others would look for gimmicks, he would create a solid, lasting design.










Projects.
Advanced First Person Character ​— Unreal Engine Marketplace A popular tool, Selling on the Unreal Marketplace - A tool for Unreal Engine 4 that is the basis of modern First Person games, increasing usability for designers without technical skills Luck Screen ​— Google Play Store Luck Screen is a casual, puzzle/pattern mobile. The game is based around the pattern lock screen on a mobile device, you must figure out the correct pattern to unlock the phone.

Available on the Google Play Store.







Alex made several games for his final degree portfolio.
One of them, ‘Come In, Over’ has been written about in an 80 level article .

Alex has a YouTube Channel where he shares his level design work.