BAF and BAF:GAME, Talks to look out for

BAFter Hours Every day 5:00

Tues

Tomek Zawada, CD Projekt Red – Movies vs Games, Which Industry Fits You? 11.30
Jennifer Schneidereit and Philip Tossell, Nyamyam 2:00
Lucas Hardi, Bethesda Game Studios 4.15
GameCityNights 6:00 (4hours)

Wednesday

Christine Phelan, Valve 11.30
David Brown, Philip Gray and Bill Martin, TT Games 3pm
Neil Thompson, BioWare 4.15pm

Sat

Bradford Animation Festival 2012 Closing Night Party 10:30

Games Companies in Leeds and Around

Hopefully this year I will be able to collect some experience working in a short term internship or visit to a games company and see how the concept artists work as well as the rest of the process. I have looked around Leeds for a start as it actually has quite a lot of local games companies, especially if your looking at mobile development.

Activision Leeds

Activision is quite a big company and so there is most likely less chance that they will reply to offers of a visit, especially if they are working on a big new title, however the company overall has a good background and can’t hurt to email in the future. I believe approaching a company like this would be better with a good portfolio behind your request.

Blitz Games studio

Blitz Games have a lot of different studios including another games one named Volotile Games. Blitz Games also have a Blitz Academy which helps to educate students and make sure we are being taught to as close to what the industry want. Being a company that already tries to help students I feel I have a strong point to approach the company on a visit or even some work experience there. I think it will be essential to get in somewhere this year mainly to see the work they produce, the time limits they have, and advice on how they broke into the job they currently have.

Below are some more companies around or near the area, some with small indie teams. This could be good to look at as well as in small teams jobs can be very much shared or multiple jobs are done by a single person. Due to this there is a different end product. some might even bring in artists when designing a game, this is where I need to make more contacts and a good portfolio so when they do need that, they come to me.

Fourdoorlemon – Bradford
Codemasters
Full Fat Productions
Games Factions
Just add water
Moodpod –small indie team
Sumo digital
Weaseltron entertainment