The results of the sixth annual Game Republic Student Showcase were announced last week. Sean McGeady (@MacTingz) went along to the event hosted by Leeds College of Art …
The room is hot and bustling. The whir of fans constant. Clusters of students hover around their creations and wait to be judged. With so many games and animation students exhibiting art, design and technology, movement is continuous onscreen and off. Guns fire, frogs leap and cars race across TVs and tablets all around the room. The Game Republic Student Showcase is a veritable feast for the peripheral vision.
Now in its tenth year, Game Republic was set up by Yorkshire video game companies to “give themselves a louder voice” in an industry often neglectful of the North, says Game Republic director Jamie Sefton. Game Republic is a network that connects local developers, institutions and affiliated companies, which often share information, resources and sometimes staff; “What’s great about this region is that games companies do talk to each other.”
Game Republic’s network spawned the Student Showcase. Now in its sixth year, the event – hosted this year by Leeds College of Art – allows students to display their work to the region’s most successful games developers, who judge projects in four different awards categories. But there’s more to the event than awards.
“It’s so good for networking and encouraging students to stay in the region, and graduate jobs,” says Jamie. “Of course, for the universities, it’s great. They get to meet industry. They get to hear feedback. Out of it, we have had dozens and dozens of work placements and full-time jobs.” The showcase “changes lives,” says Jamie, a passionate gamer by his own admission.
Two people hoping to have their lives changed today are Leeds College of Art students Zoe Limbert and Jade Hodgson, who, alongside 3D environment artist Freddie Pitcher, created Cognitive Core, a third-person role-playing game concept inspired by such AAA titles as Borderlands, Deus Ex and Dishonored.
The game is set in “a future alternate reality,” says Zoe, creative writer and developer of the game’s narrative. “It was an experiment to see how far we could push characters, so they’re not like the usual game characters and the usual environments.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Jade, the concept artist and animator behind the game’s character design. “We wanted to get away from big burly men in armour,” she says. “We just wanted to try and make them [the characters] look as different as possible.”
After four months of work culminating in the exhibition of Cognitive Core to a host of experienced industry professionals, I ask Jade what she hopes to get from the event. She reclines quickly in her chair and her eyes flicker toward the ceiling and the heavens beyond. “A job!”, she calls out.
Jobs are hard to find, particularly in an industry as competitive as the games industry. But Jade might just get one. Companies have hired directly from these events, as CEO of Just Add Water, the Otley-based development team behind Oddworld games tells me. “This is our fourth year. We started in 2009. Tom, who’s judging today, we hired him on the back of that. Then, Maya, who’s with us, we hired her on the back of her second place last year. So we’ve hired two people straight from the event basically.”
It’s a similar story for Bradford-based Four Door Lemon, as director Simon Barratt explains. “We’ve supported it [Student Showcase] for quite a few years now. Last year we actually recruited one of the programmers who was present on the showcase. We’re just really impressed with the quality of work.”
There’s a comforting symmetry between students being hired as a result of the showcase and them being brought back to judge future awards. It offers the development companies an extra perspective on students and their projects.
Despite several successful companies scouting young talent, Simon insists there’s no real rivalry between them. “We’re all great mates. People seem to think that we compete for the same work but generally there’s enough, between genres of games and different experience in teams, that we all look out for each other a lot. A lot of other game studios in the UK and abroad are very jealous of what we’ve got here. We’ve got such a communicative and supportive network.”
There is an encouraging female presence at the Student Showcase too, with many young women keen to make strides within the industry, including Zoe and Jade. It’s something Simon values highly. “It’s a problem for the games industry. We very publicly have a low percentage of female developers. We’ve employed a couple of females in the Four Door Lemon studio over the years. But we’d certainly like to see more, get more of a balance, because it makes for a healthy working environment and a healthier output. It’s good to see. I just hope we can keep them in the games industry after they’ve completed their courses.”
Mike Smith, programme leader of BA (Hons) Animation at Leeds College of Art knows how important the event is for his students. “I think it’s brilliant because it means, at the very least, they can see what the competition in the region’s like, and arguably nationally and internationally. It’s a great networking opportunity to be able to talk to other students and maybe start forming relationships with other people that they’ve not had the opportunity to meet.”
Last year the event was hosted by the University of Bradford, an institution with a fantastic reputation in animation. Mike was keen to bring the Game Republic Student Showcase to LCA to show off a different side of games. “We want to celebrate not only the technical aspects of the games industry but the creative side of the games industry, in terms of character design, storytelling, level design. It made sense to show that off in a specialist art and design institution.”
These creative aspects are very visible across the exhibition. Alongside technical exhibits like digital ocean wave simulators, students are displaying art portfolios and character designs. Narrative-driven games like the recent BioShock Infinite have become increasingly popular in recent years. These character-driven games with unique art direction have a clear influence on the next generation of games developers.
“Events like today really cement that relationship between industry and academia and it’s hugely important”, says Jamie. As industry professionals prowl the exhibition for the next big talent, and with such impressive work on show, that relationship may just become a reality for some lucky Leeds students.
You can find the result of the Game Republic Student Showcase awards here.