Founders of Foam Sword Big things were expected of Crowle and Yu, who met during their time at Media Molecule working on Little Big Planet, when they set up their own indie studio, Foam Sword. Their first game, Knights and Bikes, is a hand-painted action adventure following two girls as they explore a fictional British island on their bikes.
Josh Unsworth and Sam Browne
Founders at Three Knots Brixton-based indie studio Three Knots creates narrative-driven games focusing on interactivity, discovery and beauty. Their first game Pink is an impressionistic flight experience inspired by surrealist paintings and the animations of David O’Reilly in VR. On the side, the duo also run workshops for Bafta’s young games designers programme.
Holly Gramazio
Games designer and curator, half of Matheson Marcault Gramazio is the director of the experimental game design festival, Now Play This, which takes place at Somerset House every year. The exhibition brings together game design in various formats with a different theme each year and raises discussions about the wider world of interactive art.
Meg Jayanth
Dave Benett
Freelance narrative designer London-based Jayanth has won awards for her narrative design work on the interactive fiction game 80 Days. Uses her platform to campaign for better workers’ rights in the industry and improve diversity in gaming.
Tracey McGarrigan
Co-founder of Games4EU By day, McGarrigan is the CEO of Ansible PR and by night she is co-founder of Games4EU, a pro-EU grassroots movement for members of the UK video games industry dedicated to fighting against Brexit.
Ian Hambleton
CEO of Maze Theory Maze Studio is a new VR gaming studio established by ex-Playstation and Activision figureheads, led by Ian Hambleton. It’s worked on some amazing VR games so far, with the first one being The Vanishing Act which saw players retrace the steps of an inventor who created a machine allowing you to see inside other people’s memories. Curious.
Caroline Marchal
CEO and creative director, Interior Night After working at Sony’s London studio, Caroline Marchal decided to set up her own narrative games studio, Interior Night, in 2017. Sega is going to publish the studio’s first project and it’s sure to be very exciting.
Finn Brice
Founder and CEO of Chucklefish Brice founded London-based indie games studio Chucklefish back in 2011, which creates charming pixel art-style games, including the recent release Warhammer, which displays tonnes of depth and nuance.
Ranjani Natarajan
Producer at Six To Start Natarajan started as an intern and worked her way up to producer, helping create Six To Start’s running app Zombies Run! which gamifies running with the help of some app-based zombies. The studio recently created The Walk, a smartphone game with a techno-thriller story to help people walk 10,000 steps a day, funded by the Department of Health.
Dean Jacobs
Co-founder and CEO at Wibbu Wibbu was founded in 2013 to change the way the world learns languages. Its game Ruby Rei is an epic language-learning adventure on your laptop, encouraging people to learn through engaging visuals and exciting gameplay. Dean leads the team from its Shoreditch-based studio.
Sam Houser and Dan Houser
Sam Houser, Aaron Garbut, Dan Houser and Leslie Benzies of Rockstar Games
PA
Founders of Rockstar Games London-born but now New York-based, brothers Sam (president) and Dan (VP of creativity) Houser are two of the most famous names in gaming thanks to their work at Rockstar Games, the studio behind the popular Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption titles. Red Dead Redemption 2, released last year, broke all the gaming records, generating $725 million in worldwide sales in just three days.
The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people changing London’s future for the better. #Progress1000
