THE BRIT LIST: HELPING HANDS/BRITS ABROAD
JAS PUREWAL, OSBORNE CLARKE
CURRENTLY working abroad in Silicon Valley, Purewal is one of the leading lawyers in video games and digital entertainment. In his time he has advised studios like 22 Cans and CDProjekt, and has acted as EU/international counsel for firms such as IGN and Twitch. He also discusses digital entertainment law on his website,
Gamerlaw.co.uk and in columns for the Financial Times, Forbesand The Guardian.
LYNNE KILPATRICK, DCMS
IT’S unusual to see a civil servant on a list of influencers, but Kilpatrick was nominated by a plethora of high profile industry execs for her work with UK games businesses over 14 years. In her current role at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport – and previously at Business, Innovation and Skills – Kilpatrick has been tirelessly working behind the scenes, assisting businesses with financial support, education needs, training and more.
BRITS ABROAD
LAST year’s Tomb Raidergame may have been built in the US, but at its heart was some very British talent, including this man, Darrell Gallagher. Educated in Wolverhampton, Gallagher began his games development career as an artist at Sony in 1997, and has held roles at Rockstar and THQ before joining Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics. By the time Gallagher became head of the studio, Lara Croft’s position in games was on the wane. So he and the team set out on an ambitious project to change all that, resulting in last year’s acclaimed reboot. “Being given the opportunity to oversee the Tomb Raiderfranchise
www.mcvuk.com
Five of the UK’s top talent have long since left our shores and are busy
transforming global games giants such as EA and Sony
DARRELL GALLAGHER, SQUARE ENIX
at Crystal Dynamics and create a reboot that was so well received in 2013 was a great career highlight,” he says. In the wake of Tomb Raider, Gallagher was promoted to head of product development and studios for the entire of Square Enix’s Western business. He’s currently tasked with looking over Lara Croft’s next outing along with new Hitmanand Deus Exentires. His big ambition, he tells us, is to help establish games as a mainstream phenomenon. “We are heading into a time where multiple generations of families will have grown up playing
games. This combined with the many ways to access games will mean that they are more mainstream than ever before. With such a wide choice it means the industry will continue to grow and find new ways to entertain players. “At some point in the future games will also be culturally respected as equals to other forms of entertainment in the arts – I’m hoping for a gaming Oscar before my career ends.”
NICHOLAS LOVELL, GAMESBRIEF
BACK in 2008, Nicholas Lovell predicted that free-to-play would be the dominant business model in games, and he’s been actively engaged in it ever since, championing companies such as King and Natural Motion. He has written books on creating free games, including the recent Design Rules for F2P Games. He’s even been helping studios looking into the area and was design consultant on last year’s free-to-play Angry Birds Go.
PAUL DURRANT, ABERTAY UNIVERSITY
AS a part of his job at the Scottish university, Durrant has been helping indie studios in the UK. He led the UK Games Prototype Fund, which offers up to £25,000 to devs and has assisted 70 studios. Abertay’s games education was singled out for praise in the Livingstone/Hope Skills Review. He also led the team behind the international Dare to be Digital competition for students making games.
DR RICHARD WILSON, TIGA
Wilson has been proactive since he took control of games development trade body TIGA in 2008. He’s grown its members and actively engaged with the indie game community, helping its studios get the funding they need. The trade body has been most proactive in pushing for tax breaks for games, and Wilson is viewed as one of the people responsible for the Government’s decision to implement tax relief for studios.
ANDREW HOUSE, SONY
BACK in 1990, Wales-born Andrew House was living in Japan and had to choose between two job offers in the country. One was with Toyota, the other was Sony. Thankfully, he picked the latter. House worked in communications for the launch of the first PlayStation, before running third-party relations for PlayStation US (including signing GTA) and then taking the president role for PlayStation’s European operations. In 2011, he was promoted to CEO of the entire PlayStation business and last year led a dramatic turn around in the platform holder’s fortunes in launching PS4, the fastest-selling games console in history. Bad luck Toyota.
March 28th 2014
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