London Games Fest 2023!
Wow, what a week! I've only just managed to sit down and organise my thoughts.
I started the week with an invitation to the opening night of the London Games Festival. Having been a part of the 2022 London Games Accelerator I was excited to go along to see the official selection and to celebrate the opening LGF an amazing 10 days organised by Games London.
Sally at the London Games Opening Night
The event was hosted at the big and bright Coutts office in central London. I also managed to bump into my Limitbreak mentee Robin Milton whose game 'Brewess' is part of the official London Games Selection! How exciting - well done to her and the team at Fairer Games.
Robin of Fairer Games and Wyrdren Director Sally Sheppard
Wednesday I had the delight to head on over to Game Dev London Expo which will most certainly be going on my list of annual game dev events not to miss! I was honoured to be asked to speak on a panel discussing "How diversity fosters innovation" a topic I am incredibly passionate about. Thank you to our packed-out audience and, to those who listened from the corridor it was mind-blowing to think that so many of you wanted to hear from us!
Friday I spent all day Lecturing at the University of West London which is fast becoming my second home. I had the pleasure of teaching Maya and an introduction to Unreal Engine 5 this week to our first-year game design and VFX students. Being able to teach the next generation of game devs has been one of the highlights of my year so far, I am so excited by the progress they are making and can't wait to see them flourish in our industry.
Saturday was a super fun one as I ventured over to the Truman Brewery to go to W.A.S.D. I took Spellbound: The Magic Within to this event last year and had an amazing time both on the show floor and at the Games Finance Market. This year was much more relaxed for me as Wyrdren didn't have a booth while we squirrel away to work on our next title, although I'm looking forward to potentially having one next year. This meant I got to actually enjoy many more of the games on show including BAFTA award-winning games and lots of Indies! I was also invited over to see the Creator Lounge hosted by Neonhive. A super chill space for content creators to hang out and re-coup during the convention, a great idea I would love to see more cons have these chilled-out breakaway areas for industry, press, creators etc to utilise.
Amongst all of the running around this week I also managed to get a little work done for my own studio Wyrdren Games and I am hoping to have some exciting updates very soon! Ontop of that I have also been working this year as part of the Limit Break Mentorship Committee to help with the program of events that we will be announced very, very soon - eyes peeled for applications opening April 12th. So a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes.
This industry is filled with so much talent, creativity and passion - It makes my heart full. I love this community I have found myself in and I can only hope it continues to grow especially with the aptitude and drive we have for making world-class games right here in the UK.
If you’d like to keep up more with my Game Dev adventures, I post over on Twitter and Tiktok short-form video content of what’s been going on, feel free to catch me over there or read the blog posts here as they come out!
Thanks again for the support, stay Wyrd!
Game Dev London Vlog
Blog post written by Founder and Director Sally Sheppard