The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2019 – Creative Arts: Gaming

Roberta Lucca
Amelia Heathman8 October 2019

Roberta Lucca

Co-founder and CMO of Bossa Studios
BAFTA-award winning Bossa Studios makes games like the YouTube-renowned Surgeon Simulator and I am Bread, and more recently, the upcoming viral sensation, Pigeon Simulator. Lucca also uses her position to challenge the status quo in gaming and show that there is a place for women.

Michael French

Head of games at Games London
French heads the annual London Games Festival which sees thousands of gamers descend upon the city to try out the latest and greatest games, as well as significant events for studios and developers in and around London.

Siobhan Reddy

Co-founder and studio director of Media Molecule
As co-founder of Media Molecule, creator of some of the most innovative games around including the recently-released Dreams, Reddy can be found discussing breaking down the stereotypes of “gamers” and how games impact the world.

Shaun Rutland

Co-founder and CEO of Hutch
Top London mobile gaming studio, focusing on racing games. Hutch regularly wins “best place to work” awards due to its excellent work/life balance focus.

Sam Mathews

Founder and CEO of Fnatic
Fnatic is one of the leading eSports organisations in the world, all led by Mathews at the company’s Shoreditch-based HQ. However, the operation spans across San Francisco, Berlin, Belgrade and Kuala Lumpur and includes designing hardware gear and apparel to launching community experiences.

Jo Twist

CEO at Ukie
Ukie represents the UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry and with Jo Twist at the helm it’s in good hands. She received an OBE for services to the entertainment industry in 2016 and is also the chair of the Bafta games committee.

Matt Mills and John Sinclair

Founders of ustwo
London-based studio ustwo is behind some of the biggest mobile games in the world including Monument Valley and Monument Valley 2.

Adam Campbell and Chella Ramanan

Founders of POC in Play
Launched in January this year, POC in Play focuses on the representation and access of people of colour in the games industry.

Riana McKeith

Art director at King
As art director at King, the developer behind Candy Crush Saga and Farm Heroes Saga, McKeith has a big impact on the design of the games we play. She also uses her position to drive forward the case for more women in gaming.

Alex Fleetwood

Head of studio, Niantic London
It’s one thing to make a game, it’s quite another to make a connected one. Fleetwood’s gaming start-up, Sensible Object, did just this when it created Beasts of Balance, a board game which connects the digital and physical worlds together. Sensible Object was such a hit that in June the company was bought by Niantic, the Silicon Valley company behind Pokémon Go.

Rex Crowle and Moo Yu

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

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