HELLO THERE!
It's A pleasure to have you here. I am Michael, A second year University student with a love for all team aspects of game development. The way the pieces of a puzzle make a whole final product is fascinating and I aspire to one day be able to manage this process as a producer.
Throughout my career so far I have been consistently participated in work placements. Placements such as programming courses in big IT firms such as Claims Consortium. Social media management and asset creation with Cognitive Paths, multiple weeks between two years with Into Games, an amazing company who give junior developers like me a foot in the door, providing mentors with years of experience and opportunities to work with big game studios for example in my case I got to work with Aardman Studios. Also Recently getting into Teaching even!
With the skills that I have honed during these amazing opportunities, I am confident and excited to participate in the games industry. Of course these skills are being improved on daily, nothing can be "Finished" or fully developed, everything must be nurtured and revised.
ABOUT ME
Education and Opportunities
I graduated from college with a distinction and multiple work placements to my name. I felt confident in my abilities but also knew there was plenty of room for improvement. College was more than just the final grade, it was where I developed soft skills, where I found direction so early on in my life, where my love of video games and anything related was nurtured and expanded upon. I will forever look back to college as a crucial stepping stone within my Games Design Career.
Throughout my junior game dev career so far I have actively applied consistently for any kind of industry placements I could get my hands on, going so far as to bug my LinkedIn network! Due this I landed some absolutely amazing opportunities! Thanks to college contacts I got to work with Into Games, a non-profit company geared towards helping students or others get into the games industry. Through Into Games I worked with two game studios, expanding on game mechanics with Blazing Griffin and developing game concepts with Aardman Studios.
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After these Placements I went back to LinkedIn, getting in contact with an old college lecturer and organised a week of teaching, creating unreal engine workshops as well as giving portfolio and CV advice to HNC students.
Nowadays you can find me wandering the halls of Bournemouth University focusing on my modules and maintaining my work life balance, University is definitely a test of time management and project management! The most notable project within my University career so far, is the Producer role I am actively filling within my "Game Studio" Project. Me and my team will be developing a vertical slice demo for a fully fleshed out game concept, I am currently managing 12 different people all with unique skillsets and mindsets. Throughout this ongoing experience I have found so far that management is about working FOR my team not the other way around causing me to take a more Transformational leadership role which suits my personality and my team perfectly.
SOFT SKILLS
TEAMWORK
Deep understanding of the great importance of teamwork in a commercial/business context.
A team doesnt work for a producer, a producer works for the team.
LEADERSHIP/MENTORSHIP
Experience in leading a team and playing a key role in multiple contexts, including remote working, Time sensitive University projects and long term passion projects. These exemplify the necessary skills learned through experience such as crisis management, team motivation, approaching management with a transformational leadership mindset and individual consideration for each member.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Excellent verbal skills honed from work placements and volantary teaching assistant roles.
PROBLEM SOLVING
Use methodologies such as design thinking to identify and break down the problems (either collaborative or technical), and figure out feasible solutions.
TIME MANAGEMENT
Self-motivated to keep everything on track, sensitive to any risk of delay.
CREATIVE THINKING
Agile in thinking, often coming up with good solutions and out of the box ideas. For example in the into games work experience when i worked with Aardman studios, I came up with a game concept identical to a concept the company already had in development under NDA.
HARD SKILLS
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Experience in Agile/Scrum game development in different working environments using tools such as Miro / Trello / MS Project / MS Teams / Slack / Discord / Excel
GAME ENGINES
Experience in Unity / in roles of General level Design / Learning Unreal
PROGRAMMING
Beginner in C# in Unity Game Engine and C++ / Learning Blueprints In Unreal
SOFTWARE
Experience in VS code / GitHub / Maya 3D / Audacity / Twine
TESTIMONIALS
“I was fortunate enough to manage Michael during his Into Games placement. Throughout; Michael showed clean signs of determination and eagerness to fulfill the project requirements and satisfy the brief given by our industry partners. In daily stand ups, Michael communicated clearly current project progress and made sure to hold the team together during particularly stressful periods - Michael would be a fantastic producer or designer, and I hope to work with him one day, since under his influence projects thrive! ”