Working as part of the Urban Sustainable Development Lab, with Angus Taggart writing software, I designed and produced a large scale physical prototype of an internet connected public clock, aimed at opening up smart cities data to vulnerable user-groups who do not use smartphones.
Manchester City Council and Rock Paper Shotgun hired me to organise the Manchester Day Games Room. Two staterooms in the gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall hosted a broad collection of board and videogames, played by thousands of people.
Develop, the UK’s main videogames industry conference, hire YMPT to produce the Develop Game Jam each July. Support staff run the venue for two days while teams create games. At the end of the conference, with strict timescales and media managed by David Hayward, the teams present their work to Develop attendees.
Virgin Media hired me to curate and run VMGS (Virgin Media Game Space), the UK’s first public facing game space. Located in central London, it featured a mixture of exhibitions, events, and co-working space for London based videogame developers. The space ran in August and September of 2013, before taking highlights to the Eurogamer Expo.
From 2011 – 2014, I served as a production manager, screen content curator, exhibit builder and all round troubleshooter for the GameCity Festival in Nottingham. Predominantly involved managing submissions and developer relations; coordinating other teams, running venues, and building unusual game installations.
I was invited to lead a team at French experimental game jam Zoo Machines. With students Antione, Victor and Luc on art and programming, I built a custom controller for Business Piñata: Reach into the world, grasp the Invisible Hand, and decipher secret handshakes to unlock high frequency trading mode…
The Wild Rumpus run energetic club nights featuring the best in multiplayer indie games and live music. At GDC 2013 in San Francisco, YMPT assisted with tech and production for Rumpus Royale MMXIII, a series of indie game world championship tournaments.
GameCamp was the UKs only unconference devoted to games of all kinds. Organised by a group of game developers, journalists, lecturers and event organisers, it took place at LSBU in London with around two hundred and fifty attendees. With Ross Fowkes & Jo Summers, I designed systems to run a board game library for it.
Location scout for a Nottingham edition of Slingshot’s live action zombie game, 2.8 Hours Later. As well as researching then mapping potential venues, I conducted a feasibility study identifying potential confounding factors, such as environmental hazards and limitations of venue-types in the city.
Nottingham Trent University commissioned YMPT to investigate the potential to commercialise university facilities in relation to the videogames industry. The study comprised interviews with academic staff and game developers, cataloging of facilities and expertise, and research on similar programmes.