Employer: Royal Navy (Subcontracted via the Moment)
Position: Instructional Designer
Skills: Instructional Design, requirements gathering, storyboarding, Captivate, gamification, client liaison.
I was subcontracted from the Moment to work as an Instructional Designer for Babcock International who in turn worked for the Royal Navy. The contract updated the Navy’s entire engineering training program. My focus was on media design. The media was wide ranging but primarily focused on simulations. Unfortunately, the work has security repercussions and can’t be shown. I was passed for SC level security clearance in order to get this job (still valid).
Employer: National Air Traffic Services
Position: Contract Software Developer (training products)
Skills: JavaScript and Flash programming, Captivate, requirements elucidation, client liaison, design, graphical manipulation, LMS management, mobile development, SCORM, Instructional Design
At NATS I was hired primarily to fulfil a training contract with Lockheed Martin covering a large number of training courses. I developed a template system to rapidly build courses matching their specific look and feel, speeding up the process to the point where I worked almost full time on other internal training work. A lot of this work was education games. Work was often collaborative in small teams. Completed packages were deployed on mobile, iPad via a variety of work networks and through NATS LMS for which I was given administrator rights to use and set up courses. Unfortunately, much of the work for both firms had security repercussions and can’t be shown. I was passed for a national security waiver in order to get this job.
Employer: Solent University
Position: Associate Lecturer in Games Development
Skills: communication, preparation, research, organisation, programming and design.
This job was exciting as the student’s ability levels and motivation was high. I taught games physics and mathematics alongside my more specialist areas of design and programming. The post involves teaching, lesson preparation and marking with some minor administrative responsibilities. As with the other teaching jobs this involved a CRB check. E-learning was developed using Moodle.
Employer: Self Employed
Position: Games Designer and Programmer
Skills: games design, balancing, budgeting and programming in Flash Action Script 3.
I took a year break with the primary motivation of improving my programming and challenging myself. I had long wanted to design games professionally. With my background in and passion for card games and given the relatively cheap development costs, it seemed natural to make one. The game uses the simple artificial intelligence elements of the Tower Defence genre and a very unique card playing system that creates explosive combinations.
I took out one month to fulfil some travel ambitions of mine. I was playing the card game Clash of Dragons and entered a competition they ran involving giving feedback on their game. I was selected to fly to California and spend a few days giving feedback on their game. They offered me a job but unfortunately the offer was made just days after the once a year work visa window closed.
Employer: Southampton City College
Position: Games Development Course Leader
Skills: self-teaching and research, communication, organisation, improvisation, managerial, safeguarding as well as a large number of technical skills (see below).
The game course was quite varied, I taught units in story, graphical narrative, Photoshop, Flash Programming (AS3), 3D graphics using Maya, games design, running a business, research, project management, the games industry, testing, games hardware, software, communication, research techniques, interface design and animation. There were also lessons on general subjects such as CV writing, health or current affairs and lessons teaching fundamental skills such as mathematics, writing or presentation. The games course grew dramatically whilst I was there, with students gaining significantly on previously attained grades and a high university acceptance rate.
There were not enough hours of games lessons to make up a full-time job, which meant that I made up hours teaching on a range of other courses. These courses including Journalism, which I ran for several months due to a teacher leaving mid-term, the analysis aspects of TV and Film Studies and I also ran a Creative Media Diploma which was a highly varied course for younger students encapsulating a huge range of skills from all media disciplines. Whilst doing this I completed a PGCE at Southampton University.
Employer: EIDOS
Position: Lead Tester
Skills: personal communications, software standards, self-reflection, analysis, observation and logic
Things had changed when I returned to EIDOS, they had been taken over by SCi and were now paying testers more. I got to lead various projects including Pony Friends 2 and Age of Conan. This involved assigning work to a variety of offices including the one I worked in, EIDOS new office in Montreal and also to agency games testers in Brighton. I worked more closely with other departments especially region localisation, design and marketing. The major change was more responsibility, I was accountable for what was done in the project and learned how to manage this and get the best out of the people I worked with. I continued to do standards testing in all the major platforms and became the company’s specialist in the new games for Windows Standards.
Employer: Schneider Trading Associates
Position: Futures Trader
Skills: research, financial knowledge, patience, calm, self-analysis, calculation, quick reactions and concentration.
I was largely a day trader, this means that I bought and sold positions over a very short term aiming to return to a level position by the end of the day. The day trading largely involved arbitrages between interlinked markets. I also traded by exploiting the queuing system of fairly stable and heavily traded commodities and occasionally based on incoming news.
I also learned how to invest normally, working out which companies were under or overvalued and acting accordingly. This was a very small proportion of the trading I did but the only one I still continue to do.
Employer: Sega
Position: Software Standards Specialist
Skills required: attention to detail, delegation and tutoring of staff, technical knowledge, communication and logic.
A game that was normally already released in Japan would be given to us and I would check it very swiftly to ensure it was ready for European release. Sony Europe was notoriously stricter than Sony US so there were often issues that needed addressing. I worked directly with the translation staff and organised small teams of testers.
Employer: EIDOS
Position: Games Tester
Skills required: Attention to detail, logic, avoiding distraction and precise description and communication.
Playing games for a living was an extremely enjoyable job. I was a prolific defect finder, whilst maintaining a high quality of fault. I would attribute this to a logical mind set on my part, a willingness to test less glamorous areas of the game such as menus for defects, an enjoyment of puzzle solving element of finding bugs and simple hard work.
I was swiftly given leadership responsibilities such as running a four-person team on Tomb Raider PDA, 16 temporary staff on Time Splitters 2 and as assistant lead on Whiplash. I also worked on format holder requirements a more technical side of testing which involved ensuring the game lived up to certain standards as determined by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
The position occasionally offered the opportunity to make gameplay based suggestions, there was database management involved as well as regression testing and working with a large range of different hardware.
Other Work:
In 2013, I taught an evening class Website Design at Totton College.
I taught via Googles Help Outs service 3 classes on Games Development, Website Design and Flash Programming.
During University, I worked as a Pension’s Administrator for Legal and General.
Prior to University I worked as a Visual Basic Programmer at Ascom Telecommunications.
I also made substantial sums of money as a player of the card games Magic the Gathering and Marvel Versus (due to competitions run by the game maker rather than via gambling).
