Committee

Back in September, I reached out to our attendees and guests of IGDA Scotland to help continue the Chapter’s operations and formalise with the IGDA. After a month long opening for applications, we have a 6 man committee of individuals.

Despite issuing an open call for anyone to come up and join, the five people who responded have been exceptionally interested in the chapter from it’s early beginnings, and as we move forward into making some serious progress with the chapter, I couldn’t be more happy to have these people on board.

Kraig Walker

Kraig Walker

Chair

Arriving on the development scene only last year. Kraig has pushed to achieve excellence in creating quality experiences for audiences. Often one of the youngest people in the room at conferences and creative get-togethers, Kraig found that there was a gaping communication hole amidst Scotland’s, and UK’s at large games industry. Entry methods for new talent were shutting down, companies that seemed to hold a strong public image turned out to be barely holding together, and communities of developers and studios operated mostly in isolation of each other.

This problem didn’t seem easy to solve, an easy solution seemed to be “Tax Breaks!” and blame the government for everything that was going wrong. But when Hazel McKendrick revived – started up – the IGDA presence in Scotland in early 2011, Kraig saw a significant opportunity for change.

Kraig is determined to continue help further the work of the IGDA, and bring Scotland’s industry out of the dark ages. That starts with building a sense of community within the developers of Scotland, and then working to provide greater opportunities for Developers from all backgrounds to professionally further themselves and improve the output of Scotland’s talented workforce.

Kraig has built a large network of contacts and links, both in the games industry and out-width across many other creative spaces. Considered “aggressively committed” by one of his peer students. He is a refreshing take on the modern student-type, defying expectations and challenging conventions at every possible turn.

Although spending as much spare time as possible on improving the chapter is one of Kraig’s great enjoyments, he’s also an avid lover of  the lomography photography movement, and still likes to make the occasional Source engine map for clans (by request) – his grass roots beginnings in game development as a young teenager.

Marc Madill

Vice Chair

Marc graduated from University of Abertay in May 2009 with a BSc in Computing (Games Development) covering programming, mobile and online games development and web design.

During his time at university, Marc was involved in BBC Prototype, bringing together students, industry professionals and BBC staff, developing and pitching prototypes to the BBC for new interactive products aimed at engaging with future audiences. Marc worked with in-house Flash coders and contributed towards presentation and documentation.

Marc took part in Next Level Dundee 2009, which brought together people looking to break into the industry to develop and pitch ideas in response to a brief. Marc was lead programmer for his team’s Flash demo, Interactive Desktop, which was showcased at the Neon Digital Arts Festival 2009.

In more recent times, Marc has been involved in a number of different collaborative projects within the games and digital media industries. Most notably, he participated in Gen Up Scotland 2010, a 5-week training programme for emerging talent. This included immersion weeks at BBC Scotland and Channel 4 as well as a week at Tag Games. He has also participated in both the Scottish Game Jam and Social Innovation Camp during 2011.

Marc hopes to build a career finding new and innovative ways of being as creative as possible in many areas of digital design and games. Simply put, he wishes to have fun, making fun for others.

Marc brings an enthusiasm and fully focussed desire to make the most of the great opportunity a full IGDA Scotland chapter can offer, both personally and in a wider sense. He has been involved in a number of networking groups and firmly believes in building a strong sense of community for the beneft of all members.

He recognises the importance of developing strong bonds and sees the forming of the IGDA Scotland chapter as having a massive impact on the continued growth of the country as a key-player in the global industry.

Behrooz Shahriari

Secretary

Behrooz ‘Bez’ Shahriari was inauspiciously born in Glasgow on a Friday 13th. His first memory is of his brothers tinkering with a computer to make strange geometric patterns form on the TV. Only later would he realise that this was merely a Spectrum loading screen.

 But those flashing stripes and the potential worlds, stories, puzzles and mechanics that lay in wait would forever fascinate him.

 Always in love with the idea of creating such things himself, he programmed simple games on the BBC and TI83, distributing them to his classmates. It was only after spending 2 years learning to program at university that he had an epiphany – programming was something he hated and was only willing to tolerate when realising his own designs.

 Thankfully, he has found that not everyone shares this view.

 He went back into education, starting with a graphic design HND and finally attaining a degree in Computer Animation. He made a few Flash games, including Exorbis 2 (‘sponsored’ by Kongregate). Now he continues to work on simple puzzle games for web/iOS, trying to unravel the ways of efficiency.

 He has looked enviously at London IGDA chapter meetings and is now happy that – finally – Scotland will have an additional means to attract speakers and foster relationships.

Ross Forshaw

Treasurer

Ross Forshaw has had a passion for programming and games development for over ten years, with a deep understanding of different programming languages, in particular Java and C++. He is the Director of a small business, Linx Online Ltd, that develops a variety of different types of software. His passion for games still persists, with the development of a commercial game underway.

Ross’s passion for games development began when he first played Crash Bandicoot 2 at the age of twelve. With his interest sparked, he began creating his own games on any piece of paper at hand. 

 Though Ross  has a deep interest in graphic design, his passion lay in programming. For his Advanced Higher Computing project he taught himself Java and started learning C++ shortly afterwards.

Going to University he learned a great deal about games programming at the University of the West of Scotland. His drive was to build his own cross-platform game-engine, which he managed in his third year with the development of the Moombacoot engine. His Honours dissertation was focused on AI development, in which he created an AI framework for programmers.

Ross hopes to assist IGDA Scotland in its growth to build a strong Scottish game development community that will  promote development in a range of different thought provoking areas.

Luke Dicken

Committee Member

Luke has been a gamer as long as he can remember, starting on a TI81 before he could talk properly.

At about 13 years old he picked up a copy of Creatures, and from there his destiny was more or less fixed. The next 4 years were spent reading papers he didn’t really understand and playing with tech demos for both Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life.

An undergraduate degree in AI was the natural way of progressing this, followed by an MSc, both at the University of Edinburgh. Luke then moved to University of Strathclyde to pursue a Master of Research in “Autonomous Planning for Automated Systems”, graduating with distinction, and has gone on to develop the concepts he had created as part of the MRes for a PhD that he still occasionally works on.

He is a founding member of the Strathclyde AI and Games research group where he supervises projects in the area of AI for Games and gives a variety of seminars and lectures on Game AI across Scotland. In his free time he writes extensively on the subject for websites such as AltDevBlogADay and Gamasutra, and is an editor and writer for FeedTheGamer.info; a cosumer-oriented gaming news site. He is also co-chair of the Education track of the AltDevConf, a conference taking place in February 2012 organised by many of the same people behind AltDevBlogADay.

This year, Luke was awarded an IGDA Scholarship to attend E3. There he saw first hand the amazing community that the IGDA has created, and was privileged to be on the receiving ends of many opportunities as a result. Helping to organise IGDA Scotland allows him to continue the great work the organisation does and raise awareness about their initiatives.

Brian McDonald

Committee Member

Brian McDonald, game programming veteran at Glasgow Caledonian University, specialises in Video Game Graphics and Mobile Game Development. Brian, is a keen supporter of the Video Games Industry in Scotland and a long time IGDA member. Brian has been a pivotal player in IGDA Scotland chapter since the very early days, organising the Glasgow meetings and facilitating presentations across all venues.

Brian sees the future of the chapter to support the Games Industry in Scotland which includes Developers, Academics and Students. He is also keen to grow the chapter to embrace developers around Scotland.

When Brian is not making video games, he is playing video games, boardgames, roleplaying games and tabletop games. Brian is a big fan of cup cakes, and can be often seen in various bar around Glasgow. If you see him, make sure you buy him a pint or a whisky.