In June 2024, we invited over 300 students to experience the workplace, Gamechangers style. Hosted by twelve local games companies, students enjoyed interactive workshops based on real life working scenarios across the games industry. Sounds exciting? To learn more, check out our previous blog, Life is More Fun If You Play Games.
At the end of this experience, we challenged students to apply all their new knowledge and skills to become future GameChangers and enter our competition to design a computer game. We knew the entries would be fun, but we just didn’t anticipate how much fun they would actually be!
In second place, we had Jasmine Parry and Jack Plunkett, from The City of Liverpool College, whose entry ‘Bite Night’ is one for history buffs across our region. Jasmine explained, “I really enjoyed the GameChangers event as I met a lot of people in the games industry who gave me more information on what it was like to work in that setting. The game that we pitched is called Bite Night. It is a steampunk horror game set in Liverpool City Region during the Victorian era.”
Sticking with the history theme was our winner, Thomas Murphy, who also attends The City of Liverpool College. His wargame, ‘Continent in Arms’, was set in the 1920s.
Thomas said of his game, “For the post-work game design competition, I developed a concept for a turn-based digital tabletop wargame set in an alternate early 1920s universe. I had a blast conceptualising this idea, and in August, I brought the idea to life as a prototype in Unreal Engine 5.”
Thomas added, “Attending GameChangers was an amazing opportunity for both networking and learning. I gained valuable insights and skills from industry experts Thanks to the GameChangers team for organising such a brilliant event that made these connections and learning experiences possible.”
As GameChangers, we enjoyed every second of judging each entry and were excited by the potential talent we have across Liverpool City Region. Jemma Grindley, Employer Relationships Manager from All About Futures, commented, “The students who submitted game pitches should be incredibly proud of themselves – the work across the board was brilliant. It was amazing to see their creativity and passion for games and the effort they had gone to in creating games that I am sure many people would love to play.
From Jas and Jack’s market research to Thomas’ creation of a working game, these students went above and beyond, which is why they were chosen as our winners. It’s been great to see the impact our GameChangers Experience of the Workplace event has had.”
Alison Lacey, Co-Chair of GameChangers, was equally as impressed with the quality of submissions. Alison reflected, “We were delighted by the variety and creativity of concepts we received. It was great to see how they implemented the learnings from the Experience of Workplace event! All in all, I’m very excited about the future talent in Liverpool City Region.”
So, I think it is safe to say, this is another ‘level completed’ on our young people’s quest to become future GameChangers!
Lesleyann Craig – Operational Careers Hub Lead
Has this piqued your interest in GameChangers? Find out more here.
