Freelance Work
In the months since realising my desire to join the games industry, I’ve done my best to remain involved and engaged in the games industry community, as well as grabbing every opportunity that has come my way with both hands. I am truly passionate about finding my first full time role in the industry, but for now I am more than happy to continue to work freelance.
I have assisted in research projects as part of my freelance work. Each time, I’ve provided short term assistance where necessary to complete these projects. These include research projects focusing on games marketing and skills crisis reporting.
In July 2022 I was commissioned to work on Unseen Galaxy, a not-for-profit games publisher with a focus on allowing student teams to work together at their schools and colleges to create and publish their own games. During this time, it was my job to create resource documents to help our student teams understand the game development process and their roles within it. I represented Unseen Galaxy at Develop 2022 in order to discuss the project with the wider industry to gain some insight into what might be needed of us. Listening to speakers and attendees discuss the skills crisis affecting similar industries, it was interesting to discuss the affect that Unseen Galaxy could have. The Unseen Galaxy pilot will be running in the near future and I am eager to see the results and continuing to develop the project where I can.
“Charlie’s work on Unseen Galaxy was excellent, he is such a capable young man and understood innately the help I needed on the project. Charlie was proactive and resourceful and always delivered beyond expectations”.
- Stephen Hey, Unseen Galaxy
As of September 2022, I worked with NextGen Skills Academy as a programme coordinator, helping to deliver Warner Brothers Discovery Access and Rocksteady Studio's Games Academy. Working with some extremely experienced professionals to ensuring clear communication between everyone involved throughout the programme. I was able to provide ongoing support to tutors, industry professionals and attendees to 12, weekly remote sessions. This course, and many others like it, are providing an incredibly important new pathways into the games industry and I feel proud to have been a part of it.
As a part of my ongoing freelance work, I assisted Mayamada on their Do I Look Like A Gamer campaign events. The campaign aims to create a more diverse and welcoming space within the games industry and gaming communities. Alongside event set up and pack down, I helped manage a small team of people to ensure that events went to schedule, often taking initiative to ensure that any issues were quickly resolved. During this time, my help included:
Attending and facilitating Mayamada’s Friends and Families Community Game Jam 2022 and 2023, events where participants had only a few hours to design and create a board game around a set brief. Participants were aged 9 and up and created some genuinely impressive work.
Supporting Gamepad events at the BFI London and BFI IMAX. As a part of the Halloween season, we were exhibiting games like Luigi’s Mansion, Overcooked 2: The Night of the Hangry Horde, Betrayal at House on the Hill and Mysterium. Alongside general duties assisting running the event, I also ran several games of Mysterium for attendees.
In addition to the above, Mayamada ran their first Gamepad Live! event. This was their usual monthly Twitch talk show held in person at Samsung KX in Kings Cross. The event featured talks from industry speakers, opportunities for the live audience to interact with professionals and an e-sports tournament consisting of games of Knockout City, Overcooked 2 and Super Mario Strikers. We had originally planned to have a guest caster join us to commentate these games, although they were unable to so I took their place, providing commentary for the tournament gameplay. Unfortunately the VODs are not currently available.
I also assisted with 2023’s Do I Look Like A Gamer campaign, taking on administrative duties to support the campaign’s second year running, as well as being featured above as one of the campaign’s 40 industry professionals.