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Business

Teesside University business start-up helps graduate raise his game

11 June 2012

 

A computer arts graduate has released his first computer game thanks to a Teesside University digital business start-up initiative, 17 years after first realising it was his dream outside a game shop window.

Richard Edwards saw a Sonic the Hedgehog game displayed on multiple screens in a Newcastle game store and aspired to make his own in the future. Now he has set up his own company, RichMakeGame, using new business skills gained from a DigitalCity Fellowship at the University.

Richard, 28, from Gosforth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, worked in his home city as a computer games developer for five years. When the company went into liquidation, he sought a new direction. Richard said: “I was disappointed when the company folded and went to work for a smaller company for a trial period. What I really wanted to do was to try developing games for myself.

'After seeing the Sonic game when I was a boy in the games store window, I was fascinated, it looked amazing. I thought there must be people making the game somewhere and I wanted to learn the skills to make one myself. 'I’d been completing a lot of small game prototypes in my own time before the first company folded, then my mother, Susan, told me about the University’s DigitalCity Fellowships.'

The six-month fellowships are available to individuals and teams with an original project idea, are university graduates and live in the North East. The fellowship offers a business support grant of £4,000, used for living expenses whilst developing the project idea. The University has a pool of industry experts available to mentor the fellows and each project offers a maximum of four days mentoring support and the opportunity to attend workshops, seminars and networking events.

Richard successfully presented a series of games prototypes to the fellowship panel and went on to develop one of them, ‘Pineapple Smash Crew.’ The game explores the quest of a team of four men as they attempt to collect loot from space ships, battling aliens and robots en route.

Richard said: 'The game’s colourful, light hearted and energetic with accompanying music. I hired another North-East company, Echolevel, to score the soundtrack. The Fellowship team were very good at providing business advice; they gave a good sense of the direction we needed to go in. We learned all the facets of business; for example, we had a really insightful workshop about keeping accounts in order. I’d strongly recommend the scheme.'

After the fellowship ended last summer, Richard set up RichMakeGame and continued to develop ‘Pineapple Smash Crew.’ He submitted the game for display at the annual Indie Arcade Euro Gamer show at Earls Court, London. Richard’s was one of only 12 games to be picked from 100 submissions. This generated interest from the digital distributer Steam, who offer over 1,000 games available to purchase, download and play from any computer.

Steam agreed to distribute ‘Pineapple Smash Crew’ and launched it in February. So far the game has had 170,000 views on YouTube. Richard said: 'Steam is very careful about whom they pick so I really struck lucky with them. I’ve had very positive comments so far. I’m pretty amazed, I never imagined making my own game, starting something from my own imagination, finishing it and seeing it issued. Now I want my business to continue to grow and be a big success.'

For more information about DigitalCity Fellowships, please contact Cheryl Evans on 01642 384324.


 
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