Kate Killick

"I'm not a big fan of personality types. I think the most important thing is to find a way to do things that feels right to you, and not listen to people telling you what kind of work you are suited for. Just because other people have been successful by being a certain type of person doesn't mean you can't do it differently and still succeed!"

"Since I work at a small company, my job is a bit of a mishmash! I do the typical things a game designer does - that is, figuring out how the game should work, communicating ideas to the team, and working with programmers to build it, sometimes getting hands-on with the code. Basically, trying to make a fun game!My background is in UX (user experience) and UI (user interface) design, so I also do quite a lot of that. It can be hard to describe what UX design is exactly, but in short, it's about making sure a player understands and can play the game as you intended. This often involves prototyping and testing bits of the game, such as interactions, interfaces or tutorials. It's fascinating to see someone pick up your game and do things you didn't expect, and figure out how to improve the game using their feedback.Finally, a lot of my job is about helping the team understand what the goal for a game or feature is and making sure we build it on time. Making games is hard - it takes a lot of trial and error, and it's important to stay focused on the highest priority problems at any given time.There are many ups and downs to working in a startup company, but I enjoy the variety of work I get to do as part of a small team, and the fact that there are constantly new creative challenges to solve. Everybody has a say in what we're doing, and it can be difficult if we don't all agree on something, but ultimately having everybody share their opinions helps us make a better game.For a graduate game designer, I'd say a salary might start around £22k. "

"I studied art at A-Level and then did an art foundation year at university, knowing I wanted to do something creative with computers. The only career I was aware of at the time was animation, so assumed I would do that. During my foundation year though, some lecturers from the game design course gave a presentation about it. I'd always loved games, and had been making games and websites in my spare time since I was about 11, so I knew immediately it was the perfect career for me.While studying for my degree, I went to a competition for student teams to try to make a game in ten weeks. My team won, and we ended up starting a company and releasing a mobile game with Microsoft as the publisher. It was a bit of a rollercoaster but we learned a lot doing it. I loved working in a small team and getting stuck in to lots of different parts of making the game.After that I didn't quite know what I wanted to do. I liked art as well as design, but it seemed hard to find junior jobs, and to be honest I never liked the idea of working in a big company. I ended up doing freelance work for a while, mostly on websites and a few mobile games, and then taking a job as a UX (user experience) designer at an app company. I didn't even really know what UX was when I started, but it's a job that many companies have started hiring for in the last few years, and seemed like something I could apply my design knowledge to. I did that at a couple of startup app companies before finally finding a role in games that fitted me well, which is my current job at Mojiworks."

"I love picking up random craft hobbies - it gives me an opportunity to get away from the computer for a bit, and making physical things can be very meditative! This year I've learned some origami, made miniature food out of oven-bake clay, beaded a 1920's costume and jewellery, and am now learning to make vegan chocolate (after feeding quite a few failed attempts to my coworkers!)I also like to support other people in my industry, and for the last year or two have been organising a meetup for women and marginalised genders in the games industry, as well as started a mentoring programme. "

"Our day always starts with a team standup. This is where we get together and look at our tasks for the week, and everyone talks about what progress they've made and whether they need help with anything. We then have a quick company standup, where each team gives a quick summary of their day. Then, we make sure the game teams have time to go through anything in more detail, for example if the coders and designers need to talk about how a particular feature is going to work, or an artist needs feedback on some sketches.The rest of my day can be a mix of meetings with other designers, or the project lead, and sitting at my desk doing design work (and drinking a LOT of tea). My design tasks could be anything from documenting ideas, to creating visual designs, prototyping, getting feedback from players, or just looking at the game and figuring out what we need to do next.We try to work very collaboratively, so there's usually not an hour that goes by where I'm not talking to someone on the team, either brainstorming, making a plan or giving feedback. My office is open plan and we talk in person a lot, but we also use Slack across the company, so anyone can chat to anybody if they need something.We tend to work week by week, so Fridays usually involve talking about how the week went and planning for the next one. The games we work on are quite experimental, so the plan can change frequently, and we always have to be ready to try something new and iterate quickly to find an idea that works - or scrap one that doesn't. We spend a lot of time trying to analyse our games, and other games in the market, to try to understand who our players are and what kind of games they want."

"A-Level ArtHND in Art, Media & DesignBA Hons in Computer Games Art & Design"