Alumni News

Job success for Computer Games Masters

All graduates of the MSc in Computer Games and Entertainment – co-directed by William Latham and Frederic Fol Leymarie (below) – have secured jobs in their field within two months of graduation. (December 2011)

(If you are one of our graduates, please send us your updated information.)

Armagos, Panagiotis (Panos)  (graduated in 2011):

• Games designer at Unit9 (since November 2011).

Benigni, Fryderyk (graduated in 2011):

• CTO Director at AppsVortex Ltd.
• Fryderyk joined us in 2009 and did our MSc part-time in two years. He was busy with his venture as co-founder and CTO (IT Architect Consultant) at Kminds Software Solutions during his time with us.

Bennett, Daniel (graduated in 2010):

• Programmer at Arooga since October 2010.
• Managing Director at Tech64 Ltd.

Churchward, Benjamin (graduated in 2010):

• Senior Analyst Programmer Contractor at Fitch Ratings since October 2010.
  

Coward Eek, Lars Erik (graduated in 2011):

• Junior Programmer at Sony SCEE in London since October 2011.
• Short bio: Native from Norway; graduate from the Norwegian School of Information Technology, with a BSc in IT. Spent the Summer of 2009 in Scotland to take part in the Dare to be Digital competition, where at the end of 10 weeks in collaboration with his three teammates they built the game 'Break a leg'.

Datta-Chauduri, Ashoke (graduated in 2010):

• Junior programmer at Sony SCEE in London since June 2011.

Franconeri, Fabio (graduated in 2010):

• Games programmer at IdeaWorks since October 2010.
• Did a summer internship at IdeaWorks (2010).

Galdies, Keith (graduated in 2011):

• Software Developer at Uniblue Systems Ltd since September 2011.
• Short bio: Native from Malta; graduate from the University of Malta with a BSc ICT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. He decided to take the MSc Computer Games and Entertainment due to his passion for games and interest in the courses offered by the faculty.

Gkoris, Dimitris (graduated in 2009):

• Smartphone Games Developer at Capcom since June 2011.
  
• Software Developer at Execview from March 2010 to June 2011.
  

• Feedback on the MSc CGE: "I attended the MSc in Computer Games and Entertainment at Goldsmiths during its first year, so I didn’t know what to expect. My first degree in computing was in my country, Greece, so the transition to a foreign university was quite challenging mostly because of the language. In addition, the course itself was very demanding and I had to invest a lot of time for my assignments.
  
  Most of the projects I undertook were very difficult and sometimes I had no clue where to start and how to accomplish them. However, the guidance and expertise of my tutors helped me overcome most difficulties, while practice and working with my study group really helped me gain valuable knowledge. I was particularly proud of the results of my dissertation which was a project in Artificial Intelligence, the most important ingredient of a good video game.
  
  All the lecturers, Frederic Fol Leymarie, Gareth Lewis, Marco Gillies and William Latham, were passionate about their subjects and they were also very nice and friendly individuals. It was an excellent chance for networking with people who had actual experience in the video games industry or have worked in similar fields with many years of expertise.
  
  I was really pleased when I graduated, as my Master’s degree opened up career doors that were previously closed to me. The most incredible effect on my career was that I later had equal opportunity to work either as a games programmer or as a programmer in a commercial company, which is what I am doing at the moment as a Software Developer at Execview (www.execview.co.uk) that helps the University of London, BBC, ITV and other big companies and organisations manage their projects."

Huxtable, James (graduated in 2010):

• Junior programmer at Sports Interactive since September 2010.
• Did a summer internship at Sports Interactive (2010).
• Feedback at graduation ceremony, January 2011: YouTube video.

Jabari, Amirhossein (graduated in 2010):

• Software Engineer at Midas Klark Teknik (since April 2011) working on audio mixing consoles.
• Freelance C++ programmer; currently (from late 2010 to March 2011) customising boost-like string class for the Motorola processor family.
• Feedback on the MSc: "Studying at Goldsmiths was particularly important for me to learn how the video games industry is working. Meeting a number of keen students as well as professionals in the industry was also priceless. Overall, it was a good break for me to update and refresh myself with the new technology after being away from academia for almost six years."

Lad, Kieran (graduated in 2009):

• Senior software developer leading a team of programmers and video artists at Telemetry (since March 2010).

Manning, Tom (graduated in 2010):

• Independent software developer, based in Taiwan since early 2011.

Page, Michael (graduated in 2011):

• Junior programmer at Sony SCEE in London since October 2011.
• Short bio: British; graduate from the University of Warwick with a BSc in Physics with Computing.

Peacock, James (graduated in 2010):

• Programmer at Rebellion since September 2010.
• Did a summer internship at Rebellion (2010).

Powell, Steve (graduated in 2011):

• Programmer and designer at IdeaWorks since November 2011.
• Short bio: British; graduate from Staffordshire University, with a BA in Fine Art. Steve has over 12 years of experience as a developer for various UK-based companies, as well as doing freelance work; he has developped many Flash-based games.

Tsevrenis, Aris (graduated in 2010):

• Programmer at Curve Studios since early 2011.
• Lead Programmer at Colossal Games from November 2010 to early 2011.
• Did a summer internship at Asylum Entertainment (2010).
• Feedback on the MSc: "The main and big benefit that I got from my time at Goldsmiths was due to the professors who were always happy to help and provide me with any information that I required during my MSc and during my job seeking. Always supportive with a lot of experience to back up their opinions and ways, they gave me a lot of 'tools' to help me get in the games industry." (December 2010).

Vasudevan, Murari (graduated in 2010):

• Programmer at Future Games of London since early 2011.
• Games programmer at IdeaWorks in the 2nd half of 2010.
• Did a summer internship at IdeaWorks (2010).

Waring, Benjamin (graduated in 2011):

• Programmer at Bossa Studios (social networking games) in London, since November 2011.
• Short bio: British; graduate from the University of Leeds, with a BSc in Mathematics.
• Did an internship at Sony SCEE in London; R&D studios; summer of 2011.

Wash, Matthew (graduated in 2011):

• Developer at Geomerics since October 2011 (initially an intern, June to Sept. 2011).
• Short bio: British; graduate from the University of Essex, with a BSc in Biological Sciences and an MSc in Computer Studies. Matt was Lead Developer at AIM Technology Ltd in Ipswich for eight years. "I graduated from the University of Essex with a Biological Sciences degree (2:1) in 2000. Following that I went on to complete a computer science conversion MSc, also at Essex, for which I achieved a distinction. My final dissertation project was a tool demonstrating the application of genetic algorithms to various optimisation problems written in Java. After completing the MSc I joined a small business intelligence software startup based in Ipswich where I gained more than eight years' commercial development experience. I have always been interested in game development and spent a considerable amount of time researching the topic and experimenting with various technologies in my spare time before starting the MSc course at Goldsmiths. My main interest lies in the graphics programming side of game development having been particularly inspired by 'Real-Time Rendering – Third Edition' by Akenine-Moller, Haines & Hoffman which I must have almost read cover to cover by now. I am hoping that the MSc will allow me to fulfil my goal of becoming a rendering engineer."

Zhang, Peng (graduated in 2010):

• March 2011: Peng has started at OnDemandWorld which opened new offices in Beijing recently; Peng was hired as 'iPhone and web platform programmer'. The first iPad App he worked on appeared in August 2011; it helps people learn Chinese.
• Feedback on the MSc: "What I found particularly attractive about the MSc, apart from the knowledge, technology and business ideas we've learnt, is the possibility to develop easy-to-play computer games by ourselves. With the help of Dr Mick Grierson and Dr Gareth Lewis, my final project was on programming iPhone games which has now also become my career interest in the market."