College in Silicon Spa providing pipeline of talent to support future of games industry

A college in the heart of ‘Silicon Spa’ is helping to provide a pipeline of talent to support the future of the games industry – with one of its graduates securing a role at a major studio in Leamington.

Abbie Hipwell, 21 from Rugby, has joined Playground Games as a 3D Environment Artist, after completing a degree in Games Art at Royal Leamington Spa College.

The degree is delivered through WCUC (Warwickshire College and University Centre) from the college and over the last two years the course has seen a large percentage of its students secure employment in the industry on completion.

Recent graduates from the course at Royal Leamington Spa College now work for studios including Playground, Rebellion, Excalibur, SEGA Hardlight, Digimonsters, Codemasters, Bulkhead Interactive, Midoki, Maverick, Atomhawk and many more.

Abbie completed the three-year course in the summer and will graduate later this year, but she has already started work with Playground Games, which is best known for the Forza Horizon and Fable series of games.

Three years ago, Abbie had no experience in 3D design and now she is working on environments for the upcoming Fable release.

She said: “This really is a dream job for me after completing the course, but it was only around four years ago that I decided that games art and the video game industry could be the perfect career for me.

“I had studied art and computer science before. I knew that I wanted to do something which combined those two skills and that was when I found out about the Games Art course at Royal Leamington Spa College.

“I played games growing up and the part I always enjoyed was exploring the different environments, so to be designing those environments as a job now is pretty incredible. I’m currently in the points of interest team for Fable.

“For the third year of my course I specialised in environment art and designed environments similar to that which I’m working on now.

“The course was really good, we had a small group and that meant we had a lot of individual feedback.

“I’d been looking at Playground Games for a while and actually had an unsuccessful interview for another position. But I went away, considered the feedback, added to my portfolio and then another former student of the college working at Playground got in touch and introduced me to another opportunity.

“Leamington is a great place to be for the games industry, you couldn’t wish to be in a better location. The whole community is constantly collaborating and the future is very exciting here.”

Owen Edwards, lecturer in Games Art, said: “Abbie was one of our outstanding students last year and she thoroughly deserved to secure the position at Playground Games.

“The games industry is thriving in Leamington and we are proud that we continue to provide a pipeline of incredibly talented individuals to support that growth.

“There is a huge number of opportunities for young people living in Warwickshire who want to pursue a career in games and with our range of Further Education and Higher Education courses we are helping people to develop the skills to take advantage of those opportunities.”

To find out more about studying BA Games Art with Warwickshire College and University Centre at Royal Leamington Spa College visit www.wcuc.ac.uk