Games Talks Live (previously Games| Drinks | Scotland)

Indie Champions
5 min readFeb 15, 2020

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Games Talks Live: Scotland is a series of events hosted 2–3 times a year, each time held in each of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee.

They came about from a conversation about the ridiculousness of most people in the Scottish games industry only meeting at overseas conferences, rather than catching up with each in their home cities.

Because they’ve turned into a great way for someone to come to Scotland and meet folk from literally every Scottish game dev studio in the course of a couple of days, past visitors that have come up especially have included: Sega, Apple, nVidia, Universal Music, Bossa Studios, Curve Digital, Fremantle Media, Merge Games, the BFI, the Oliver Twins, and Special Effect.

Talks are strictly ten minutes, with networking breaks after every three speakers. Talk subjects can be very wide ranging; essentially anything that’s likely to be of interest to the majority of the audience. There must be no talk of recruiting or recruitment activity at the events though.

Thanks to the generosity of all concerned the events have also raised many thousands of pounds for charities such as Special Effect and the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Past events / speakers:

10th March 2022, Glasgow
- Rami Ismail
- Garnett Lee, Game Scout/Producer, publisher Raw Fury
- Stephen Hey, scout for publisher Merge Games, and Marketing Consultant
- Anna Mansi, Head of Certification at the British Film Institute
- Cécile Fléchon, Publishing Coordinator at publisher Focus Entertainment
- Imre Jele, co-founder of developer Bossa Studios
- Ian McGregor, Head of Publishing, Green Man Gaming
- Mark McCready, Scottish Liaison Officer at British Esports Association
- Phil Scott, European Director of Developer Relations, NVIDIA
- Ken Gordon, Regional Ambassador at the European Space Agency
- Tom Methven, aka developer Amicable Anima
- Max Scott-Slade, Game Director of developer Glitchers
- Simon Meek, director at developer Stacking Chairs

9th March 2022, Dundee
- Rami Ismail
- Garnett Lee, Game Scout/Producer, publisher Raw Fury
- Stephen Hey, scout for publisher Merge Games, and Marketing — Consultant
- Anna Mansi, Head of Certification at the British Film Institute
- Cécile Fléchon, Publishing Coordinator at publisher Focus Entertainment
- Imre Jele, co-founder of developer Bossa Studios
- Ian McGregor, Head of Publishing, Green Man Gaming
- Mark McCready, Scottish Liaison Officer at British Esports Association
- Phil Scott, European Director of Developer Relations, NVIDIA
- Ken Gordon, Regional Ambassador at the European Space Agency
- Tom Methven, aka developer Amicable Animal
- Paul Farley, Founder/CEO at publisher Firestoke Games
- Max Scott-Slade, Game Director of developer Glitchers
- Niamh Loughran, Producer at developer Hyperluminal Games
- Gary McCartan, CEO of developer Pocket Sized Hands

8th March 2022, Edinburgh
- Rami Ismail
- Garnett Lee, Game Scout/Producer, publisher Raw Fury
- Stephen Hey, scout for publisher Merge Games, and Marketing Consultant
- Anna Mansi, Head of Certification at the British Film Institute
- Cécile Fléchon, Publishing Coordinator at publisher Focus Entertainment
- Imre Jele, co-founder of developer Bossa Studios
- Ian McGregor, Head of Publishing, Green Man Gaming
- Mark McCready, Scottish Liaison Officer at British Esports Association
- Phil Scott, European Director of Developer Relations, NVIDIA
- Ken Gordon, Regional Ambassador at the European Space Agency
- Tom Methven, aka developer Amicable Animal
- Brian Baglow, Director, Scottish Games Network
- Ron Ashtiani, founder of art studio Atomhawk and co-founder production house Big Thursday Creative
- Max Scott-Slade, Game Director of developer Glitchers
- Kyle Banks, developer of Farewell North

4th March 2020, Dundee
Ryan Bentley & Reuben Moyler, Universal Production Music
Neil Parmer, Escape Technology
Imre Jele, Bossa Studios
Chris McLaughlin, Moon Mode VR
Brian Baglow, Proper QA
Nick Streeter, Special Effect
Stuart Baird, Forza livery painter
Silvia Ferrero, MediaLoc
Ross McDonald, Ruffian Games

3rd March 2020, Glasgow
Graeme McKellan, NoCode
Chris McLaughlin, Moon Mode VR
Neil Parmer, Escape Technology
Hazel Gibbens, Tech Nation
Ryan Bentley & Reuben Moyler, Universal Production Music
Special Effect
David Purvis, Spelfie
Stuart Baird, Forza livery painter

2nd March 2020, Edinburgh
Chris Scullion, Games Journalist
Nick Barratt, Proper QA
Ryan Bentley & Reuben Moyler, Universal Production Music
Chris McLaughlin, Moon Mode VR
Sara Gatland, Filmmaker
Special Effect
Neil Parmer, Escape Technology
Greg Maguire, Humain

7th November 2019, Dundee
Philip and Andrew Oliver AKA The Oliver Twins
Bobby Wertheim, Sega
Mhairi Maxwell and Kirsty Hassard, V&A Dundee
Neil Parmer, Escape Technology
Paul Farley, Chilli Connect (Unity)
Neil Crawford, FindMyPast
Greg Lee, Ruffian Games
Alistair Low, Ninja Kiwi

5th November 2019, Edinburgh
Philip and Andrew Oliver AKA The Oliver Twins
Stuart Burnside, British Film Institute
Attila Vass, Speech Graphics
Mhairi Maxwell and Kirsty Hassard, V&A Dundee
Orfeas Boteas, Krotos
Neil Parmer, Escape Technology
Greg Lee, Ruffian Games
Tim Dew, Games Without Frontiers,

4th November 2019, Glasgow
Philip and Andrew Oliver AKA The Oliver Twins
Ged Grimes, Heist Records
Stuart Burnside, British Film Institute on Video Games Tax Credits
Danny Buksh, Glasgow School of Art
Sara Gatland, Video Editor
Neil Parmer, Escape Technology
Nick Streeter, Special Effect
Jason Frame, Curious Chip
Jeff Robbins, Bithell Games

31st July 2019, Dundee
Meredith More, V&A Dundee
Paul Leishman, Team Junkfish
Karen Troop, Freemantle Media
Graham McAllister, UX Expert
Sharon Methven, DC Thomson
Nazan Ünlütürk, ChilliConnect
Andrew Macdonald, Scottish Game Dev Association
Ronan Sandford, Etherplay
James Cope, Ruffian Games

30th July 2019, Glasgow
Lauren Bassam, V&A Dundee
Karen Troop, Fremantle Media
Simon Byron, Curve Digital
David Fox, indie game developer
Korina Abbot, Kinetic Atom
Stephen Hey, Merge Games
James Stewart, Get Well Gamers
Chris Scullion, Games Journalist
Jon McKellan, NoCode

17th April 2019, Dundee
Mal Abbas, Biome Collective
Stephen Hey, Merge Games
Alexis Evans, Tag Games
Sean Taylor, InGame
Chris Scullion, Games Journalist
Paul Durrant, UK Games Fund
Mike Dailly, Ogre Games
Stuart Burnside, The British Film Institute
Mark Hogarth, TechStart Ventures
Matt Tester. Universal Music
Ged Grimes, Heist Records

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