Benni Hill is the Creative Director at Bonsai Collective developing Luna Abyss.

Benni and I had similar trajectories into the games industry, founding our first studio together over 12 years ago (as of recording in 2024) so this discussion focuses on early trials and tribulations of making a game over 4 years without income, how Benni thinks about Creative Direction, and building a new team in Bonsai Collective.

About Benni Hill
Studio: https://www.bonsai-collective.com/
X: https://x.com/Benni_Hill

About Peter Bottomley
Studio: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

Ian Forrester is the Senior Firestarter at BBC R&D

Ian specialises in open innovation and identifying new disruptive opportunities through open engagement and collaborations with start-ups, universities and early adopters.

In this episode we talk about the R&D happening outside of the real-time industries on how they're approaching linear content.

My conversations with Ian are always facinating, and although we go deep into subject areas, I'd open by making an ask of you. Try to listen to what Ian is saying about media view the current landscape and how potential advances in these industries could be supported by real-time tools and technology.

About Ian Forrester
Studio: https://cubicgarden.com/
X: x.com/cubicgarden

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

Originally from a Yorkshire mining community, Martin moved to London and became an animator over 15 years ago. Now a film visualisation supervisor, he has helped create huge action sequences for blockbuster franchises such as Jurassic World, Marvel, Fast & Furious, James Bond, and the DC Universe. His credits also include THE LITTLE MERMAID, ALADDIN, 1917, and THE WHEEL OF TIME. He has recently completed production on his fifth - and most ambitious - solo CGI animated film, PRAZINBURK RIDGE, a 10-minute long sports-slash-war drama created in Unreal Engine using cutting-edge virtual production techniques.

About Martin Bell
Studio: http://www.yescommissioner.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/yescommissioner

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

In today's episode, we review the shifts realtime industries experienced in 2023.

We talk about how processes changed across the year, the exciting new opportunities along with technology adoptions we've taken on throughout the year.

About Haz Dulull
Website: https://hazimation.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hazfilm/

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

Today's guest is Mo Davoudian, CEO & Creative Director of Brain Zoo Studios.

Mo Davoudian is an Emmy Award-winning Executive Creative Director and CEO of Los Angeles-based Brain Zoo Studios, where he has overseen projects with partners such as Warner Bros., Disney, Marvel, Activision, Electronic Arts, Mattel, Hasbro, Microsoft, Lego, Sony and more.

He’s been producing real-time animated productions for over 20 years and recently created Marvel’s first real-time animated production on Guardians of the Galaxy: Black vortex Series.

Mo's extensive realtime experience has also been on other titles such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Mortal Kombat 11, Skylanders, Disney’s’ Infinity 3, Ultimate Spiderman series, Ratchet & Clank, Lego Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Gears of War, Lord of The Rings, Borderlands 3, Disney’s Doorables and Marvel’s Heroes United animated films.

About Mo Davoudian
Studio: https://www.brainzoostudios.com/

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

Today's guest is Dan Pinchbeck, a founder and Creative Director of The Chinese Room

The studio started it's journey publishing survival horror mods before releasing Dear Esther in 2012 which published to critical acclaim.

Since then, The Chinese Room have released Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Little Orpheus.

In this discussion we talk about the creative process of working in video games alongside discussing the role of a creative director in a team that's gone from a handful of developers releasing walking sims, to a 120 person team working on 2 unannounced AAA projects.

About Dan Pinchbeck
Studio: www.thechineseroom.co.uk
X: https://x.com/danpinchbeck

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

Lina is a principle animation engineer at NVIDIA working on Omniverse, a real-time simulation and collaboration platform for 3D production pipelines

Lina has over 20 years of experience from working on titles such as “Battlefield”, “Gears of War”, “Paragon”, and “Fortnite.” During her 12 years at Epic Games, she focused on motion and animations of characters.

She led the Unreal Engine Animation System & Tools effort, developed the Facial Animation System (Pose Blending) and the ControlRig. She was also the tech lead for MetaHuman Creator and was also involved in many GDC special events which we chat about in this episode.

About Lina Halper
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linasong/
X: https://x.com/nikolobin

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

Tim Repa-Davies is the General Counsel & CoSec at Sumo Digital Ltd which is part of the SumoGroup Ltd.

He has an article series online called 'Contract Killers' which is definitely worth reading through.

In today's talk, we break down a studio's journey into 3 sections:
Years 1-4 - Shipping first projects
Years 5-7 - Creating a strategy
Years 8-10 - Preparing for investment and long term projects

About Tim Repa-Davies
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/dontfeartherepa
X: https://x.com/dontfeartherepa

About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley

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