Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based Creative Director operating in the Gaming space. If you think a Creative Director is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Alex Rigby
Creative Director of Playdemic
Alex is focused on making sure the company produces the best-looking, most fun and highly innovative social entertainment apps in the world.
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About Playdemic: Playdemic is a gaming company that develops social games for mass market audiences.
Craig Howard
Founder and Creative Director of Lucid Games
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About Lucid Games: An independent videogame developer in Liverpool, UK.
Barbara Lippe
Founder, Creative Director of entreZ VR
Barbara Lippe PhD is a unique combination of video-game-art-director-turned actor. Having designed characters for games companies in Tokyo including Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Namco Bandai and creating art for social games years before the rise of the genre and researching what works for a female target audience she has reached a turning point: it’s not enough to DRAW characters, one must BECOME characters. To that end, she has recently graduated from a renowned London acting school. With that new toolkit onboard she’s moving on from designing virtual worlds to creating drama-enriched content for the virtual reality. Bridging the two worlds, she marries the lessons learned on stage & screen with her knowledge of video games and innovates the principles of character development, status and staging for VR.
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About entreZ VR, Snafflz, Spree Interactive: entreZ VR is an experienced team of industry players passionate about storytelling on real and virtual stages.
John Ribbins
Creative Director of Roll7
John Ribbins is the Co-Founder at Roll7.
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About Roll7: Roll7 make games that are Simple to Play.
Elizabeth Sampat
Studio Creative Director of Future Games of London
Elizabeth Sampat is an award-winning game designer and activist. At work, she designs blockbuster titles that are played by millions of fans every day; when she comes home, she crafts personal games that are intimate, revealing, and push the boundaries of the relationship between game and player. In her spare time, Elizabeth also works to make the industry she loves a better place for women and marginalized people. She was on the IGDA Women In Games steering committee for two years; Marie Claire called her “The Game Changer” when they named her one of “20 Women Changing The Ratio” in male-dominated industries. Elizabeth’s personal work has been in the LA Times and on Rock Paper Shotgun, and her advocacy and talks have been covered on Polygon, Kotaku, The Escapist, and more. She’s also an accomplished writer outside of the game industry, and was a regular contributor at The Yearbook Office. Her book “Empathy Engines: Design Games That Are Personal, Political, And Profound” was released in early 2017. She is kind of a feminist, and definitely trouble.
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About Future Games of London, Future Games of London, SYBO Games: We make iPhone, iPad and Android games for all you lovely people 🙂
David Ream
Creative Director of Hello Games
People often ask me – “Excuse me, are you David Ream, Creative Director of Hello Games?” At this point I nod. “I thought so! I would love to know a bit more about you.” I am a polite guy, so I indulge them. I normally start by telling them about how it all started with my Dad and his hacked Atari 2600. Piles of loose ROM chips with stickers on that said things like Frogger, Adventure, Kaboom and Defender. We sigh together nostalgically. I waffle on about old PC games I used to love for a bit, then move on to how I went to University to do Maths and Physics, then a Masters in Computer Science. With my smarts established I next talk about moving down to London to work for Climax as a bright-eyed graduate coder. I take them on a wild journey from there out to Kuju in the game development heartlands of Surrey, including development of some sort on every platform of the time and including personal fanboy favourites such as being able to help create a new Geometry Wars game. If at this point their eyes have glazed over, I drop in casually that I am a keen musician, that I play the piano. That either gives them more useful insight into the David enigma or makes them think I am being a pretentious snot. Who cares? I have re-engaged them. I win! I round it all off by saying how much I enjoy working in games, and how the opportunity to be part of a tight team made up of my mates was one that I could not possibly pass up.They nod knowingly, smile and walk away thoroughly enlightened.
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About Hello Games: Hello Games is a British video game development and publishing company based in Guildford, England.
Caroline Marchal
Founder and Creative Director of Interior Night
Caroline is a narrative game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. She was lead Game Designer on Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and has founded a narrative game studio called Interior Night, working on an unannounced new IP.
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About Interior Night: Interior Night is an independent game studio of Quantic Dream and Sony veterans based in London.
Phil Stuart
Creative Director & Co-Founder of Preloaded
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About Preloaded: They make games that do more than just entertain.
Emily Short
Creative Director of Failbetter Games
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About Failbetter Games: Choice-based interactive stories online
Justin French
CEO & Creative Director of Dream Harvest
Founder, CEO and Creative and Managing Director of Dream Harvest Games. Previously a Sound Designer, Composer, Game Designer working across AAA and Indie games. Worked at OMUK, one of the UK’s leading Dialogue production studios for the games Industry as well as working previously with their main competitor, Side (Now owned by PitStop Productions) on multiple AAA projects. Also worked extensively with several other small indie game studios in the position of sound designer, composer, game designer and project manager/producer, often all at the same time. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some incredibly talented people on some really fun projects, some released and some that unfortunately never saw the light of day. I like to wear many hats and get involved in all aspects of the game development process. Started Dream Harvest in August 2013 where I undertook the task of hiring a talented team of Developers, Designers and Artists to work on multi-platform titles. I project manage the team, creative directing the projects with the aim of hitting our vision and always trying to get the best out of the team. My ability to communicate ideas in the language understood by each discipline has given the team a strong direction and I have endeavoured to fill in the gaps of knowledge that certain team members, including myself, have by holding training days and spending time with each member on a one to one basis to cultivate their talent. http://press.dreamharvest.co.uk
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About Dream Harvest: Combining narrative storytelling with online competitive gaming.
Katie Goode
Creative Director of Triangular Pixels
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About Triangular Pixels: Triangular Pixels is an independent games developers, experienced in the big leagues.
