2020 has already been one of the most significant years in Deep Silver Dambuster Studio’s history.
Although we are only six months into the year, we have already been presented with many opportunities, challenges and milestones and have developed as a studio in size, within the community and in our working methods.
We want to share with you some of these important moments, achievements and ways we’ve overcome challenges to give you a better understanding of who we are as a studio and more importantly, where we are going.
[Left Lion Magazine wrote a profile about the studio in February 2020, read it here]
Inclusivity and Diversity – Raise the Game
The video games industry, like so many others, has its own problems with inclusivity and diversity.
We’ve decided to take action against this issue to ensure that our games and the people who create them are made up of people from all races, genders, sexual orientations, ages and different backgrounds.
To demonstrate our commitment to this cause, we took the pledge towards Raising the Game earlier this year, which involves introducing meaningful cultural and behavioural change to our studio.
We hope that by showing our support to this cause and by taking action, we will inspire more businesses to think about how they can improve diversity and inclusion within their own setting.
Some of the activities and initiatives that we have already launched since joining Raise the Game include a series of awareness sessions to challenge the status quo, the recreation of job adverts to remove the possibility of gender bias and to encourage diverse applications, and our team members attending virtual events around inclusivity and diversity.
We are continuing to look for new ways to embrace a more inclusive and diverse environment for our studio members and will continue to update you with our progress via Twitter and LinkedIn.
DambusterWFH
Every business in the UK has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. For Deep Silver Dambuster Studios, it forced us to quickly adopt remote working, which involved its own logistical hurdles.
Going from a tightknit studio setting to every member of staff working from home required a lot of effort from our IT, Production and HR teams and was a big cultural change for everyone.
We are however, proud to say that we have been working from home since March and have continued hitting development milestones, recruiting and on-boarding and supporting our studio members throughout the period.
For more information, check out our blog post with HR Manager Helen Haynes all about remote working or head to Twitter or LinkedIn and search #DambusterWFH.
Mental Health Support – Safe in Our World
During Mental Health Awareness Week this year, we decided to join Safe in Our World on their quest to level up mental health within the games industry.
This means ensuring that our office is always a positive and safe environment for our team members where they can readily access the support that they need.
It also means promoting mental health services that could be helpful to our players, followers, studio members or anyone else in need. We are looking forward to working with SIOW to develop a more defined Mental Health Policy within the studio in the next 12 months, keep an eye on our social media for updates on our progress.
Studio Growth and Expansion
Since January, we have welcomed over 20 new starters to the studio across several departments and levels of seniority, seven of whom have joined us within the last two months whilst we have been working remotely.
In order to do so, we have needed to adapt our recruitment and on-boarding processes to be entirely remote, which you can read more about in our previous blog
As well as growing in headcount, our premises have expanded too and we have now sourced and opened our own dedicated Motion Capture suite for our Animation department to use once we have returned to the studio.
If you would like to keep up to date with new hires at the studio, we regularly create posts featuring all of our new starters on our Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.
Community Projects and Outreach
2020 has been a busy year for Deep Silver Dambuster Studios on the community side of things. Prior to the lockdown period, our studio members have attended and given talks at events, reviewed university students’ coursework and been members of the judging panel at several game development contests.
[Audio Designer Ryan Williams visited Access Creative College in Lincoln to talk about his journey into the world of sound design]
In March, we hired our new Studio Community Manager, Toby Gallagher. With the help of Studio Administrator, Tracy Guy, he has been further establishing our studio’s identity online through social media activity such as meet the team posts and authored educational content from different departments.
We intend to keep producing this type of content to both show you the people behind our studio doors and to help educate those interested in the many facets of game development.
[Members of the Art Team attended De Montfort University to review students' portfolios and offer their tips and advice.]
Keep up to Date with Dambuster
For all the latest news, updates and content from Deep Silver Dambuster Studios, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
For job opportunities, head to our Careers page.