MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Today we’re thrilled to announce the MCV/DEVELOP Women in Games Awards shortlist for 2020 – a few months later than usual admittedly, but that’s 2020 for you. Despite the disruption, the awards are returning for their sixth year, and we were inundated with hundreds and hundreds of fantastic entries.
It is an honour and a delight to be able to once again celebrate the huge contribution of women to the UK games industry. There were many, many deserving nominees, thank you all for putting yourselves and your colleagues forward. A huge congratulations to all of you who made the shortlist below and we hope you can all join us on the day, though a little differently from usual.
We’re very excited to announce that this year’s Women in Games Awards will now be livestreamed. Yes, the decision was somewhat forced upon us, but the outcome is looking brilliant. We’re now working with game event production experts ADVNCR on the awards, and thanks to their enthusiasm we’ll be doing a full live production.
We have a pair of incredible hosts lined up for the event, who I’m sure you’ll be familiar with, but we won’t be revealing those quite yet, for reasons that will become clear. Plus we’ll also have some special guests in the studio on the day, and plenty more joining us remotely.
All of our shortlisted nominees will have the option to join us live on the stream as the winners are announced. And now it’s online, we are hoping the whole industry will join us too. It’s all happening on the afternoon of Wednesday the 25th of November, we’re expecting the event to run for under an hour, exact timings to be confirmed but we will be consulting everyone before making a final decision.
Final judging is now underway, and we’d like to thank all of our judges for putting in the time and effort to choose our winners. We’ll be featuring them all in an upcoming feature on the state of play for women in the industry
We’d like to thank our sponsors for this year’s event, without which it really would not be possible: Rare, Facebook Gaming, Unity, EA, ADVNCR, Amiqus, Creative Assembly, Hangar 13, OPM Jobs and Splash Damage.
And so without further ado (and if you skipped straight down to here, please scroll back up after and read the livestream details) here’s the Women in Games Awards 2020 shortlist:
Rising Star of the Year – Development
Hannah Rose, Bithell Games
Inês Filipa Brasil Lagarto, Lab42
Jasmine Moore, Sumo Digital (Nottingham)
Jessica Sham, TT Games
Julia Shusterman, Sports Interactive
Vicky McKelvey, Supermassive Games
Rising Star of the Year – Business
Christie Moulding, Team17
Emily Horler, ReedPop, UK (formerly Gamer Network)
Emma Withington, Bastion
Eva Poppe, Unity
Shazina Adam, Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe
Katie Laurence, Ubisoft
Creative Impact of the Year
Anna Hollinrake, Mediatonic
Helen Kaur, Rocksteady
Jess Hyland, Wonderstruck
Julie Savage, Supermassive Games
Karoline Forsberg, nDreams
Lily Zhu, Splash Damage
Technical Impact of the Year
Amy Phillips, Media Molecule
Anastasiia Tsaplii, Bossa Studios
Cheryl Razzell, Polystream
Michelle Chapman, Sumo Digital
Mohrag Taylor, Creative Assembly
Nareice Wint, Lucid Games & Party Llama Games
Comms Impact of the Year
Amy Hughes, Square Enix
Charleyy Hodson, Xbox UK
Haley Uyrus, Mediatonic
Taylea Enver, Frontier Developments
Sola Kasali, EA
Zuzanna ‘Zee’ Inczewska, Team Adopt Me
Journalist of the Year
Elle Osili-Wood, Freelance presenter and journalist
Jessica Wells, Network N
Lara Jackson, GameByte
Louise Blain, Dialect/Freelance
Vic Hood, TechRadar
Vikki Blake, Eurogamer & NME
Games Campaigner of the Year
Cinzia Musio, Splash Damage
Fey Vercuiel, Studio Gobo
Lauren Kaye, She Plays Games
Marie-Claire Isaaman, Women in Games
Michelle Tilley, Sony Interactive Entertainment
Roz Tuplin, Games London
Career Mentor of the Year
Caroline Miller, Indigo Pearl
Korina Abbott, NeonHive
Melissa Phillips, Silver Rain Games
Romana Ramzan, Glasgow Caledonian University
Tara Mustapha, Code Coven
Anisa Sanusi, Limit Break Mentorship
Businesswoman of the Year
Gemma Johnson-Brown, Dovetail Games
Korina Abbott, Neonhive
Maria Sayans, Ustwo
Nusrat Shah, Exient
Tina Lauro Pollock, Brain and Nerd Ltd
Lauran Carter, Liquid Crimson
Outstanding Contribution
This award will be decided by the editorial team and judges and the recipient announced on the day of the event
