Steel Minions

From Sheffield Hallam University Issued 15/12/10: "The man behind the Broken Sword series of videogames has joined forces with Sumo Digital's creative director and the founder of Gremlin Graphics to give games development students at Sheffield Hallam University a unique industry insight.

Charles Cecil was at Sheffield Hallam University to provide fledgling game designers with a window into the development of commercial games. He was joined by the founder of legendary Sheffield software house Gremlin Graphics, Ian Stewart, and Sean Millard from Sumo Digital, at a special lecture which focussed on the Dr Who Adventure series of games.

While they were there, the industry dignitaries opened the University's brand new in-house gaming development studio, which will give students and recent graduates the opportunity to develop console games, under the guidance of tutors and industry professionals.

The studio is a new initiative supported by Sheffield Hallam's Department of Computing and the Communication and Computing Research Centre.

Sean Millard said: "Our industry is a hard one to break into. The studio provides a fantastic opportunity to students here and will help to ensure that Sheffield remains a centre for game-development in the years to come.

"Many of Sumo's staff have worked together since the days of Gremlin Graphics, which was based just down the road from Sheffield Hallam. Some of us even studied here, so it's fantastic to be able to provide input into its game-based degrees."

The studio was opened with a competition to reinvent one of Gremlin's - and Sheffield's - most successful franchises for a new generation of gamers. Mentored by staff from Sumo, Sheffield Hallam students will produce a new game design for the 1990s videogame character Zool for the PSP Minis platform. Zool was originally a hit on the Amiga, but was also ported onto the Atari ST, Sega Mega Drive, SNES and Game Boy.

Permission to use the Zool character was given by IP owners UrbanScan Ltd's Ian Stewart. The Gremlin Graphics founder attended the lecture alongside other members of the local games industry.

Students on the entire range of Games Development courses have been asked to update the character in the development of an exciting new minis title for PlayStation(R) Network. The winning design will be chosen by Ian and Sean, and could go on to be made into a full game by the new studio, made possible though our academic membership with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE).

The competition is supported by Sumo, who will be mentoring students throughout the process with a series of seminars delivered by Sean.

Dr Jacob Habgood, senior lecturer in game development at the University, said: "The lecture marks a new relationship between Sheffield Hallam and local developers Sumo-Digital, who have an industry heritage which dates back to the 1980s.

"It also marks a new era in gaming education provision and knowledge exchange at the University in that we are now one of the few universities in the country to have an in-house development studio for our students." (1)

Link to Steel Minion's website. (2)

Steel Minion's updates to "Zool Planets" found in Zool Projects.

References:

(1) https://web.archive.org/web/20110321131914/http://www.shu.ac.uk/news/release.html?ID=757

(2) https://steelminions.wixsite.com/steelminions