Hey everyone,
What could be better to celebrate International Women’s Day other than to acknowledge the incredible work the women at FuturLab do here? We don’t know either, so here are anonymous testimonials of the success and passion we see every single day:
Cristina Ruiz
“Cristina is our only Marketing Artist at FuturLab and has been with us since March 2021. In that short time, she has had an incredible impact on our Early Access launch of PowerWash Simulator by creating beautifully engaging assets that have made the brand come alive with a personality none of us envisioned.
Her illustration skills are incredible, and her ability to create instantly charming pieces with pretty vague briefs is beyond impressive. She has the enviable ability to look at a game and take obscure elements from it to create beautiful visuals, which has elicited an unexpected narrative across our channels and a strong, instantly recognisable brand identity.
From creating memes to our ever-popular gnome mascot, I genuinely believe that without Cristina on the team, we would not have been able to cultivate the same warm, positive, and highly engaged community that we have today.”
Eden Schünmann
“Eden Shünmann joined us six months ago as an assistant producer where her can-do attitude and eye for problems immediately made an impact in helping us navigate the waters of Steam Early Access.
Eden’s cool head and determination to succeed in the industry is a huge source of strength for us. She is dedicated to any tasks and responsibilities thrown her way and is always hungry for more.
Her ability to handle the localisation for over 10 languages in an Early Access game (in her first production role!) shows phenomenal potential, especially with all the other tasks she juggles!“
Rebecca Sweetmore
“Rebecca Sweetmore, our extremely modest Head of Marketing and Communications would hate that I’m writing this, but it needs to be said. She is a powerhouse of talent. Her patience, independence, creativity, strength, determination, professionalism and humour come together to form an extraordinary woman who has demonstrated that her mindful and holistic approach to marketing can be a template for any indie studio searching for success. For us at FuturLab, we found it in Powerwash Simulator thanks to her.
Rebecca has built a team around her who have flourished in her care. Joining them for weekly calls and seeing the bond they share and how that partnership has allowed them to succeed under the huge pressure of launching a small-studio Early Access game to a big audience is a delight.”
Hayley Blundy
“Administration and organisation of a workforce when becoming remote has been a mighty test for our industry. It’s one which mainly fell on the shoulders of the wonderful Hayley, our Studio Manager. Working alone in managing that change would be a huge challenge for anyone but doing so during a period of unprecedented growth – where a company more than doubled the number of employees – would take superhuman skill and patience. Luckily, our self-styled “studio mum” Hayley is a superhero.
She has not only ensured that everyone has their professional and technical requirements satisfied, but thanks to her pre-pandemic undertaking of mental health and well-being courses, she kept us happy, sane, safe and even fed! No one in our studio cares more about the people than Hayley, and everyone here knows that she’s only a couple of clicks away for advice, support or just a chat about whatever may be on your mind.
She has consistently dazzled us all with her commitment to creating the best possible studio culture, from organising the epic social for all employees past and present to celebrate our 18th birthday, to innovative use of technology to bring people together for team-building activities such as remote escape rooms and immersive interactive quizzes. In building a team so rapidly, she has laboured tirelessly to ensure everyone is properly welcomed to the team. After everyone’s first day, they have known exactly who Hayley is and exactly who we are as a team. I can honestly say that we would be utterly lost without her warmth, wit and will for us all to succeed.”
Sofia Emmanouilidou
“Sofia joined the FuturLab team at the height of the pandemic where together we ticked off a lot of firsts! For us it was our first fully-remote interview process (which she nailed) and first hire who no one had ever met face-to-face, but more importantly, it was Sofia’s first job in games. Sofia leapt into action learning the ropes of being a QA-tester and within a year had become our Senior QA, having seen 3 releases out the door – often single handed!
The greatest challenge was yet to come. Like many of us at FuturLab, Sofia had no idea what to expect with the release into Early Access and supporting what would essentially be a live-game which we were trying to finish making and support at the same time. Sofia excelled under this pressure and took it upon herself to put the players and the community at the heart of her testing. Exhaustively ensuring that save data was left intact, fighting to get resources to fix issues she felt passionately about, and of course using her superior knowledge of the game to influence design decisions during weekly build reviews.
But Sofia isn’t just here to do QA, while she’s certainly a rising star of the discipline, we are supporting her true passion in 3D art and are expecting great things. Sofia is the best player in the world at PowerWash Simulator, and the best QA we’ve had the joy of working with at FuturLab. Whatever she does next, I have no idea that it will be outstanding, and she’ll bring her wonderful energy with her into whichever team she may join.”
Laura Fontaine
“Laura is an artist in the truest sense of the word. We were lucky enough to have her join our team in the chaos of our Early Access success with PowerWash Simulator. To say that she hit the ground running would be an understatement.
Hailing from Paris, Laura immediately distinguished herself with exceptional modelling skills, while adapting flawlessly to our unique workflow where art meets design in an often challenging pipeline and all in her first English language job.
Being left to her own devices with nothing but a light brief is where Laura’s creativity and professionalism really sing. She rapidly iterates, knows exactly when to seek feedback and ultimately delivers work of the highest quality. While I am unable to share many examples of her work at this stage, her labour of love has been a mini-golf course. The level was specifically requested by, and eventually voted for by our community. Laura has embraced our project and community at all levels and so took on this responsibility with passion. I have no doubt that our community, like our entire company, will be utterly blown away by her work.”
Tara Zhong
“Tara is an absolute superhero of a programmer and a person, she’s only recently come on board and has solved so many problems and found so many solutions; we’re already seeing Tara’s influence throughout our new project.
To say she’s fit into the team effortlessly would be selling Tara short, she has already thrived through owning her own work and showing her creative side. It’s a daily occurrence for someone to spot an issue, only to find that Tara is already handling it as well as several others. This is all wrapped up in someone who is always approachable, honest and a genuine pleasure to work with.
She’s an all-timer and we’re so lucky to have her.”
Megan Rouncefield
“Meg, our Senior Combat Designer and Resident Cat Enthusiast, joined us in September 2021 on a brand new Action IP and has made an immediate impact.
In just 6 months, Meg has transformed the trajectory of our combat systems as well as provided amazing insight for the whole team as the game takes shape and evolves, combining her passion for systems design and rhythm action games to amazing effect.
And in addition to putting together work of such high quality, Meg has also been instrumental in ensuring the team’s wellbeing is looked after and has been a great listening post for everyone.”
Kirsty Rigden
“One of the reasons I took my job at FuturLab was Kirsty. The prospect of working with such a strong, successful female leader within games was such a huge draw. Although we work within different disciplines, she still inspires me to speak up, put myself forward and stand by my beliefs.”
Thanks to everyone for reading. We’re currently hiring and would love for other incredible women to apply so we can write glowing comments about them next year too!
https://futurlab.co.uk/jobs/