Here at FuturLab, we just celebrated our 21st birthday as a studio, and 2024 has been nothing short of incredible. We welcomed 20 brilliant new team members, shared multiple satisfying PowerWash Simulator Special Packs and free levels, celebrated award wins, and enjoyed an all-around fantastic year. It’s been one for the books! You can catch up on our studio’s highlights with our FuturLab wrapped video here.
As a mostly remote team, we cherish the moments when we can come together in person, and our annual Christmas party is a highlight in our company calendar. This year, we took to Brighton’s iconic seafront where team members, along with their friends and family, gathered for an unforgettable evening filled with delicious food, 1920s-inspired fancy dress, and a thrilling company-wide murder mystery! A huge thank you to some of our team who volunteered to immerse themselves in the world of the Brandy Butter Murder Mystery by performing as the suspects for the evening!
Of course, no FuturLab Christmas party would be complete without our Golden Gnome Awards. With the first awards starting last year, these quirky and heartfelt company awards are our way of celebrating the incredible hard work and creativity of our team. Each team member gets to “gnominate” their colleagues through an anonymous survey, with winners carefully chosen by our management team.
The winners were proudly awarded a custom-made Golden Gnome trophy, presented in a glitz and glam ceremony. These wholesome awards are a great opportunity to remind us how much we value and appreciate one another.
Without further ado, here’s the full list of this year’s Golden Gnome winners:
Slack Superstar Award
Celebrating our Slack Superstars! This award shouts out the people who keeps our (mostly) remote FuturLab team feeling connected with their contributions on Slack.
Winner: Carla Wellings, Senior Product Manager
Rising Star Award
Celebrate a newbie! This award is to shoutout someone who joined FuturLab since last year’s Christmas party, and is already making an impact!
Winner: Hannah Bayliss, Technical Artist
Skills Award
This award celebrates someone who shows expertise in what they do and excels in their specific niche. They have the wisdom and knowledge, and always seem to know the answer (or at least how to find out!)
Winner: Iris Swetenham, Principal Programmer
Creativity Award
This award celebrates those who are always coming up with new ideas, solving problems and showcasing their creativity. Maybe they find solutions to tech problems, help create new workflows that make your life easier, or come up with new ways employees can have fun and connect with one another. Let's celebrate creativity in all of its forms!
Winner: Alex Dawson, Senior Artist
Marvellous Mentor Award
This award is a chance to thank those who act as mentors and offer amazing support, training and leadership. Perhaps they've encouraged you to develop your skills and push your career in new directions, or maybe they answered all your questions when you joined FuturLab and helped you feel right at home.
Winner: Peter Hansen, Head of Tech
Development Award
This award celebrates those who are always developing and improving their skills, knowledge and ways of working. Maybe they're the champion of development days, take the time to share their knowledge with the team or have completely made their role their own with fresh ideas and putting their learnings into action.
Winner: Bára Sigmundardóttir, Junior 3D Artist
Team Player Award
Every team is unique and have their own hurdles and successes and this award celebrates those awesome collaborators that bring people together! Maybe one person in particular helped you a lot when you were new to your role, or perhaps they always make sure everyone has their say in meetings!
Winner: Antony Lingard, Senior Artist
Culture Champion Award
This award celebrates those who exemplify FuturLab’s core values of skill, humility and kindness. They always help with any task, no matter how big or small, are so incredibly talented at what they do and above all do it with patience, generosity and kindness.
Winner: James Butlin, Lead Programmer
Unsung Hero Award
This award celebrates those who may slip under the radar at times, but they are doing incredible things and deserves a special shout-out for their hard work! Whether it's for their work on a specific project, behind-the-scenes or for a particular achievement, these people are invaluable to your experience at FuturLab!
Winner: Paul Simpson, Senior UI Artist
Wildcard Award
This award encouraged everyone to gnominate anybody for any reason, at all!
Winner: Mark Ginbey, Game Writer
Pet Pic Perfection Award
This award exists to honour all of the beautiful pets that accompany us while we work. A good opportunity/excuse to look at cute animals.
Winner: Finch (owned by Eilidh Norris, Junior 3D Artist)
Getting together as a studio is something we truly treasure - it’s a chance to connect, celebrate, and reflect on the year gone by. It’s a real highlight in our calendars to not only come together and get into the festive spirit, but also spare some time to write feedback about one another through our Golden Gnome nominations and crown our winners. It’s a wonderful way to spotlight the incredible efforts of our team, and we love honouring some of our amazing colleagues with these special awards.
We couldn’t be prouder of everything the talented team at FuturLab has accomplished in 2024. With so much creativity, passion, and hard work fuelling our team, we’re more excited than ever to show you what we have in store for 2025.
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