Game Jam Judges
Laura Cress
Gaming & Technology Journalist | Streamer
twitch.tv/cressup | youtube.com/@cressup
Returning for 2025, Laura Cress has worked as a broadcast journalist covering news, technology and gaming trends for the BBC for the past seven years.
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She also streams games and in particular indie games on Twitch, and on YouTube interviews individuals renowned for forging their own creative paths in the industry, such as Ron Gilbert, Charles Cecil and Tim Schafer.
Christopher Acornley
Computing Lecturer, UHI Perth
Christopher Acornley is a Computing Lecturer at the Perth Campus for the University of the Highlands and Islands. He started with developing mobile games in Dundee before joining Abertay University, teaching in their Games Development and Programming courses. He has since moved to teaching Computing at Perth UHI.
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Chris' main focuses in his teaching is Programming and Artificial Intelligence. He is currently researching the use of Generative AI techniques to design User Interfaces in video games.
Alastair Low
Indie Game Developer
Alastair Low has worked in the games industry for over a decade on loads from mobile to PS5 and playdate. He runs Lowtek Games, a small studio focusing on making dyslexia-friendly games and tools for old and new systems.
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He's ran 3 successful Kickstarter campaigns for new games for the NES in the FLEA universe. Ally helped run a local makerspace where he hosted many game jams and loves to make weird game concepts with alternative controls.
Craig Barron
Head of Engineering, Code Wizards
With over a decade of experience in the gaming industry, Craig specialises in game technology software development.
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Craig started his career implementing features within custom Objective C and C++ engines for PC, iOS and Android games. He was then a Lead Software Engineer, where he architected and engineered a social gambling application implementing payment platforms, leaderboards, private and public leagues, advanced league filtering systems and advanced logging and metric systems in Azure.
He has led and been a lead engineer for projects involving turn-based strategy games and gambling games. He then moved on to successfully manage teams and delivered backend and client integrations for AAA titles across various platforms, including PC, console, and mobile. Craig has an extensive knowledge of game development features, tools, and industry standards and has collaborated with leading game studios to integrate advanced features and technologies into their games.
Craig is actively involved in the gaming community, participating in conferences, workshops, and knowledge-sharing initiatives.