Game Jam Judges
Laura Cress
Gaming & Technology Journalist | Streamer
twitch.tv/cressup | youtube.com/@cressup
Laura Cress has worked as a broadcast journalist covering news, technology and gaming trends for the BBC for the past seven years.
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.
Andrew Mulholland
Director - Hunted Cow Studios Ltd.
Andrew is the co-founder of Hunted Cow Games and has over 20 years of experience in the industry.
Notable games developed by the Hunted Cow team include Fallen Sword, Operation: New Earth, Warhammer: Chaos & Conquest and the recently announced game Godzilla x Kong: Titan Chasers - the studios first game based upon a large movie IP.
Martin Thomas
CTO - Code Wizards
Code Wizards CTO Martin, is a games and sport (especially basketball) loving engineer. He leads the Code Wizards engine room ensuring our engineering teams are doing the right things and that Code Wizards are doing their best for customers, partners and friends.
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Martin has over 25 years of commercial engineering experience and is a true technologist to his core. He boasts a wealth of industry expertise - covering a range of roles - from engineer right through to architect.
Brian Baglow
Founder and director of Scottish Games Network and Scottish Games Week.
scottishgames.net & gamesweek.scot
Brian Baglow is a global games industry pioneer. Starting his career as a writer on the legendary Grand Theft Auto, Brian has gone on to found businesses, establish the Scottish Games Network and create Scottish Games Week. A recognised expert on the future of the global games market, Brian is a university lecturer, journalist, designer and creative super connector.
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Brian is a writer, designer and producer. He is also a founder, CEO, non-exec director and games pioneer. He started his career in the games industry at the legendary Scottish studio DMA Design, as the writer for Grand Theft Auto before discovering a talent for communications and marketing.
Brian joined Rockstar Games in New York as its first Global PR Manager, before moving into the nascent mobile games industry with the pioneering Scottish publisher Digital Bridges.
In 2002 Brian founded Scotland's first digital games agency, Indoctrimat, which worked with over 150 organisations in the games, mobile, digital, creative, education and public sectors across the UK and around the world.
Since 2009 Brian has lectured at Edinburgh Napier University, focusing on the transformative power of interactive media within the creative industries.
Brian founded the Scottish Games Network in 2004 which has grown from a purely social group to become the defacto industry body for Scotland's rapidly evolving games industry. In 2022 Brian created and directed Scottish Games Week, the first large-scale games event to focus upon the transformational capabilities of the whole games ecosystem.
Brian is now using the catalyst of SGW to create an entirely new ecosystem-wide cluster with the aim of making Scotland one of the world's leading hubs for games education, creation and application.
In addition, Brian has established himself as an expert in the use of applied game technologies and 'gamification' techniques within our creative world. He's a regular contributor to the media, tech ecosystem and government, whenever they need to know more about this 'games thing'.
Dr Malcolm Clark
Deputy Head of Curriculum for STEM, UHI Moray
Malcolm Clark is somewhat of an all rounder. He has a background in interactive media, computing science (AI and Data Science) and cognitive science (user research). He’s a passionate lecturer & active researcher in innovative and socially responsible projects. His favourite games are the Stanley Parable, Red Faction and Doom.
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.