TIGA, the trade association representing the UK gamesindustry, welcomes Xiotex Studios as its latest member.
Xiotex Studios was founded by Byron Atkinson-Jones to create
original game IP as well as provide game development consultancy to allow
others to bring their creations to market in a practical way.Mr Atkinson-Jones started out his love of coding on the ZX81
and Commodore 64 and eventually progressed on to making demos on the Commodore
Amiga.
He had made games for hobby and university coursework but
the first real break into the games industry happened when he was offered a job
working for SN Systems where he made game demos for the development kits it
produced. He also wrote the Target Manager application that is used to
communicate with the dev kits and still is today.
He went on to work for Kuju, EA Canada, Lionhead Studios but
his proudest moments were working for PomPom games and Introversion. He eventually decided it was time to break out and go it
alone so he founded Xiotex Studios with the full intention of making his own
games.
Xiotex Studios has worked on a forthcoming title from Future
Games Of London called Hungry Shark
Evolution. Xiotex Studios was called in as a Unity consultant. Mr Atkinson-Jones was an early adopter of Unity back when it
was a Mac only product.
He says he is in a unique position of being able to
provide professional advice and consultancy on how to best make use of Unity in
a games production environment. He is also more than comfortable working in a more
conventional console and mobile setting having worked on PS3, X360, Wii, PC,
Mac and iOS.
Byron Atkinson-Jones, founder of Xiotex Studios, said:
“I found myself attending events organised by TIGA and
I was impressed at how useful they were. It wasn’t just from an educational
point of view but from a networking one also. I was very impressed with how
TIGA was able to bring people from all parts of the industry together to share
their views and show us what they were working on. It broke down the usual
secrecy barrier and showed just how we could help each other. Co-operation is
going to mark the next level of evolution of the games industry in the UK with
the larger organisations closing and the smaller studios blossoming. TIGA is
going to be the foundation that allows that cooperation to happen. That’s why I
joined.”
Dr Richard Wilson, CEO of TIGA, said:
“TIGA is the organisation for developers and digital
publishers and one of our key roles is to support smaller and start-up studios.
So I’m delighted that Xiotex Studios has joined TIGA.Xiotex Studios is a passionate, small company, with a great
future in the UK videogame sector. We welcome them to TIGA.”
Notes
to editors:
About
TIGA:
TIGA
is the trade association representing the UK’s games industry. The
majority of our members are either independent games developers or in-house
publisher owned developers. We also have games publishers, outsourcing
companies, technology businesses and universities amongst our membership. TIGA
was awarded ‘Trade Association of the Year’ and the ‘Member Recruitment Award’
at the Trade Association Forum Best Practice Awards 2010. TIGA has also been
named as a finalist in the 2010 Chartered Management Institute (CMI) National
Management and Leadership Awards in the category of ‘The Outstanding
Organisation of the Year Award (SME)’. TIGA is an ‘Investors in People’
accredited organisation.
TIGA's
vision is to make the UK the best place in the world to do games
business. We focus on three sets of activities: political representation,
generating media coverage and developing services that enhance the
competitiveness of our members. This means that TIGA members are
effectively represented in the corridors of power, their voice is heard in the
media and they receive benefits that make a material difference to their
businesses, including a reduction in costs and improved commercial
opportunities.
For further
information, please contact Dr Richard Wilson, TIGA CEO on: 07875 939 643, or
email richard.wilson@tiga.org.