Beautiful Game Studios
Beautiful Game Studios, the team behind the latest Championship Manager games, are based in north London. The studio employs over 30+ avid CM and football fans with over 100 years cumulative development experience and 90+ published titles.
You've played the game, now is your chance to meet part of the team behind Championship Manager!
Name: Alex Whittaker
Favourite Club: Torquay United
Job Title: Goalkeeper
Job Description: Hard maths, passing the buck, shot stopping, arguing, staring at graphs, sighing.
History: Learned to feed myself, learned to urinate in the toilet, got a degree in genetics followed by another in artifical intelligence, worked in the drugs trade and then moved into the games industry, had kids, lost hair.
If you had champ man stats – what would your highest be: Deppends how late it is: vision and balance start good but get progressively worse, later it's dribbling and throwing.
Favourite Pastime: Hanging out with the family, playing games.
Name: Alec Fu
Favourite Club: Tottenham Hotspur and Valur
Job Title: Designer
Job Description: Reading, thinking and writing - not always in the right order! Daily battles with MS Word and putting on my headphones to block out the filth from Kyne's warped mind and cakehole.
History: Jacked in a well-paid job in the City to find more meaningful, creative work - still looking, J/K! Started in QA before moving to design, yay.
If you had champ man stats – what would your highest be: Vision!
Favourite Pastime: Watching Icelandic movies whilst eating dim sum and drinking whisky from Isla.
Name: Chris Jones
Favourite Club: Crystal Palace. I’m a season ticket holder.
Job Title: Associate Researcher.
Job Description: I look after England, France and Belgium mainly, plus a few other countries. England is obviously a massive country to look after in itself and I have to pay real attention to detail which can be tough but I relish the challenge and I get a lot of help from Champ Man fans which is very useful to me and the team as a whole. I collate all the spreadsheets from my Researchers while doing quite a bit of my own research. I also mod the forums when I have a chance and I believe I have the most posts at BGS (other than Keir obviously!). I can usually be found in the ‘General Football Discussion’.
History: I joined Anco almost straight from school as a tester but they soon realised that I was a lot better with useless football facts, stats and anecdotes so I took charge of the research side of things. I ran the research side of things at Anco from the age of 17 but it wasn’t anything quite as comprehensive as the Champ Man database. I have now been at BGS for over two years and I still have the title of youngest employee at the company (I’ve just turned 22). This was also the case at Anco and Kyne and Screech came up with the great nickname of ‘Weenus’ or Wee Boy’ which has sadly stuck! I have now been in the industry for over 6 years and its still great fun!
If you had champ man stats – what would your highest be: Crossing or possibly Shot Power. Just ask Alex Whittaker what it’s like to take a left Footed blaster in the face! Although some people would say if ‘Vain’ was a stat I would be up there with the best of them!
Favourite Pastime: Obviously I love football and that is my main hobby. I have played for a few decent clubs and trialled with a few more but wasn’t quite good enough to be a real success! I watch Palace home and away and try to get to other games as well. I stopped playing on Sundays as it was a bit cold for me and I didn’t like my hair getting messy but I have carved out a successful career in the Friday 5-a-side team and have won quite a few titles and awards. I have a growing collection of ‘Match Worn’ football shirts which is a rather sad hobby but at least I don’t take pictures of Aeroplanes!…. (Steve…)
Outside of work and football I enjoy sampling different pubs and bars in London, eating out, cinema, spending time with the Mrs (she would kill me if I didn’t put that!), Music and I have just got in to DIY.
Name: David Rutter
Favourite Club: Hitchin Town and Leicester City
Job Title: Studio Manager
Job Description: Moaning and worrying about everything. Interviewing potential staff, answering PR questions, asking Eidos for info for the forums, and getting in the way of Michael, Luke and Richard. Thinking of unnecessary work for Steve Didd @ Eidos to do. Oh – and lots of development planning stuff.
History: Bailed out of a very dull career in science to become a games tester in 1994. Then worked as a producer at Silicon Dreams on a heap of arcade footy games, including the now legendary Lego Soccer Mania J The 4th employee of BGS in 2003.
If you had champ man stats – what would your highest be: Weight
Favourite Pastime: Excluding work type things (footy and games), “Family Life” just pips scuba diving. Yes – in the UK. Yes - it’s cold. No - you can’t see very far.
Name: Keir Edmonds
Favourite Club: AFC Wimbledon…… and ‘Po Na Na’ when I’m too drunk to know any better
Job Title: Web Monkey
Job Description: I work at both BGS and Eidos. My main duties involve wrestling my way passed tourists on the London Underground when travelling between the two offices, looking after the forum, helping to maintain and update the site. I also recently did some of the art in CM2006 and I’m involved in various other creative tasks for the web department at Eidos. I also send lots of emails to people in marketing and brand. Lots and lots of emails.
History: I’ve been at Eidos for about five and half years. I started in test, where I worked on such Eidos classics as ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire German Junior Edition’ and ‘Pop Star Maker’. I progressed to customer services at about the same time Tomb Raider ‘The Angel of Darkness’ was released, which I still haven't fully recovered from. Then I managed to land this job in December 2003 and haven’t looked back since.
If you had champ man stats – what would your highest be: Dribbling and feinting.
Favourite Pastime: Drawing and animating in Flash and Fireworks, drinking Guinness and nice beers, jogging when I can be arsed, being a general internet geek.
Name: Kevin Brennan
Favourite Club: Arsenal
Job Title: Programmer
Job Description: Looking after everything to do with the way the competitions run in our game.
History: Somehow managed to land a job in the games industry (my dream since I was a little boy - honest!) on sheer enthusiasm alone. Despite no experience I started out porting PS2 titles to GameCube and Xbox. It was a steep learning curve, but great fun. After a few years I jumped at the chance to join BGS to work on the mighty Champ Man.
If you had champ man stats – what would your highest be: Height
Favourite Pastime: I’m a computer geek, what do you think?!? Playing games of course! Oh, and going to watch live comedy