Lady Shotgun

Description

Lady Shotgun is a co-operative of experienced freelance game developers founded by three mothers who wanted to have their cake and eat it too! Games industry veterans, Anna Marsh and Sarah van Rompaey (who’s CV’s include senior positions on the Tomb Raider, SingStar and Alien franchises), and artist, Gabriela Pavan, founded the virtual studio in 2011. As the three founders live in different countries and are mothers of young children, the need to balance work with childcare is a core objective for the company. The result has been a far more diverse work force than traditional game development studios – Lady Shotgun is one of few game development teams to be over 50% female, with women taking on development roles in all disciplines. Lady Shotgun is committed to ethical development, including embracing flexible work practices that fit diverse lifestyles and sharing all profits fairly with the team. We also believe in loving our players by crafting brilliant fun-to-play experiences for them to enjoy. Lady Shotgun is currently developing exclusively for iOS but intends to extend to other platforms soon. Lady shotgun’s debut game, Buddha Finger, will be available on the App Store on the 28th October 2012.

History

Early History

Anna Marsh started her career as a level designer for Psygnosis, Sarah van Rompaey produced a number of titles for Infogrames whilst still working as a screenwriter and director. They met at Eidos where they were they were the only women in a twenty strong publishing development team. Between them they worked on numerous titles, most notably on the Anniversary and Underworld installments of Tomb Raider. After working together as Senior Producer and Executive Designer of the Tomb Raider franchise, van Rompaey went on to be Senior Producer of the Sing Star franchise whilst Marsh worked at Creative Assembly on the Alien game. After the birth of their children, Marsh and van Rompaey turned to freelance and contract work but juggling commuting, traditional work hours, unrealistic development schedules and motherhood was difficult and they soon found themselves fantasising about a “different kind of development studio” which would allow them to work flexible hours from home on games they could be proud of. They were joined by Pavan, an artist with many awards and exhibitions under her belt who worked as a commercial freelance graphic artist for clients such as Philips and Fererro Nutella, and Lady Shotgun was born. Lady Shotgun team members live in France, Argentina, United Kingdom and Australia.

Recent Work

Lady Shotgun will release their debut title, Buddha Finger, on the 28th October 2012 for iPod, iPad and iPhone. Buddha Finger was created by a team of ten, all of whom worked flexibly from home over a ten-month period. Although Buddha Finger is a native iOS title, Lady Shotgun is platform agnostic; the game will be ported to Android, Windows and other mobile platforms post the Apple version release. The game was selected to feature in the Eurogamer Expo 2012 Indie Game Arcade and at Game City 2012, and has garnered very positive previews. Anna Marsh writes and speaks about diversity and game design and has recently been seen at the Women in Games Conference 2012 and featured on pocketgamer.biz. Lady Shotgun has other projects in the works for future release, including a narrative lead transmedia project, and a number of fun casual action games on a variety of platforms.