Andrew Greensmith

BSc Computer Games Technology, 2002

What is your current role?

I took part in the Dare to be Digital competition in my final year at Abertay and, although my team didn’t win, afterwards I joined a competing team to form a company called VideoBrains as their lead programmer/MD. At VideoBrains we successfully built and shipped a mobile WAP game called Wapletes. I joined Mobius Entertainment in 2002 and after numerous GBA games I took the role of lead programmer as Mobius became Rockstar Leeds. At Rockstar I managed the team of programmers and we got to create amazing titles such as GTA: Liberty City Stories, GTA: Vice City Stories, GTA: Chinatown Wars, as well as assisting and contributing to projects external to the studio such as Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire. In 2011, I left Rockstar to form a new company with one of the senior designers with the aim of providing a service to streamline and enhance games being produced by other companies. After working with Activision on Prototype 2 in 2012 I joined The Blast Furnace (a newly formed mobile development studio) as their Technical Director developing titles including Call of Duty: Strike Team. Sadly The Blast Furnace shut down after two years so I began contracting and worked with Sumo Digital, Fierce Kaiju, Here2Peer and Red Kite Games.

In a very short time I helped to ship Little Big Planet 3, God of War III: Remastered and a Gear VR launch title called Viral. A year later I joined Red Kite Games as their Technical Director which has since grown substantially and we now work with key industry partners like Sumo Digital, Codemasters and Double Eleven as well as platform holders such as Sony and Microsoft. My job is very varied but fundamentally involves writing code for a variety of games on a range of projects, platforms and languages. Specifically this is currently the core tech for Crackdown 3 on PC and Xbox One.

While writing code I also support our junior programmers to learn and grow into the next generation of veteran developers and help to run Red Kite Games along with the other two directors.

What is your lasting impression of Abertay?

Abertay arguably taught me some of the core skills I still use today both in terms of programming and management. Without these, I doubt I would have managed to get a job in the games industry and certainly not managed to gain the wide range of experience on some amazing projects. Abertay stays strong in the field of games because of their high standards. Even now I take notice when I see a developer’s CV with Abertay mentioned on it. I always make a point to interview students who’ve studied at Abertay and, throughout the years, I’ve hired numerous graduates from the University.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

My advice to my younger self would be to work smarter, not harder. Take a step back from what you’re doing (as well as things that other people are doing) and see if there’s a way to make everyone’s life easier and less stressful. My main goal nowadays is to prove I can manage to have fun developing games and have a good work/life balance. At Red Kite Games I feel we are doing an excellent job achieving this and we are still growing. I would love for us to continue to make great games with great people whilst having fun doing it.