About
Hi! I'm Simon.
I have a deep love of unique and delightful play experiences, leading teams and creating innovative play experiences since 2000.
I cut my teeth in the beautiful mess of the early internet, building Flash games, educational experiences and installations, before starting my own studio, HandCircus in 2008. Our first title Rolando won several awards and was featured in the iPhone’s first global ad campaign. More recently I spent 3 years as Play Invention Director at LEGO's Creative Play Lab, focusing on physical play, toy design and new and innovative ways to allow players to shape their own play experience.
I have a deep love of prototyping and working with teams to create unique and compelling play. I'm a strong believer in bottom-up innovation and an iterative, explorative approach to discovery. While I enjoy coaching creative teams, I also love to be hands-on and have enjoyed being able to maintain strong design and development skills throughout my 20 year career.
The "specialisation" part of my T-Shape is game development, most commonly in Unreal and Unity. However I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a variety of platforms, technology, and audiences - creating games for console with custom engines, creating interactive toys with bespoke electronics and several vision-based installations
In addition to games projects, I've also created a number of open-source projects to help accelerate the prototyping and development process. I've also greatly enjoyed an ongoing mentoring role as part of Limit Break.