As the excitement of Armoured Clash reaches a fever pitch, we’re thrilled to welcome two talented game designers to Warcradle Studios. Sophie Williams and James Hewitt, both powerhouses of the industry, have joined the team as we explore the Dystopian Age and more!
Sophie WilliamS
With career highlights that include working for Black Library and Games Workshop, coordinating artists and managing thirty years of artwork, Sophie’s strengths lie in her ability to create effective structure from chaotic creativity. As the first female retail manager for Games Workshop, she has often found herself as a pioneer in her field and brings that approach to designing fresh and exciting games.
Working with Mantic Games, Modiphius Entertainment, and Steamforged Games, Sophie has helped create an impressive range of games. Her repertoire features the likes of Hellboy: The Board Game, Ancient Grudges: Bonefields, Sea of Thieves, Voyage of Legends, and Robot Fight Club. We’re excited to have her on board the Warcradle Studios team.
What do you do at Warcradle Studios?
“I'm the Game Development Manager. I'll be taking a key role in contributing to the design and development of Warcradle's games while also managing the team and leading in long-term planning and organisation. I LOVE organising and scheduling, so this is a dream!”
What would you say are your greatest influences?
“I've been a tabletop gamer my whole life, from playing BattleTech with my older brothers to playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons with school friends, wargaming through my twenties, and having a very eclectic board game collection. I’ve played a bit of everything…”
“My early years were spent reading RPGs voraciously and visiting the Brighton Games Workshop store. Since then, I've developed a love for discovering new games and mechanics, and I love nothing more than seeing a new take on an established system.”
“I have a particular fondness for games that engage the player in the story. Fog of Love is a really interesting example. It's a narrative game that was designed to avoid direct conflict, while compelling the players to really get in each other's way as they pursue their own goals. But games don't have to be narrative-based to tell a story. If you're like me, you'll create one of your own over the course of the game as things go well or badly for you. Pandemic Legacy has its story embedded among its mechanics, so I found it instantly compelling. My favourite memory, though, is playing Necromunda, converting models to reflect their latest upgrades and feeling very attached to characters that would inevitably suffer a horrible death in the next game.”
What are you most looking forward to working on?
“I'm so excited to get into the 'big picture' of the Dystopian Age. I love the idea that each game reflects a little slice of the whole and that each one gives you a different playing experience. I can't wait to potentially shine a light into other parts of the setting that haven't yet been shown off to their full potential... who knows what gaming experiences that might lead to?”
James Hewitt
Having worked in and around tabletop gaming for most of his life, James Hewitt has built quite a name for himself as an outstanding community manager and game designer. Starting out working in Games Workshop retail, he soon found his feet in game design at Mantic Games with the iconic DreadBall.
Moving to the Games Workshop rules team, James has been involved in the creation of games such as Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus, Blood Bowl, Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, and many more. We’re thrilled to have him as Lead Game Designer for the Warcradle Studios team, providing his decades of experience creating excellent games and mentoring a new generation of designers.
What do you do at Warcradle Studios?
“I'm Warcradle's Lead Games Designer, so I'm leading the charge as part of the Games Development team. We're going to be responsible for creating, testing and expanding a whole line of tabletop games set in the Dystopian Age - not just Dystopian Wars, Wild West Exodus, Mythos and Armoured Clash, but also board games, card games and roleplaying games!”
“My role as Lead Designer means that I'm in charge of training and developing the team, sharing my experience in the industry to ensure that we provide our players with exciting action, compelling decisions and plenty of opportunities for strategy.”
What would you say are your greatest influences?
“I love games of all kinds - board games, card games, wargames, roleplaying games, social games, video games, you name it. I'm a firm believer that if you want to write well, you have to read well, so I draw on a lot of influences! I'm gonna narrow it down to three that I can think of right now.”
“I've got a deep-seated love of the tone and feel of games from Games Workshop's original Specialist Games line - open-ended, narrative-heavy games where you grew to love your models and lamented each battlefield death. When I was designing at GW, I was honoured with the opportunity to revive some of those old favourites, and my main goal was always to maintain that core feeling!”
“There are a number of designers in the tabletop roleplaying space who I often cite as influences, and John Harper is a recurring one. Blades in the Dark is a game that understands the importance of telling a compelling story at the table and provides a razor-sharp set of tools that let you strip away the parts that don't matter and cut right to the action.”
“Finally, it's got to be Richard Garfield and the slew of amazing tabletop games he's made. Without him, we wouldn't have Magic the Gathering, Netrunner, RoboRally, King of Tokyo... games that encourage tense, thematic, fun and thoughtful gameplay”
What are you most looking forward to working on?
I've been pitching several ideas for board games, but what I'm really excited to see is a roleplaying game set in the Dystopian Age. It's such an incredibly rich setting, and I can't wait to zoom right in and see some grimy details. It's early days, but with the creative team that’s in place, I think we're going to knock this one out of the park. (Uh... no pressure, right?)
We’re excited to welcome Sophie and James to the Warcradle Studios team and cannot wait to share with you the amazing work they have been doing so far.
