30.10.2025 – Guest Speaker Bea Grove
Bea’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bea-g-659066149/
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In week 5, we had the chance to talk to Bea Grove. She graduated from the University of Southampton in 2018 and currently works as a senior game designer in the mobile publishing department.
After her graduation, she attended summer school at the University of Southampton and afterwards, she applied for many junior roles. Her skills in games design testing and her approach of prioritizing fun in designing landed her a job as a junior game designer. From there, she started leading projects and soon became a senior publishing designer. It was quite a different role as it involved making decisions and taking responsibility for them. She also had to lead designs and persuade people of their validity.
Bea currently works as a developer and publisher at Kwalee, where she contributed to many projects such as Queens Master: Sudoku Puzzle, Derailed: Survival Adventure, Town to City and The Precinct. Her responsibilities in design so far include documentation, feedback, UI/UX design, economy design, level design, and feature design.
We were advised to keep in mind that AAA is not the only way into the industry. Roles in the game design profession often overlap, and skills developed in fields outside of the ones related to gaming can still be valuable within it.
Bea then went on to talk about how university prepared her for her job. At the university, she had the opportunity to work in different roles and practice her documentation skills. Furthermore, she improved her abilities of teamworking and coding. University also opened many job opportunities for her, as well as helped in starting her portfolio.
When preparing a portfolio, we were advised to showcase all the projects we would like the employers to see and strongly highlight the parts that we took ownership of. When writing a CV, we should always be honest about its contents and include relevant links to portfolios or released games. It is also recommended to keep it concise – one to two pages in length.
During interviews, it is important to show passion for games. A tip which I found useful was to give role-specific praise and critique when discussing games, as this showcases my understanding of that area. Researching the company beforehand is essential, as it allows you to answer basic questions about it. Always sound enthusiastic about the studio and its recent projects and prepare one or two questions about the role or their work.
Advice that I found especially practical included documenting designs in bullet points to facilitate communicating the ideas, as well as considering decreasing the scope of the game to make sure you can design it from start to finish. I tend to over scope my projects so in my current one I will try to think about how I can cut down on some of the design aspects and still achieve the target outcome.
Projects Bea has worked on
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