Teaching gamesfrom first idea to first release

by a developer who still ships games

Whether you've never opened a game engine or you're deep into your first commercial project, I teach the way I work: by making things. Nobody leaves my sessions without having built something real.

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Sessions & workshops

The NFTS Games Design and Development MA stand at EGX Rezzed, with visitors playing students' final year projects.

Two students at a workstation reviewing a Unity scene and code side by side.

National Film and Television School - Games

MFA Game Design & Development

I tutor programming and production one-on-one on this two-year MFA, where students build six games and show the last at EGX London.

“Geoffrey is a very knowledgeable and energetic games developer and educator. He has helped many people find their brighter future in the games industry... he cares deeply about his students. He is reliable, punctual and always keen to make your projects succeed. Highly recommended.”
Alan Thorn - Head of Games, NFTS (Sep 2016 - Nov 2023)

Tutoring since February 2023, one-on-one on students' games. Most of the work is sharpening a design, then meeting production reality without losing what they set out to make. Programming is Unity with C# and Unreal with Blueprints, but the engine is not the point: patterns, SOLID, object-oriented architecture and clean code let them pick up either without starting again.

The hard part is balancing productivity, learning and wellbeing across two intense years, pushing students to ship without burning out. I also run workshops on prototyping, version control, using AI safely and ethically, and testing ideas against the market.

A course slide contrasting a design prototype with a production prototype.

A course slide on prototype properties: small, scrappy, and applicable across writing, design, art and sound.

National Film and Television School - Games

Certificate in Indie Games Development

I take students through indie production on their own projects - scoping, playtesting, budgeting, and getting a game onto a storefront.

Format: Six months - nine 3-hour evening sessions, remote
Focus: Indie production, idea to storefront

Nine sessions walk through the production side of indie development: finding an idea worth building, budgeting and funding it, prototyping and playtesting it, managing the project, and getting it onto Steam, mobile, VR or web.

Each session mixes short lectures with hands-on activity. The real challenge was keeping it engaging over a remote evening slot, after a full day's work for most students - so the format leans on doing and discussing over listening.

Geoffrey running a paper-prototyping exercise with a group around a table.

Participants cutting and arranging paper components during a workshop exercise.

National Film and Television School - Business of Film and Games

Agile Management

I run a workshop on where Agile fits across games, film and TV: teams argue it out, then feel it for real in the Kanban Pizza Game.

Format: 3-hour workshop
Focus: Agile project management across creative media

The Kanban Pizza Game comes before the theory: teams build, deliver, get feedback and adjust, all under time pressure. Having felt iterative delivery rather than been told about it, they are far better placed to judge which parts of a film schedule genuinely cannot flex and which have only ever been rigid out of habit.

Run for the Business of Film and Games course at the National Film and Television School, and built to travel to other film, TV and content teams.

A grid of six Bitsy games made on the taster day, each a small pixel scene with a line of dialogue.

The day's schedule slide: intro to indie games, learning the engine, designing your game, then making it.

BFI Metro London Skills Cluster Training

Indie Game Development Taster Day

I hand complete beginners a tiny game engine for a day - six hours later, everyone has shipped a game.

Format: One day, no experience required
Engine: Bitsy

The morning introduces the range of roles, disciplines and tools involved in making games, then hands participants a bite-size game engine called Bitsy.

In the afternoon, participants pair up and build a game from scratch using Bitsy. They make everything a game should have: art, gameplay, story, audio... And by the end of the six-hour day, everyone has shipped something playable and ready to publish on itch.io.

Sky Sports

Unity '101' For Broadcast Production Developers

I taught Unity to Sky Sports' broadcast production developers over three days, building toward real-time on-air graphics.

Format: Corporate Unity training - 3 days
Covered: Unity, C#, UI Canvas, DOTween

Day one gets participants excited about using a game engine - getting something moving on screen, playing with 3D physics, building a playable obstacle course.

Day two moves on to the UI tools needed for a news ticker and broadcast overlay, with tween animation.

Day three opens up the wider toolset to spark imaginations, using post-processing and particle effects to make a world come alive.

About

I'm a gameplay programmer and educator based in London. I've shipped commercial games and kept them alive once real players depended on them - and that production reality comes into the classroom with me.

My teaching runs on informed uncertainty: I'd rather hand students good questions than ready-made conclusions, and I hold my own practice to the same standard.

Beyond the classroom

If you want to learn how to make games, I can teach you - whatever your starting point. Bring a blank page or a half-built project, and let's talk.

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