Games workshop: new design software paves way for more immersive video games

Alumnus Thomas Matcham is working with Imperial Innovations to develop a piece of design software that will lead to more immersive video games.

The video games industry is big business now and developers are constantly looking to push the boundaries in terms of graphical prowess and immersive gameplay. After graduating from Imperial with an MSci in Mathematics in 2012, Thomas Matcham launched his technology start-up CoAdjoint, aiming to transform the video gaming experience through design software that allows characters far more interaction with their virtual environment.

Why did you get into the gaming market?

Computer games played a big part in my life when I was growing up, but I started to become dissatisfied with the experience; the industry, for me, became quite stagnant in its development. In most modern gaming systems, everything is fixed in the sense that one action leads to a specific outcome. I wanted to offer developers the opportunity to make a different variety of games where, rather than linear storytelling, user interaction shaped the direction of the game more fully to create individually tailored experiences.

How have you achieved this?

I thought about how we develop as people when learning new skills, such as a language or sport, and applied a mathematical model to this process. Using this model, I’ve developed gaming software where the character adapts and improves, based solely upon the gamer’s performance. We also want to make experiences more interactive for different types of software – for example, we could apply this model to educational software such as financial trading games.

What pushed you to take this idea down the entrepreneurial route?

Confidence was a big issue for me and I didn’t know if my idea had any worth. So when I heard about ICStartup+ (an initiative led by the College and Imperial Innovations which provides funding, mentorship and office space to promising tech start-ups) I signed up. As well as the practical help I received, it was useful interacting with likeminded people in similar situations, sharing ideas and getting good, constructive feedback.

A demo video game that used Tom's model

By Kailey Nolan, Imperial Innovations. For support to get your software into the real world see: www.icstartup.com/vc