Five graduates from the University of Northampton are helping to save lives… direct from their digital studio.
William Marshall set up 925 Studios last year with fellow games course graduates Ben Maher, Artise Brown, Wednesday Garrett and Gabriel Cruceanu. 925 primarily works with the public sector, providing training simulations, virtual environments and prototypes.
Its first major project is a commission from the National Fire Chiefs Council to build a virtual fire training simulation to promote UK fire safety law in the workplace.
“It helps businesses to know what measures they need to take into consideration with fire safety law, how things in the workplace should be arranged and what protocols need to be in place to protect employees and the company,” said Mr Marshall. “Simulations are a great way of training people in a safe environment and we can build these virtual environments to spec.”
The decision to specialise in training simulations was made after the friends came to the rescue of students on the Early Childhood programme at the University of Northampton. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Early Childhood undergraduates saw their placements in schools and nurseries cancelled so the five created a virtual reality version of a pre-school below, which allowed the students to safely explore and identify hazards in a simulated environment.
“By the end of last summer, I had an idea that we could carry on making these helpful simulations for clients, which we are doing now for the NFCC,” said Mr Marshall inset. “It is exciting and exhilarating how quickly this is happening. We are using skills we gained during our games development degrees straight out of the gate.”
Now the studio is planning to develop its work with public sector clients.
