Slingshot Effect makes games ranging from apps to live action spectaculars for paying players and public and private sector clients, including Arts Council England and Samsung. Slingshot knows what it does best: make exciting, immersive games. And so the question isn't why would you include that in the hiring process, but rather, why wouldn't you? Which is where the cards, lemon and spoon come in.
"Use what you know," says Simon Johnson, who founded the company five years ago with his creative and business partner Simon Evans. "We're a games company, so a number of games have gone into the process of finding the right people." The two Simons play cards in interviews, or set up 'lemon jousting' sessions (two people balance lemons on spoons and try to knock their opponent's lemon off), or invite candidates to play a game with the rest of the team, to see how they fit in.
"It's to see how they respond in a competitive space," says Evans. "Games are a successful way of weeding out people who can be difficult or unreasonable." Johnson adds: "It might sound like we're talking in jest. But the card games make an interview informal and distract people, so that you can see through the veneer to the real person. With lemon jousting, you can very quickly see someone's attitude to winning, to losing, to competition, to integration."
Evans and Johnson met five years ago at a workshop at Bristol's Pervasive Media Studio, a creative technologies collaboration space, and started working together soon afterwards. "I think that because we're both called Simon, there was an instant magnetism there," jokes Johnson. An initial three-month project turned into two years, and a number of different R&D commissions, before they decided to make it official with a new company. "We felt we should break off and stand on our own two feet," says Johnson. "The pressure of the world can be a good thing."
Slingshot Effect, found several floors up in a ramshackle studio space in the heart of Bristol, has grown since then. Six permanent members of staff have been hired in the past year (including an 'inhuman resources manager', who looks after staff, performers, stage managers and 'volunteer zombies'), a number which should rise to 10 early this year. The reason for such quick growth is the strong commercial nous that Evans and Johnson display alongside their creativity. They began 2.8 Hours Later, a cross-city zombie chase game, as a community project, before realising there was a definite commercial angle.
"We started charging people to do it, paying people to work on it, and then turned it into a product," says Evans. The game has had huge popularity: last year it toured nationally and 16,000 enthusiasts signed up to play.
"A street game is both a new and an old kind of entertainment," says Johnson. "It's old- fashioned fun, running around your city, but for a generation who have grown up with computer gaming as a serious medium. For that generation, the three words 'Zombie, Chase, Game', make sense. People tell us they've thought of doing it, but we were the ones who were stupid enough to take on the risks of chasing thousands of people across a city."
"Dangerous things that don't hurt you are just brilliant - but the 'not hurting you bit' is quite hard," adds Evans.
Like any small business experiencing rapid growth, Slingshot is learning as it goes when it comes to HR processes. "We're going through a process of normalisation," explains Johnson. "With the hiring process, for example, we've had to extrapolate different sets of duties and normalise all the activities that go into making a game into one set of activities that we can hire someone to do. It's exciting and challenging."
"We are only just getting to grips with staff care," Evans continues. "Obviously, we know that at the basic level, it's days off and salary. But then there's quality of work and career progression: if it's your second year in and you're doing the same thing, money and days off aren't enough. We are lucky, because what we do is quite cool, but even that will wear off after a while. How do you keep things fresh?"
One way of doing that is moving people on to new products and projects regularly, says Johnson. "That way, everyone gets to have novel experiences, but you manage to retain the talent and the skills within the company."
As well as looking after staff and a big book of freelancers, Evans, Johnson and their 'inhuman resources' manager also have to manage and care for hundreds of volunteer zombies. As with recruiting for full-time staff, wannabe zombies take part in a game as part of the selection process, testing their ability to 'play safe'. "Some people just aren't going to be good zombies," says Johnson. "Zombie school is a school you can fail." Once on-board, looking after volunteers is paramount. "There are a lot of people coming through, and it's easy for someone to get lost," he adds. "The integration of paid staff and volunteers is crucial - it's important that it feels like a community."
Although Slingshot takes its games around the country, and even abroad to Europe and the US, the Bristolian ethos is key to its success. Neither Johnson nor Evans is from Bristol originally, but they've both been drawn to the city. "We're here because Bristol allows us to develop and premiere our games," says Evans. "It's the culture, the community and the creativity. Money here used to come from trade; now it's not a movement of goods, it's a movement of ideas."
