Tara Saunders

Tara Saunders is Studio Head of Larian’s UK studio, Chair of BAFTA’s Games Committee, and a member of the BAFTA Board of Trustees. With a background in art, design, and animation, Tara discovered early in her career that being surrounded by creative people is what energizes her—making her first steps into a game studio in 2000 feel like coming home.

She went on to spend close to twenty five years at PlayStation’s London Studio, beginning as a cinematic animator and eventually leading the studio with an emphasis on studio operations, people, and culture. Today, she brings that same passion and cultural leadership to her role at Larian.

More recently, Tara has trained as a personal and business coach, a journey that has deepened her perspective on leadership and team development, further enriching her ability to support creative, empowered, and collaborative studio environments.

Culture as Infrastructure: Building Studios That Endure Through People

Great culture builds when we put people-first and empower them to make us product-strong. This roundtable will explore how internal studio culture can act as a foundational system—just like pipelines or tools—that supports our long-term success. We will explore the invisible systems in our studios that quietly shape both good and bad culture, discuss how we can intentionally design repeatable positive culture practice that can scale with our studios, and in what ways having a strong people-first culture can directly improve our studio’s output or efficiency. Lastly, when inevitably the going gets tough and shipping priorities are high, what anchors our studios in its people-first principles?