Danny Quin

Danny Quin is all about attention to detail. A producer on Sports Interactive’s Art & Animation team, he understands how small changes can have an outsized effect on group dynamics. Noticing how these factors affect those around him has been a skill passed down from one Quin to another: fostering effective teamwork has been central to Danny’s family's preoccupations for half a century.

You see, football is in Danny’s blood. His father, Barry Quin, has worked in the game for most of his life. Centre of Excellence Director at Brentford for two decades (as well as a brief stint as the first team’s caretaker manager in 2007), Watford’s Head of Academy in the coaching and development department for a decade after that. And it was at Vicarage Road, that Danny’s journey to SI took root.

“I ended up working here through a total miscommunication,” says Danny, laughing. “One day my dad met Studio Director, Miles at Watford and said ‘My son works with you guys’. They obviously had no clue what he was talking about. I was actually working as an assistant producer at another football video game at the time; he’d clearly just mixed them up. Once those wires had been uncrossed and they found out I was on a short-term contract elsewhere, they suggested I send my CV over.”

And now here he is. “I began working at SI at the end of 2018. I was working in a licensing role before moving into working with the Art & Animation team, since my background is really in animation.” Danny was one of those people who kept pestering team members for more responsibilities, anything to let him scratch his creative itches while helping the studio move forward as a whole. He began using his Photoshop skills to take some of the strain off the designers and soon became a vital bridge between the Licensing and Art & Animation teams.

“That made my transition into a producer working with the Art team a natural progression that worked for everyone,” he says.

Blessed with a calm aura and patience, the role of producer is one Danny likens to a football club’s backroom staff, away from the headlines, sure, but vital for keeping things ticking over during periods of high pressure.

A born plate-spinner, Danny brings two skills honed during his time teaching in American summer camps to the SI studio: communication and empathy. He admits to “obsessing” over the best ways to communicate information to his team members, helping an extremely varied group work in unison towards a common goal.

“Understanding effective communication styles with your team isn’t just about what you say, but how the other person hears it,” says Danny. “You have to be a social chameleon, and, across the team, I’ve learned to change how I deliver different information to different people in different ways.”

These are values instilled in him by his old man, with Danny and Barry still catching up now to shoot the breeze over communication styles and techniques. “He still lives near me so we go out for lunchtime walks and talk about it constantly,” says Danny. 

One technique that Danny favours is extracurricular activities. Some members of his team — whose roles cover animation, character work, environments, and technical art on FM — regularly play football together on Tuesday afternoons, and the whole A&A team comes together regularly to play video games, often simple browser games everyone can enjoy as a chance to switch off.

“As you get to know each other outside of your job role,” he says, “you start to understand their communication styles a lot better. We’re all learning about each other constantly and getting to know each other on a personal level is vital to building camaraderie in the team.” 

“Our team is probably the most diverse across the whole company in terms of age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and any measure,” adds Danny. “We've got team members across the neurodivergence spectrum. And so, we’re a group focused on innovation with lots of different personality types, which is a great combination.”