A BEAR go-karting game has been presented by a Southampton academic to the world's largest industry event.

Arran Langmead, a games art lecturer at Solent University, explained how his game 'Bears Can't Drift?!' was created for consoles without the technical code favoured by developers.

He took computer games art student Laura Reeves along to the Game Developers Conference, which brought together more than 27,000 professionals from across the world.

Mr Langmead said: “This new way of creating games demonstrates a shift in accessibility in games development. If people like me – someone with no coding ability – can now build games, people with other skillsets could start moving towards games development.”

Third year student Laura Reeves won the chance to attend after Mr Langmead offered a pass to students. She said: “Networking with all these people by just being myself and talking opens up so many doorways for my future career in the games industry – I even got offered a job at the conference! Being surrounded by so many hard working developers encouraged me to push myself more and more.”

Southampton Solent University is currently working to build the research profile of its games courses, with topics being studied including virtual reality and the links between games and mental health.