The Critical Friend
No fluff. Just the honest, objective feedback you need to level up.
ABOUT POLYCARA
Better companies start with people.
Good company people. It’s who we are, and what we help you build.
Why Polycara
Nobody builds a company, or a game, with just one kind of friend. You need someone to tell you the truth, someone to get you moving, someone to keep you steady and someone to push you further.
Polycara exists because great creative work needs a healthy company around it. We bring together experienced consultants, each showing up as the kind of friend you need at that moment, to help studios look beyond their product and give their people, culture and commercial plans the attention they deserve.
The eight friends
Each consultant shows up as the kind of friend your studio needs at that moment.
The core friends
The Catalyst Friend
The spark that turns overthinking into immediate, high-impact action.
The Anchor Friend
Keeps you locked onto your core values when everything else is moving fast.
The Stretch Friend
Destroys your comfort zone so you can finally see what you're capable of.
The Strategic Allies
The Compass Friend
Your roadmap through messy career moves and organisational politics.
The Mirror Friend
Reflects your raw strengths and blind spots, minus the judgement.
The Sounding Board
A zero-risk filter to stress-test your wildest ideas and strategies.
The Safe-Harbour Friend
Total psychological safety. The place to fail, learn, and reset.
Our approach
Practical, collaborative and led by people who have worked in studios.
Honest, not harsh
We tell you what we see, kindly and clearly. Good friends don’t just say what you want to hear.
Evidence over hope
We ask useful questions and look for real signals. Clear decisions need more than a good feeling.
Learn by doing
We work through your actual challenges together, not a pile of generic slides.
Leave you stronger
Our job is to give you tools and confidence you can use long after we’ve left.
The core collective
Different perspectives. One shared belief in good companies.
Gina Jackson OBE
Pitch & commercial plans, data
Making the story and the numbers add up.
LinkedIn profile
Jenny Hurley
People strategy, structure & leadership
Building people-first companies with strong leaders
LinkedIn profile
Marcia Deakin
Smart skills, people, education
Knows what's missing and fixes it
LinkedIn profile
Stephen Hey
Game & audience strategy
Connecting games with their audiences.
LinkedIn profileGames first.
Creative people always.
We work with new games studios, teams with a game in progress and growing creative companies. If your work depends on good people working well together, we’d like to hear from you.
Find your starting pointGOOD PEOPLE. GOOD FOUNDATIONS.
Let’s talk