Alayna Cole
Games producer, managing director (Queerly Represent Me)
Who are you, and what do you do?
I'm Alayna, and I do a lot of things! I work full-time as a producer in the games industry, but I'm also managing director of a charity, and I do a lot of research and publication. I have two books coming out next year!
What hardware do you use?
Right now, I am typing this on the PC that I took from my desk at Defiant Development, after our studio sadly closed a few weeks ago, so honestly I have no idea what is inside this machine. According to my System window, I have an Intel i5-4690 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon R9 200 series graphics card. I haven't even removed Defiant's administrative lock on the PC yet!
As for other hardware, I'm rocking a fancy new pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50x noise cancelling headphones, and a basic Microsoft corded mouse and keyboard. Nothing special!
I also use an ASUS F402W Notebook PC when I'm travelling (which is often) and some brandless bluetooth headphones that I bought from a knock-off store online. My phone's an iPhone SE with a cracked screen, which is next on my list of hardware I need to replace.
And what software?
I've recently become fully dependent on the cloud, so I'm living on Google's suite of products. I use Google Docs and Google Sheets most, and have Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendars open all the time. I sound like a walking advertisement for the company!
I do a lot of quick image edits, and have always leaned on PhotoFiltre 7 for that, so I don't have to open Photoshop every time I just need to crop or colour change an image. I also use Slack and Discord to keep in touch with my teams, and Trello for personal task tracking. I love Hootsuite for easy social media updating, which is important to spread the word about the charity work I'm doing.
What would be your dream setup?
You can tell from how little I knew about my PC before answering these questions that I am not very fussy! So long as I have enough processing power to play some videogames (I'm addicted to Final Fantasy XIV at the moment) and access to the Internet so I can use the Google Suite, I'm content! So I guess I'm living my dream already.