COMMENT
Business Buzz
with Harry Pearson
When even rain couldn ’ t stop play
In the days before computer games , a good pair of wellies was all you needed to brave a biblical downpour ...
Bob Makin , cover star of this issue , confesses that as a kid he liked it when it rained because it meant he could stay in and play computer games .
He ’ s lucky he didn ’ t grow up in my house , because if he had , he might not have gone on to build up and sell a major computer game business , SockMonkey Studios . My mother wouldn ’ t let a little downpour – or , indeed , a biblical-style monsoon – stop her from driving me outside to “ get some fresh air ”. “ Go out and play football ,” she ’ d say , hustling me towards the door . “ But my trainers will get soaked ,” I ’ d wail . “ Wear your wellingtons ,” my mum would counter . “ John Hickton doesn ’ t play in wellies ,” I ’ d respond . “ He would if he lived in this house ,” my mother would answer and shove me out into the garden .
Even if I ’ d been allowed to stop in , I wouldn ’ t have been playing computer games . I was born in the early 1960s , an age when kids grew up without such fabulous entertainment . Unless , that is , you count the blooping , slow motion black-and-white tennis you could play on your TV screen by plugging in the Adman Grandstand 2000 ( made in that centre of tech , Harrogate ). And I ’ m not sure modern Middlesbrough-based games companies like SockMonkey and Double Eleven actually would .
When early arcade games such as Space Invaders , Pac-Man and Asteroids began to appear in British pubs in the 1980s , I didn ’ t take much interest in them , either . That was because me and my mate Tim were operating what the hipsters today would term a “ side hustle ” to fund our rock ‘ n ’ roll lifestyle . Using the accumulation of trivial facts that still splatter my brain like graffiti on a gents ’ toilet door , Tim and I were topping up our student grants ( young folk , ask your parents ) by winning money on pub quiz machines . For those whose memory is cloudy , these started to appear in British pubs about the same time as the Donkey Kong table arcade game . You paid 20p and if you answered enough multiple-choice questions correctly you won a jackpot of £ 10 ( a tidy sum in the days when a full-time shop worker took home less than £ 80 a week ). Over the next few years the questions got more difficult ( most machines had a bank of about 30,000 ) and the top pay-out rose to a rather tidy £ 40 .
Every cloud – videogame guru Bob Makin made use of rainy days to play his beloved Nintendo and SEGA consoles .
The machines made a lot of money for licensees and pretty soon there were more than 20,000 of them across the UK .
Tim and I did pretty well out of them , too , but nowhere near as well as some people . A bloke from Sussex named Christian Drummond travelled all over the country playing the games in the 1980s and later estimated he was earning 60 grand a year ( all of it tax-free because it came from gambling ). An Oxfordshire
Boro legend - striker couple called David and Lesley-Anne John Hickton didn ’ t play Brewis went on a tour of British pub in wellies ! quiz machines ( known as “ quizzies ”) in the early 2000s and won £ 10,000 in a couple of months . Tim and I never came anywhere near that , but in the late 1980s we did once accumulate enough from a week of playing quizzies around London to go on a Club 18-30 holiday to Spain ( young folk , ask your parents . Or maybe best not ).
As the output of Double Eleven and SockMonkey Studios shows , since those shadowy days , computer games have continued to rise in popularity and sophistication . The quiz machines , meanwhile , have gone the way of the Adman Grandstand 2000 and its F ’ Gamatic operating system . They were killed off a decade ago by the rise of the smartphone and the search engine . Who needs to memorise thousands of facts when you have Google ?
Harry Pearson ’ s latest book The Farther Corner – A Sentimental Return to North-East Football is out now .
154 | Tees Business