CHECK OUT GAMES GURU BOB’ S STORY
GAME?
W
ARE YOU
Born and raised in Middlesbrough and now living in Darlington, Bob Makin is general manager of Middlesbrough-based games developer Behaviour Interactive UK.
Here’ s Bob’ s story and his advice if you’ d love to follow him and enjoy a career in video games …
hen I was in school, there were only two jobs I wanted to do: an animator or a video games designer.
After seeing the first Animex festival in 2000, I decided to study at Teesside University. I focused all my attention on the subjects that would help me.
At school, I enjoyed art, IT, physics and maths, as well as drama. In college, I continued this trend and picked the subjects I enjoyed and that would point to a career in games, studying graphic design, IT and drama, at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, in Darlington.
I went on to study a BA( Hons) in computer animation at Teesside University, shortly followed by a new online start-up called Animation Mentor. This was an incredible experience – I worked weekends, nights and any time that I wasn’ t working in my retail job at GAME in Darlington.
The most important thing I learned from my time at Animation Mentor and Teesside University is that networking is key. So my advice is always to talk to people and get to know more about their roles, the industry and potential jobs. Networking helped me to earn my first development job at Jagex in
Cambridge, working on RuneScape as an animator.
From there, I ended up at another studio in Middlesbrough called Iguana, moving into production( project management). Within six months, Iguana was soaked up by Team17 in Wakefield, and I worked on the Worms franchise as a producer.
While looking for jobs closer to home, I decided to join up with my friend and colleague to make our own studio. We went through Digital City’ s incubation start-up programme called The Fellowship. It’ s a similar process to what Tees Valley Labs offers in the current day. We were awarded a £ 4,000 grant each to leave our jobs and create a studio.
SockMonkey Studios was born in February 2013 and is based in Middlesbrough. Using my networking connections I’ d made over the past few years, we began to win contract work. SockMonkey grew over the next decade. We grew from offices in the university business hub and into the Boho Zone. We worked with clients such as Sega, Disney, tinyBuild, Hello Games and Sumo on some amazing games.
A decade later and we had grown to 50 people and caught the attention of gaming giants Behaviour Interactive. SockMonkey Studios was acquired by Behaviour to become Behaviour Interactive UK in February 2023, 10 years and a week since its inception. We are now part of one of the biggest independent game developers in the world. Right now, in the town, we have some incredibly talented developers working on world-class games, not just at Behaviour but with several thriving games businesses.
In the past two years, Behaviour staff have worked on titles such as Mortal Kombat 1, Silent Hill: Ascension, Civilization VII and our very own Dead by Daylight.
Part of a thriving local tech and digital sector, there’ s a growing gaming industry in Teesside and a huge amount of space for growth in the biggest entertainment industry in the world.
Scan the QR code to view an exciting video about Behaviour Interactive
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