Mark Anthony Hobbs gives us the lowdown on Climax Studios' new Edinburgh location
Back in February, Climax Studios, a subsidiary of Keywords Studios best known for Assassin's Creed Chronicles and assisting in the development of various AAA titles such as Returnal, Halo, and Horizon announced that it would be opening a new location in Edinburgh, Scotland.
We recently sat down for a chat with its new Studio Head, Mark Anthony Hobbs, to discuss his personal and professional background, how it led to his current position at the new studio, and what to expect from the developer in the future.
How did you get started in the video game industry?
"I got into the games industry as a programmer after graduating from Computer Games Technology at Abertay University but even before university, I was an active modder of games like Unreal Tournament and Quake 2."
We’d love to hear about your various roles since graduating.
"I’ve had quite a varied career that has given me experiences I’m very grateful for. As a programmer, I mainly worked in middleware, supporting various games on the gameplay, animation, and physics systems. I spent just over five years as a CTO at Medical Technologies building games to help diagnose dementia-related diseases.
In more recent years, I have been building and managing teams at scale in AAA game development, and in 2022, I joined Keywords Studios as a solutions architect and now Climax Studios as studio head for Edinburgh."
Can you tell us a little bit more about Keywords in general?
"Keywords is potentially one of the best-kept secrets in the industry. Keywords Studios is the number one global game services provider, with over 12,000 people and over 70 studios worldwide. Those studios, like Climax, help game developers build and deliver great games."
What led to the creation of Climax Studios Edinburgh at the beginning of 2024?
"Growth and talent. Being part of the Keywords family has helped Climax grow. As well as the Portsmouth Studio, we have opened locations in London, Liverpool, and now Edinburgh, where we hope to attract some of the incredible talent from the region."
Can you tell us a little bit more about Climax in general?
"Climax is a AAA co-development studio with over 35 years of experience across all aspects of game development. We partner with the world’s top developers on headline games, providing everything from tech solutions, art, and creative all the way to full game development."
What’s your vision for the new Edinburgh studio in particular?
"Ultimately, it’s to expand on the success at Climax Studios, to help AAA Game Developers build games that gamers love to play, but also to be part of the developer community and hopefully become a studio that we can be proud of in Scotland."
What sort of positions will be hiring for this year and beyond?
"Initially, we’re going to have an engineering focus as we look to fill the programmer roles that we have available. Over time, we’ll begin to add various other roles to build our cross-discipline capabilities, but the initial focus will be to bring in the engineering talent and grow from there."
Can you give prospective candidates any advice before they apply?
"Many of our projects use Unreal, but we also work a lot with custom engines that aren’t memory-managed. Programmers will definitely want to brush up on their core C++ knowledge."
A massive thank you to Mark for taking the time to speak with us!
As he said, Climax Studios Edinburgh is currently searching for new members to join its expanding development team.
Whether you have a talent for graphics development, UI implementation, or Unreal Engine in general, Climax has a number of open positions available on its company page below.
