This profile forms part of a series of interviews produced as part of Game Republic’s 20th Anniversary celebrations supported by our Official Partners Barclays, Escape Technology and Red Kite Games.
Dr Jake Habgood has played an incredible role in the games industry over the last decade or two, starting with books on game making, working in schools, lecturing at Sheffield Hallam University where he also set up the University’s Steel Minions games studio. He is now Director of Education Partnerships for Sumo Digital where he is creating new pathways for people to get into the industry. He set up the Sumo Digital Academy and has helped to create new apprenticeship programmes for the games industry – the first cohort completed in July. He is also an Education Advisor to TIGA and a Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield.
What is great about working in the games industry?
I’ve always enjoyed being part the eclectic community that make up our industry. There’s something magic about the interaction between creative people of different backgrounds and perspectives that is exciting to be part of. I fell in love with the game development community when I joined Gremlin as a new graduate in the 90’s and have treated it as my natural home ever since.
Take every opportunity you can to work IRL alongside your more experienced colleagues. Real life is a naturally moderating experience and a healthy counterbalance to the echo chambers of the internet! People are just a lot more layered and interesting in real life too.
What words of advice do you have for people starting out in the games sector?
Take every opportunity you can to work IRL alongside your more experienced colleagues. Clearly your own learning and development will benefit from being surrounded by an experienced development team, but it’s not just about what you can learn directly from them. Simply observing other disciplines performing their roles is hugely insightful, and you’ll gain new respect, understanding and tolerance just from being around people with different world views from your own. Real life is a naturally moderating experience and a healthy counterbalance to the echo chambers of the internet! People are just a lot more layered and interesting in real life too.
What work have you been doing in the region to support the games industry, what’s the impact you are having?
I started teaching game development to school children around 20 years ago as part of my PhD and ran numerous clubs and workshops across Sheffield and Nottingham after that. That led to the opportunity to write two books on hobbyist game programming with GameMaker, which did pretty well and were the basis of entire summer camps in the US and Australia. That’s when I did my first stint at Sumo and played more than a passing role in matchmaking GameMaker with YoYoGames up in Dundee. I then spent 10 years as a Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University where I set up the Steel Minions game studio and shipped several PlayStation titles with student development teams. I also won and ran a Horizon 2020 EU project based on PlayStation VR at Sheffield Hallam and got my Readership for my academic work into educational game design.
A terrifying number of my former students now work in the games industry and plenty of them have senior roles and accolades like BAFTAs to show for it. My students now give jobs to my students, and I occasionally meet professional developers who read my books when they were at school. I’m not even as old as that makes me sound!
Who is your favourite former student?
I can’t tell you that! Obviously, they are all equal 🙂 However, I would say that I get the greatest reward as a teacher when I feel I’ve made a real impact, and that’s typically not the highest flyers. The most focussed and driven students will succeed regardless of the curriculum or opportunities afforded to them (and sometimes despite of them!). I suppose that’s why I like the concept behind the Academy so much: most of the apprentices wouldn’t be in the industry at all without our help. If just one of them goes on to make a real impact in our industry, then we’ve achieved something significant.
What influence do you think your company and similar types of organisation can have on the sector or region?
The Academy is only just getting started and it has already taught game programming to more women than our degree programme at Hallam did in 10 years. I also think we’ve already trained some future industry leaders, so I shall be watching their careers with much interest! I think apprenticeships have the potential to make a real difference in bringing more diverse backgrounds to our industry, but the processes involved need streamlining if apprenticeships are to become common in our industry.
I would bet that a significant proportion of industry developers in the region had their careers assisted by winning some kind of award at the annual Game Republic Student Showcase.
What do you think of the role of Game Republic?
Game Republic has played a hugely influential role in promoting graduate talent in the region. I would bet that a significant proportion of industry developers in the region had their careers assisted by winning some kind of award at the annual Game Republic Student Showcase. We brought a team to the showcase 10 years ago with a PSP game called BounceBack and I know that members of that team have gone on to contribute to the development of Crackdown 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed, Little Big Planet 3, Sea of Thieves and SackBoy, and there are probably plenty of other titles that I’m unaware of.
Why is the region a good place to do business?
There’s a long history of game development in the region going back to the 1980’s, and that ensures that there is a strong community and pipeline of talent at all levels of experience. There is a great book on the history of the games industry in the region written by Mark Hardisty (A Gremlin in the Works by Bitmap Books). It focusses on Gremlin in Sheffield but shows their links with games companies across the whole region and how seminal it was for key individuals and companies. An interesting read for understanding the region’s heritage in games!
What projects are coming up for the Sumo Academy?
The Sumo Academy recently shipped Zool Redimensioned on the PlayStation. It is a remake of an old Gremlin game from the 1990’s and it has provided several cohorts from the academy with a real-life project to work on. I’ve always done what I can to support students to get experience of the whole development process, including bringing products to market. The BounceBack example shows how that can help to catapult student’s industry careers, so do look out for Zool Redimensioned on PlayStation and Steam – it may be your chance to experience the first game made by a future industry legend
