James Brooksby

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT JAMES BROOKSBY

James is a veteran of the games industry with over 25 years of experience in running and guiding game development and publishing studios. He played a pivotal role in the early stages of Kuju Entertainment, which grew to around 350 staff. Throughout his early career, James has produced numerous high-quality games, including 40k Firewarrior, Geometry Wars Galaxies, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Burn Zombie Burn, Strike Suit Zero, Fractured Space and Classified: France:\'44.Ascending through increasingly senior management positions, James eventually oversaw the development and growth of entire game studios. He founded doublesix games, a groundbreaking division of Kuju focused solely on developing and publishing digitally distributed games across multiple platforms, utilizing innovative marketing and sales techniques during the early days of digital distribution.James then led a management buy-out of part of doublesix to form Born Ready Games, successfully launching Strike Suit Zero. Born Ready Games evolved into Edge Case Games, where James, as CEO, led the company to produce the critically acclaimed Fractured Space, a free-to-play PC game. At Edge Case Games, James learned more about raising finance, namely from an angel group, a VC and from a large Chinese games company. Under his leadership, Edge Case Games built a reputation for excellence and was eventually acquired by Wargaming.James then founded Absolutely Games, a highly focused strategy games studio in the UK. Drawing on his extensive experience, he emphasizes franchise design, smart decision-making, community collaboration, long-tail game development, and values-based leadership. Absolutely Games published its first title, Classified: France ‘44, to critical acclaim in March 2024. James and his team are now working on follow-up games and are excited about a bright future creating games they love.