All those bananas and barrels you collected as a kid? This man made ‘em. Another Rare veteran of more than two decades, Mark became lead artist working on the Donkey Kong Country series, continuing in this role for DK64 and Kameo.
This amber-maned testosterone machine is known not just for his ability to melt bean tins using just his magnificent tan, but also decades of classic game characters for the likes of Killer Instinct, Battletoads and Diddy Kong Racing. Kev is working on Yooka-Laylee.
Steve began creating backgrounds for the Donkey Kong Country series, before leading environment art for the Banjo Kazooie series, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata & Kinect Sports.
Talbot, another experienced artist of almost 20 years, is an animator by trade and has worked on the Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark series of games. Apparently, he does all his motion capture without crash mats, because he’s well ‘ard.
Supreme scheduler Andy has produced more than 20 titles, including Banjo-Tooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day and Jetpac Refuelled. He’s also both the second Andy AND Wilson on the team, which can’t be very good for our organisation, surely.
In the national census, Daley lists her religion as “Donkey Kong”. Every day she lights candles at Chris Sutherland’s feet, then sacrifices a small lock of Kev Bayliss’s hair in a ritual sacrifice designed to summon Steve Mayles from his hiding place underneath the stock cupboard desks.
Dean’s worked as an artist on the likes of Kameo (and its canned sequel), the Kinect Sports series and the upcoming Sea of Thieves. However, he’s most famous for creating the Orange Pointlights in Glitterglaze Glacier, which he just can’t stop boasting to journalists about.
Gav joined the games industry in the N64 era and moved up the design ranks working on the Banjo Kazooie series, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata & the Kinect Sports series. Starting off in Q&A during the late nineties guarantees that *almost* nobody has claimed more collectibles than him.
It’s fair to say that Steve Mayles is the ‘father’ of some the most beloved characters in gaming. During his 22-years at Rare Steve created iconic stars such as Banjo and Kazooie and the Donkey Kong Country series’ modern Kong family.
Jens is the technical mastermind behind the Playtonic machine, channelling a decade of experience spent developing Rare’s internal technology and executing miracle handheld ports of the likes of Donkey Kong Country and DK Pilot.
Simon is an experienced engineer who has worked on the Banjo-Kazooie, Kameo and Kinect Sports series of games, as well as 2015’s Rare Replay compilation.
A master in the art of “the gab”, our resident friendly silver tongue brings a whole new meaning to “let me do the talking”. Thankfully she uses her powers for good, having once negotiated office doughnut prices, winning us a cheaper sweet treat.
Dan – who joins from Rocksteady – claims to have studied classical music and composition before joining the games industry. Now he studies our classic burp and fart noises for Yooka-Laylee.
Matt is known for making various Lego games noisy, from Marvel, to Batman. A streetwise sound designer, Griffin immediately signalled his cunning by opting to start during Yooka’s release week, smirking with satisfaction as he munched away at the launch day cake.
In a previous life Gary lead design on a host of handheld classics, including the likes of Donkey Kong Land, Conker’s Pocket Tales, Sabre Wulf, Banjo Pilot and Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise.
Lee’s testing CV includes Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and the Viva Piñata series. His day-to-day now includes sending us angry emails about the bugs we’ve made, thus ensuring that our final game is as polished as can be.
With almost 30 years under his belt, Chris is one of the most experienced engineers around. The veteran – who is the voice of countless gaming heroes – was responsible for building the mechanics and feel of some of the generation’s biggest games.
James started his career in 2004 as an engineer on Xbox 360 launch game Perfect Dark Zero, before eventually going on to work on the Viva Piñata games, Xbox Avatars and more. Don’t be deceived by his fresh face: James has seen things you wouldn’t believe…
Mark insists that the Tingle Tuner can be used to hone in on social media trends. We aren’t so sure, but we let him get on with his tingle-tuned video content creation anyway. A dad of twins, he’s perfectly primed to wrangle any buddy-duo!
Young Lockwood is an Australian. He’s also done some game design, apparently, which includes building levels for a host of indie hits such as Stealth Inc and Mike Bithell’s Volume.
We found George wandering around outside the studio, hyperventilating after he had run out of Mario Kart opponents to thrash. He demanded a worthy opponent, and since we couldn’t offer him one, we gave him a job instead.
Ed is the father of Jinjos and Mumbo Jumbo from the Banjo-Kazooie series. After taking a long break from working on games, Ed is back in action and bringing his red-headed flair to Playtonic HQ.
Chris joins fresh from a background in compliance for the erm, Ministry of Justice. These days he lays down the law in the Playtonic office, enforcing our strict kitchen rules and judging us with a menacing gaze whenever rubbish isn’t placed into the correctly labelled wastepaper bin.
Gaetan is one of the youngest members of Playtonic. He brings a marriage of technical and artistic prowess that often leaves us scratching our heads. We don’t know how he does what he does, but we’re happy to cheer and clap along like delighted children at a magic show.
Cook worked in testing on games such as Perfect Dark, Banjo-Tooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day before going on to lead design on the Viva Piñata series, It’s Mr. Pants and more.
