People

Rik Alexander - Chief Executive Officer

Rik is the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of Monumental. Rik oversees all strategic, operational and tactical activities.

Prior to founding Monumental Rik was General Manager of Climax Online and oversaw a studio of 80 development and publishing staff working on the original massively multi-player game Warhammer Online. Rik has extensive experience throughout the publishing side of the video game value chain and has served at global game publishing firms Acclaim and Hasbro Interactive.

Rik was instrumental in building the key franchises that led to the acquisition of the Climax Racing Studio by Buena Vista Games in September 2006.

Rocco Loscalzo - Chief Technical Officer

Rocco is the Chief Technical Officer and a co-founder of Monumental Games. Rocco oversees all development activity.

Beginning his career in surface modelling and manufacturing software, Rocco rose to director level before moving into the games industry in 2000, when he joined Charybdis. Here he worked on projects such as DinoHunter and Magic & Mayhem: Art of Magic. In April 2001, Rocco joined Climax where he worked on Warhammer Online, and began development of what would later become the Monumental Technology Suite.

Gylan Hunter, Chief Art Director and Head of Monumental Online

With over twelve years' experience within the games industry, Gylan has experience managing teams across all formats. Graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone in 1995, Gylan went on to join the team at Digital Animations creating FMV sequences for games such as Urban Chaos, Need for Speed, Omikron, Braveheart and Alone In The Dark. From there he joined Climax Brighton as lead animator working on projects such as ATV, Hot Wheels and Moto GP 2 and 3. In 2005 Gylan joined the management team at Monumental as Art Director.

Paul Mayze, Chief Operating Officer

Prior to entering the games industry, Paul worked in communications and business strategy roles for a series of entertainment and new media companies, including the advertising giant Publicis. Paul holds first-class degrees in English Literature and Computer Science, and in 2007 received an MBA from Cranfield School of Management.

Since joining Monumental Paul has presented at London Games Week, Games Horizon, Ogilvy Games Day and other conferences. He is currently a director of TIGA.

Jamy Nigri, Business Development Director

Jamy joins Monumental from Aria systems where as Head of Games, New Media and Entertainment he led the globalisation of Aria's business activities, taking them into Europe, Asia, and South America. Prior to this Jamy had been VP of ClickandBuy following a successful career in Travel and Aviation Security. A former professional baseball player, Jamy currently works out of California.

Luke Smith, Design Director

Luke began his career in games as a designer working for Climax Racing in Brighton. He was promoted to Lead Designer for the MotoGP series, helping to cement the AAA profile of the franchise. He later became Game Director for Pyro Studios in Madrid, before returning to the UK as Design Director for Monumental. After ten years in the games industry, Luke has experience of a wide variety of platforms and genres, and has a string of successful projects behind him.

Andy Norman, Head of Monumental Racing

Andy joined the British Broadcasting Corporation after graduating with a degree in Psychology. There he was selected for fast-track training, and successively became one of the youngest ever employees at Producer, Senior Producer and Editor level.

After joining the games industry in 2000 to further an interest in interactivity, Andy began development on what may have been the world's first browser MMO in 2003 (Championship Manager Online). Andy has worked for Eidos, EA and SEGA (mainly on racing games) and has a personal metacritic average of 85% over his career.

Mike Cox. Business Development Director EMEA

Mike started in the games industry in 1992 as a 3D artist before forming his own art/animation outsourcing company, working for companies including Codemasters, Time Warner, Psygnosis and EA. The founder of AudioMotion, Mike saw the business become Europe's largest and most successful motion capture facility, providing animation for games, feature films and pop-promos.

In 2003 Mike joined EA as Senior Development Director before moving to Kuju Entertainment in 2006 as the Production Director. During 2009, Mike joined Emergent Technologies, selling Gamebyro and LightSpeed middleware engines.

Michael Delves, Head of Monumental CET

Michael has over 23 years industry experience starting in 1985 when he wrote his first published game while still at school. He continued his programming career for a further 10 years rising to Lead Programmer at Ocean software. Michael was later promoted to Development Manager helping oversee producers and projects including associated contracts, acquisitions and successful rights sale to other publishers for products which no longer matched the company's portfolio.

Following roles at Hasbro, Software Creations and Acclaim, he helped found Silverback Studios with the support of Fund4Games, which later became Swordfish Manchester as part of Swordfish Studios.

Jeremy Middleton, Non-Executive Director

Jeremy has spent the majority of his career in the marketing communications sector. Having successfully built and sold a number of companies, he joined Media Square plc in the summer of 2002. During his time as CEO of Media Square the company grew from 50 employees in the UK to more than 1,800 in nine countries, and increased its sales from £5 million per annum to more than £200 million. Jeremy left Media Square in the summer of 2007. He now spends his time investing in, and working with, small and medium size enterprises that have strong and ambitious management teams.