Man found dream job after chance encounter in Liverpool shop

A man began a career in video games after a chance meeting in an old Liverpool shop.

Phil Charnock works at video game developer Draw & Code. He helped launch a new games studio in Liverpool city centre last year called Scallywag Arcade, and is currently working on a game based on the popular Channel 4 show Taskmaster alongside Niall Taylor, the head of games at the studio.

Speaking to the ECHO about why a new studio was opened, Niall said: “Andy and John are founders of Draw & Code respectively and called me up and asked me to come help them build a new game studio - that's where we started, about a year and a half ago now. Over time we've just built a team and built up the brands.

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“We've brought in folks from Warner Brothers, Aardman Animations and lots of local Liverpool talent. We've built what we think is a very experienced game development team in the heart of Liverpool. And as part of that we formed a new games label as we're calling it Scallywag Arcade.”

For Phil, the head of relationships, working in Merseyside brings him back to why he joined the world of video games in the first place. Phil, a 45 year-old from Southport now living in Garston, said: “I remember once upon a time, I was working in a video shop and a chap came in. We were stocking PlayStation One games.

“This fellow points at one of them and says, that's one of mine and I go no, you don't know how this shop works. It's a video shop, they're not yours, you can have them for a day or two, but they're not one of yours.

“It basically turned out this guy was the lead designer on Lemmings, and he