Geoff Heath gets OBE

Geoff Heath has been named an Officer of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

The former Climax chairman, Activision Europe founder and NCsoft man – who came to games in the 1980s after a career in the music business – was given the honour ‘for services to the Computer Games Industry’.

In terms of his industry career, Heath helped establish Activision in Europe as its first European MD, and then advised other American firms on how to do the same thing.

He then worked for Virgin Mastertronic, and then Mindscape – where he notably hired Phil Harrison, who in turn went on to become head of Sony’s studio business.

After that Heath took the role of non-executive chairman at Climax Studios.

In 2004 he became head of NCsoft Europe. He currently holds a number of board positions at games and technology companies.

Previous industry recipients of honours from the monarch include Peter Molyneux, Ian Livingstone, David Gardner and Jane Cavanagh.