How Specialmoves began - Specialmoves

How Specialmoves began

How it all started

Specialmoves officially started in 1999 in our Creative Director’s bedroom, but its story began way before that. The four founders Dave, James, Pascal and Darrell met four years earlier, as students on the influential Media Lab Arts (now DAT) course at Plymouth University.

Media Lab Arts was a new media course run by the School of Computing and taught by artists. It sounds like the digital equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting but turned out to be an inspirational springboard. It was a course about ideas and exploring the cool things you could do with the emerging technologies. 

During their third-year industry placement, Dave, James, Pascal and Darrell found they knew as much, and often much more, about interactive technology than the people employing them. This gave them confidence that striking out on their own after graduation wouldn’t be that hard. They knew how to do this stuff and they were really good at it.

There were only really two objectives: to make cool interactive stuff, and create a company where they would want to come to work. That’s exactly what they did, and what Specialmoves still does today.

Where does the name Specialmoves come from? Well the official line is that it’s a video games reference. A unique combination of actions that produces extraordinary results. If you want to know the real answer, come see us and we’ll tell you over a cup of tea…