Studio Director of Sports Interactive, the studio behind the stellar Football Manager series, has been awarded an OBE by the Queen in the latest round of honours awards. In full, O.B.E. stands for Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and is one of a series of chivalric awards created by George V, the highest of which makes you a knight of the British Empire. Suffice to say, not too many game developers have made the esteemed honours lists.
The co-founder of Sports Interactive, Olly Collyer, congratulated Jacobson on the Sports Interactive site, saying, "we think this is very much deserved for all the hard work involved in not only establishing a good sense of business to a raw and young Sports Interactive all those years ago, but also evolving the studio into an equal and more professional partner with its publisher and also a responsible one, via the involvement with various charities, as well as taking away the things we don't like doing to allow us to concentrate on coding!"
"The honour is also deserved recognition for lots of other work Miles has done away from SI over the years on the BAFTA games committee, Develop advisory board and as a founding trustee of GamesAid as well as many other advisory committees."
Collyer adds that "apparently he was in the frame for a knighthood but they didn't have a platform high enough to allow the appropriate member of the Royal Family to reach his shoulder with their sword so they settled for the O.B.E."
Writing in response to the news, Jacobson said "It really is very humbling, and is further recognition for the whole SI team around the world. I'm a bit lost for words at the moment, so I'll leave it at that for now."
For a few clues as to how the Sports Interactive developer earned himself a place on the honours list, check out our review of Football Manager 2011 .
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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.
