For as long as he can remember, Mike Maksim has had a serious passion for sound. He started toying around with audio at a very young age, using his parents tape recorder to record things from the radio and TV, and sounds he made with his voice, and manipulating the sounds by changing the speed of the tape, and by stretching and damaging it in various ways. He also experimented with programming sounds and games from code found in computing magazines on the Commodore 64 in the mid 1980s. Then at around age 13, he visited Universal Studios with his family and got picked out of the audience to participate in a show that was a staged Foley recording session, and from that point on knew he wanted a career in sound design.

As a musician, he began teaching himself how to play his first instrument - the guitar - at age 14. After a couple years of practice, he formed a band with some of his high school friends and started playing gigs and making 4 track recordings. From there he went on to learn how to play other instruments such as the bass guitar, drums, and eventually started learning how to play keyboards and singing. In 1998, he bought his first computer and began creating his own music.

3 years later, he moved to Southern California and became the singer for the band Tragic Ritual. He also recorded and produced their demo CD, and created a number of sound effects and samples for use in their songs and during performances. After a couple more years, he built his own recording and rehearsal studio in a house in San Diego and started recording bands, ADR, sound effects, and more of his own music using Pro Tools LE 6.1 running on a Power Mac G5.

After some careful deliberation, he decided to pursue an education in sound design in order to launch his career as a full time sound designer. He researched what a number of schools had to offer, and finally settled on Vancouver Film School. He then moved to Vancouver, BC and attended the VFS Sound Design for Visual Media program, and graduated from it in February of 2009.

Mike is now currently working as a Sound Designer for 2K Marin on XCOM, and continues to work on various audio projects as a hobbby in his spare time.