MaxPlay
Collaborative Game Development Platform
Google Docs for Game Development.
Overview
MaxPlay is a high performance, cloud-enabled, collaborative game development platform led by a world-class team of proven experts in game development, enterprise software, data science, and publishing, MaxPlay is dedicated to enabling, partnering and collaborating with game developers in all aspects of the gaming ecosystem so they can spend more time creating and running their games.
As Founder, I built the original team, secured Seed and Series A funding, oversaw spin out from MPC/Technicolor, led product strategy, and the product team working from concept to design to prototypes, prioritizing roadmap, market research and testing, developing messaging and branding, go to market, and business model.
The Opportunity
Every time new developers stepped deeper into game development, their workflow stepped further back in in time. There was no cloud-based collaboration or syncing, no easy way to share or track files and changes, no way to track how a team actually performed, no way to send permission-gated builds to clients.
When I was Director of Interactive Technology at MPC/Technicolor. Technicolor was doing an R&D roadshow and I saw some technology that had potential to be productized as a cross-platform game engine. This was a chance for Technicolor to expand business into a new vertical, to update game development workflows, and to connect developers.
This research proof of concept could be built upon to modernize game development, bringing it in line with nearly every other creative and development workflow by building a cloud networked environment with cutting edge asset management, performance optimization, and rendering. Essentially, it was Google Docs for game development, on steroids.
But before we became a real company, I had to build a proof of concept with minimal staff under a tight timeline, and convince a 100-year-old $6B company that they needed to expand into a vertical they’d previously dismissed.
The Work
I created an extenssive landscape and opportunity analysis of the addressable market. Then I packaged what our team had made into a working proof of concept, and put together the pitch to fund an MVP. I assembled and led a small team split between Austin, LA, and NYC that evolved the product to be a SaaS, cloud-enabled, real time collaborative game development platform. To test our theories, I led extensive user and market testing to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback.
Based on these results, I defined market opportunity, target demographics, business model, staffing plan, product roadmap, pricing model, branding, and pitch deck. Coordinated with all relevant stakeholders and regularly presented to Technicolor’s C-Suite. The strength of our prototype and our testing was so convincing that we were able to secure Series A funding from Techincolor, and a handful of private investors.
I oversaw spinout process from Technicolor, identified and hired executive management team, and led Product and corporate strategy, oversaw the Product Design Team, roadmap, go to market plan, business model, pricing, market research and testing, and branding.
The Results
MaxPlay was the most highly anticipated game development platform in the world, compared to industry leaders before it was ever released. This is demonstrated in earned media impressions and testimonials from industry experts and early users.