Paul Gouge
Paul Gouge is a games industry entrepreneur and investor, the founder of BattleMail, Rockpool Games, Ironstone Partners, Ideas Pad and Playdemic.
Career
BattleMail
After receiving a degree in economics, Gouge spent 2 years in investment banking before leaving in 1999 to found his first games company with Alex Rigby, BattleMail.[1] Their game, Battlemail, was a virally distributed casual MMO that was nominated for a BAFTA award[2] and was sold to (M)Forma.
Rockpool Games/Ironstone Partners
In late 2002 Gouge and Alex Rigby founded Rockpool Games, a mobile phone games studio, as well as Ironstone Partners, a video game licensing business. Over the next 5 years Rockpool developed mobile games based on major video game licenses and won several major awards.[3] Both businesses were acquired for $15m by Eidos Interactive in early 2007,.[4] with Gouge acting as head of Eidos Play, the firms casual division, until February 2009.
Playdemic
In late 2010 Paul and Alex Rigby then founded Playdemic.,[5] a European independent social games company that develops and operates game services for social networks and mobile devices. The company’s first release, Gourmet Ranch,[6] launched in August 2010 and by early 2012 had registered over 10m users and generated over $10m in virtual goods revenue.
Playdemic's second release was Crossword Buddies,[7] which launched on Facebook in February 2012 and became available on iPhone and iPad in May 2012. On 8 March 2012 Playdemic signed a distribution deal with Zynga [8] to help increase its audience.
Appatyze
Gouge was a seed investor in and Board advisor to Appatyze (www.appatyze.com) an in-app advertising company.
References
- revolutionmagazine.com, 24 May 2000, 12:00AM (2000-05-24). "Battlemail to push games via email. - Brand Republic News". Brandrepublic.com. Retrieved 2012-07-18.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
- "Awards Database - The BAFTA site". Bafta.org. Retrieved 2012-07-18.
- "Total Mobile Magazine Awards Three-In-A-Row Maximum Scores For Games Developed By Rockpool"
- "Eidos Acquires Rockpool Games"
- "Social Games Developer | Gourmet Ranch | Crossword Buddies". Playdemic. Retrieved 2012-07-18.
- "Gourmet Ranch". Playdemic. Archived from the original on 2012-08-01. Retrieved 2012-07-18.
- "Crossword Buddies". Playdemic. Archived from the original on 2013-01-31. Retrieved 2012-07-18.
- "Playdemic sign distribution deal with Zynga". Playdemic.com. Archived from the original on 2013-02-01. Retrieved 2012-07-18.