Village Gamer

Former Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Relic veterans announce the formation of Pixelmatic, a new social mobile game startup based out of Shanghai and Vancouver. The Pixelmatic team’s experience ranges from creating highly rated multimillion dollar AAA franchises to multimillion user top ranked social games. Pixelmatic’s focus is on creating “true social games” to push the current boundaries of social game conventions.

“True social games are games that can enhance existing relationships as well as encouraging new connections,” said Samson Mow, Founder and CEO of Pixelmatic. “While games are an ideal medium to facilitate connections with new people, most mobile games don’t encourage that type of social interaction – it’s something we want to change. Social is still very relevant to games, especially on mobile; a major revival for social games has already taken place in Asia on mobile platforms like LINE, KakaoTalk, and WeChat. We’re on the precipice of a new generation of social mobile games.”

With a Canadian management team, Pixelmatic’s primary development centre is set in Shanghai and supported by a small team based out of Vancouver.

“It makes sense in China because it’s an emerging international game development hub with a lot of untapped talent,” said Nat Mak, CFO. “We’re actively seeking people that share our values of responsibility, excellence, and passion, to build a team that creates games that appeal to a worldwide audience.”

“We’ve spent the better part of a year building up our technology and developing our first title, and now we’re ready to really begin the work of advancing social games,” said Cong Ly, CTO. “There’s a huge opportunity on the horizon with the explosive growth of messaging apps, and we believe we’re in a unique position to take advantage of it.”

Pixelmatic’s first title will be published by 6waves and launching initially in Japan for both iOS and Android devices. Pixelmatic was founded in 2011 and has been operational from June 2012 after closing a seed funding round.

You can connect with Pixelmatic on:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+
• YouTube
• LinkedIn

Samson Mow – Founder & CEO

Samson Mow is the founder and CEO of Pixelmatic, a developer of social mobile games. He founded the company in 2011 with a mission to spark the imaginations of people everywhere through games. Pixelmatic’s focus is on creating engaging games that are truly social and encourage new connections to be made.

Previously, Samson was a director of production and executive producer at Ubisoft, where he spearheaded expansion into Asian markets for web, social, and mobile games. Samson oversaw ongoing development and live operations of the cross-platform (web and iOS) MMO strategy game “Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms” in Asia, along with the social games “Castle & Co” (Facebook, mixi, Naver) and “The Smurfs & Co” (Facebook, mixi). “The Smurfs & Co” is Ubisoft’s most successful social game to date, reaching over 10 million users through organic growth. Prior to Ubisoft, Samson was in charge of business development and operations at Sitemasher, a Vancouver based startup developing a SaaS platform for building websites and apps. Sitemasher was the winner of the 2008 Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award from Microsoft and was later acquired by Salesforce.com and rebranded as Site.com.

Samson holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Simon Fraser University in Canada. As a veteran of the game industry, Samson regularly features as a speaker and panelist in conferences such as GDC and CGDC.

Nat Mak – CFO

Nat Mak is the CFO for Pixelmatic and also manages human resources, administration, and operations. Previously, Nat was a senior accountant at Relic Entertainment, one of the premier PC RTS studios in North America. At Relic, Nat oversaw multimillion dollar budgets, corporate finances, and payroll for the entire studio. His multiple working credits include Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Dawn of War 2, Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising, Dawn of War 2: Retribution, and Warhammer: Spacemarine (Xbox 360, PS3, and PC). Before joining Relic, Nat was the Treasury Accountant for Vancouver Coastal Health, where he was in charge of maintaining the funds of the healthcare budget for the largest health authority in the province.

Nat currently hold a CPA, CGA designation in Canada and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of British Columbia. As an avid gamer and adventure seeker, he moved to Shanghai to join Pixelmatic and accelerate their entry into the exciting social mobile space in Asia.

Cong Ly – CTO

Cong has been in the software development industry for over 12 years. He is an experienced software developer with experiences in web applications, health care systems, online multimedia applications, and cross-platform video games development. While at Activision, Cong was a part of their Advanced Technology Group (ATG) where he was responsible for the development of custom backend technology to provide feature parity between the PC and Sony PlayStation Network. Cong is credited with titles including: “Prototype”, “Crash of The Titans”, “Crash: Mind over Mutant”, “Scarface: The World Is Yours” and “Crash: Tag Team Racing.” Cong holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computing Science with a specialization in Software Engineering, and a Master of Science degree with a specialization in Distributed Multimedia Systems from Simon Fraser University; his thesis was “Latency Reduction in Online Multiplayer Games Using Detour Routing.”