Goodgame Studios establishes “Brain Trust”
Hamburg,
Due to the company’s rapid growth and transition into Germany’s leading game developer in recent years, Goodgame Studios’ founders, Kai and Christian Wawrzinek, have increasingly had to deal with organizational matters, resulting in less availability to directly influence the core business of game production. In the future, the founders will focus solely on the development of strategy games for browsers and mobile devices.
Together with Dominik Willers, former CIO, they will form the “Goodgame Brain Trust”. This think tank joins the studios in developing new, innovative game concepts and counsels the studios concerning implementation. Thus, Goodgame Studio’s founders return to their original role as creative advisors. Their know-how and passion for gaming enabled the brothers to celebrate success with gaming hits like Goodgame Empire, Goodgame Big Farm, and Empire: Four Kingdoms, the latter having remained the world’s most successful app from a German developer since 2013.
With this decision, Goodgame Studios follows a model which is well-established in the creative industry. For example, Pixar Animation Studios (Toy Story, Finding Nemo) established a small group of creative heads, who focus solely on developing new movies.
“My brother, Dominik Willers and I are very happy to again work with the products themselves in our new roles. We’ll use all our energy to add to the game development process, so we can follow up the success of our previous hits as fast as possible. We are convinced that we can push Goodgame Studios at the best possible rate in this solely product-focused role,” says Christian Wawrzinek, founder of Goodgame Studios.
A newly established management team will handle the daily operational tasks. All members of the new management board have known the company very well for a long time. Maximilian Schneider will be the new Chief Executive Officer. He has been a member of the management team and Chief Strategy Officer for Goodgame Studios since August 2014. Before joining Goodgame Studios, he was a banking and finance lawyer in a leading international law firm in Frankfurt am Main. A four-man team will be joining Maximilian Schneider on the management board: Fabian Ritter, founder, as CFO, Sebastian Frank as COO, Thomas Zimmermann as CMO and David Lee Ellis as CPO.
“We are convinced that Max Schneider is the right person to handle all operative tasks at Goodgame Studios in the future. During the current phase, it has been extremely important to us to give the responsibility to a manager who knows our company inside out and can begin tackling our current challenges without needing any induction,” says Kai Wawrzinek, founder of Goodgame Studios.
The changes take immediate effect and come promptly after the recently announced reorganization of the company in order to accelerate the speed at which the company can return to focusing on its core competencies.
