01/16/2018
10 years ago today, on January 15th, 2008, I started Adrian Crook & Associates.
It wasn’t called that back then. It was just ‘Adrian Crook’ - me, working out of my basement, designing Facebook games and trial-to-purchase downloadable titles.
My first two years were up and down, and today, when I’m asked by someone what I’d recommend when starting a consultancy, I often reply, “a good line of credit.”
But jokes aside, I’m extremely proud of what AC+A has become. My partner Tony Lam and I built a freemium design and product management consultancy that counts as clients the most influential companies in the mobile games sector. From LEGO to Facebook, EA, Zynga, Rovio, Microsoft, and over 120 others.
In addition, 2017 saw us launch Hempire, a game we designed and developed over a two year period for our clients, LBC. Hempire is now a top grossing, 4.8-rated mobile game that we’re still involved daily in the live operations of the title.
I want to thank all our great team members, past and present. People like Kevin, Mack, Raul, Tomas, Maxime, Wes, Peter, Isaac, Jordan, Seann, Joe, Chris, Michelangelo and others. These are the talented designers and product managers at the top of their craft, committed to delivering profitable, fun design and product management solutions.
And of course the biggest thanks goes to our amazing clients. One of the reasons I started AC+A was to be able to meet more of the people and companies in our awesome industry, and it's still as rewarding as ever.
Our team and our clients are what make AC+A what it is today: the industry’s leading game design consultancy.
And we’re excited about where mobile games are going in 2018. Our experience on Hempire, and many of our clients’ projects across the world, tell us there’s a market for innovative, fun titles, and that even an independent company can make it with the right strategy.
We, too, are changing our strategies alongside our industry’s success stories.
Over the past few years we’ve launched our Teardown Club service where we deconstruct the most competitive titles of the day, offering product-management insights a la carte, or on-demand.
This past year we added a member to our core leadership team to provide additional support and structure to our client work. We pride ourselves on being flexible to our clients’ unique needs—no cookie-cutter reports here—but just like in game development a little project management goes a long way in ensuring all stakeholders can look forward to good results and working together again.
We also recently launched a new website that (we feel) reflects our ten-year journey thus far, showing off our core design, product management, and development work. It also features our library of teardowns, our blog, and our feature articles on design and monetization strategies.
Remember: if your freemium game isn’t quite living up to expectations (no matter what stage of development you are in), if you need help with your pitch to your publisher, or maybe you’re having trouble hiring that elusive, key lead designer or product manager role, you can always reach out to us.
Here's to another 10 years,
Adrian Crook
