James Gwertzman spent eight years at PopCap Games, much of it in China, as the game industry went through many changes. PopCap’s own struggles to adapt to the new free-to-play game business spurred the idea for a new company. Gwertzman’s PlayFab, a Seattle spinout from online game company Uber Entertainment, will provide the back-end infrastructure that mobile and online game companies need to support their free-to-play games.
During the eight years he spent working for Seattle-based PopCap Games, James Gwertzman witnessed the company make the transition to a free-to-play monetization strategy. It wasn’t easy. Suddenly, PopCap had to invest time and money into not only building and shipping a game, but creating a robust back-end architecture to run what was essentially a full-blown 24/7 service. PopCap wasn’t the only company struggling with this problem. “Companies kept building their back-ends from scratch,” Gwertzman said. “There had to be a better way.”
