Playscape Games are an independent mobile game developer based in Melbourne, Australia. Our focus is on creating detailed worlds and rich story-driven gameplay through the Heroes of Arcadia Role-Playing Game series.

Management And Team

Ben Hutchison directs the company as well as leading the game design and development of Heroes of Arcadia. Playscape Games was founded in 2005 by Ben Hutchison and Louise Lovell.

Prior to founding Playscape Games, Ben Hutchison worked as a Senior Developer at Goldman Sachs JB Were on their institutional trading systems. These real-time systems handle literally millions of dollars of stock trades daily and must operate at the highest standards of reliability and correctness. Previously at Sensis, Ben implemented key back-end business processes that supply the data to one of Australia's busiest websites, Sensis' YellowPages.com.au. In the U.K Ben worked for software vendor IntaMission to bring their high-performance JavaSpace engine to market. He also played a leading role in the development of a sophisticated stock-market prediction system for Intelligenesis Corp of New York. He has also contributed to mobile news and info service products at Ericsson, and to the domain name registry system used by Melbourne IT.

A team of four contractors (2 art, 1 audio, 1 level design & scripting) has been working with the founders towards the development of episode one, on an ongoing part-time basis.

Expertise and Values

Our studios strength is our ability to synthesize advanced software engineering techniques with creative game design. This has enabled us to implement an ambitious game concept that breaks new ground for the mobile platform in terms of game depth, richness of storyline, and episodic integration. We are committed to extended development schedules to allow us to take the time needed to iteratively test and refine gameplay, and ensure a quality product outcome.

We value and appreciate our development team members for their passion for excellence, technical skill, creativity, resourcefulness and integrity.

Ownership and Funding

Playscape Games is an independent studio primarily funded by its founders. Additionally, we successfully applied for and won investment from the Victorian government's Digital Media Fund towards to the costs of game prototype development through the course of 2005 - 2007. Playscape Games has near complete ownership of the intellectual property associated with Heroes of Arcadia, with Film Victoria the minority stakeholder.