Fire Awards: Finalist - software/innovation
Graphite Lab, the Maryland Heights video game developer, has worked with some of the biggest names in industry, creating games for brands like Atari, Disney and Hasbro. It’s now developing more original games of its own. In March, Graphite Lab said it entered into an agreement with Atari to publish its original puzzle-game Kombinera. The studio has also boosted its capabilities in areas like game maintenance, user acquisition and audience retention to generate more revenue from the games it develops. In 2021, it says its revenue increased 43%. Matt Raithel is owner and studio director of Graphite Lab.
What was your company’s biggest achievement in the past year? Our biggest achievement this past year was getting our first publishing deal. The legendary video game pioneer Atari agreed to fund and publish an original video game developed by our team called KOMBINERA. This game is the first original game released by Atari in years and is among the highest rated Atari games, according to review site OpenCritic. This is the first time our team has received outside funding to bring an original idea of our own to market.
What is your company’s top goal for the next year? We have plans to release additional original titles next year, which is why getting our first published title was so important. KOMBINERA’s success has led to additional publishing deals which are not yet announced. These deals allow our team to introduce new brands to gamers vs just working with popular brands they already know. It also allows our team to have a significant stake in the back-end performance of the games, sifting our model from 100% service based to have a product-based focus.
Are you currently hiring? If so, for what roles? We are hiring for quality assurance (game testers), and programmers primarily. We may add between 8-10 new positions in the next year which would be 30-50% growth of our team.
For links to profiles of winners and finalists in the 2022 Fire Awards and Startup Exit Awards, go here:
