Kwalee was founded in 2011 by David Darling CBE, who also co-founded Codemasters, way back in 1986 and who sold out his stake in that company in 2007. David was awarded his CBE by the Queen in her Birthday Honours in 2008 for services to the computer games industry.

The reason that David founded Kwalee was because he realised that the whole game industry was changing over to digital distribution and that smartphones would become the major gaming device. He saw that the old business models involving distributing physical stock to bricks and mortar retailers were becoming out-dated. He was excited by the amazing technology in the iPhone like the accelerometer, gps, touch screen, compass, cameras, microphone, etc. and how all these could be used to make really innovative games. The name Kwalee comes from his grandfather's boat and is the Aboriginal for "wait for me". The company logo is a stylised version of David's hand in a pose that captures this.

Kwalee is concentrating on a multiplayer games with innovative game-play. Their first game is Gobang Social for iPhone which is a addictive turn based strategy game. Their second game, Pussy Flip, is based on the classic board game Reversi with a lot of feline themes added to make it visually interesting and to surprise and delight its players. After these two titles Kwalee are developing several innovative games with original game mechanics.

Kwalee have recruited a team of 20 people that include Andrew Graham, a widely respected game designer who was responsible (amongst others) for the Micro Machines series. Adam Philbin has been recruited to head up one of the development teams and is the author of several million plus selling smartphone games. Industry veteran Bruce Everiss has joined as Chief Marketing Officer and brings over 30 years experience to the job. Other members of the team have been very carefully selected to contribute a wide range of talent and expertise to the team. David's father, Jim Darling, serves as company Chairman, a role he filled for many years at Codemasters and he is very active indeed in the commercial activities of the business.

These staff have every encouragement to do a great job, everyone has the very latest and very best technical equipment to do their job, the development team have every Wednesday to work on their own projects and everyone is listened to and can contribute to the projects underway. A whole pile of activities from table tennis, beer Thursdays and regular staff fun days out ensure a good work/life balance!

links:

Kwalee website: http://www.kwalee.com/

Kwalee on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwalee

David Darling on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Darling_(entrepreneur)

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