Supercell and King vets co-found Antihero Studios to “create games worth sharing”

• Former Supercell and King developers have co-founded a new studio making multiplayer games
• The start-up aims to “create games worth sharing”

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Former Supercell and King developers have formed a new multiplayer start-up called Antihero Studios, on a mission to “create games worth sharing” on mobile.

Supercell’s former senior game designer Frank Yan is among the co-founders, stepping down from his position at the Clash of Clans maker after two-and-a-half years. He will serve as chief product officer at the start-up, working alongside ex-Supercell creative director Brice Laville Saint-Martin.

The studio’s third co-founder, Andre Parodi, brings over a decade’s games industry experience from King and Bandai Namco.

Industry inspiration

Antihero has received a pre-seed investment from Sisu Game Ventures on its mission to create multiplayer games that are socially engaging, determined to avoid overreliance on performance marketing and to instead create something “inspiring”.

Ahead of its seed round, former Socialpoint developer Gonzalo Martinez has also joined Antihero as lead frontend engineer, sharing in the start-up’s vision.

“As I observed VCs backing more and more performance marketing-driven mobile gaming start-ups, I realised that we were failing to build an inspiring future for our industry,” Laville Saint-Martin posted on LinkedIn.

“This realisation broke my heart, and it still makes me emotional as I write this. What a missed opportunity to inspire players on the world’s most popular gaming platform.

“We are on a mission to create games worth sharing and remembering, to drive gaming culture forward. Our goal is to generate organic growth, lower CPI, and increase LTV through socially engaging multiplayer games and brand loyalty, taking the best from our industry and drawing inspiration from others to learn how to disrupt our own.”

Laville Saint-Martin also shared with us: “We believe that company brand strategy is a blue ocean in mobile gaming that only a handful of teams will be able to tap into. With this mission, we have a chance at serving a massive underserved audience of Gen Z looking for truly social games in the genres they love the most.”

A call to co-found

As for Yan, he began his career in games as the co-founder of Rolling Biscuit Games in 2014. There he developed a live service RPG called Monbattle, which “didn’t find an audience” but formed the basis of an “amazing” journey into the industry.

Since then, he has gained almost six years’ experience at Blizzard Entertainment in a range of roles – including senior game systems designer on Hearthstone. In his recent stint at Supercell, Yan had a particular focus on system design, virtual economy and monetisation on Brawl Stars, a title that has seen a stark resurgence in 2024.

“Over the last 10 year, I was fortunate to have worked with exceptional game makers and learned how to build socially compelling games. About the importance of gameplay-first design even when there isn’t clear data. About what makes games spread,” he posted on LinkedIn.

“Slowly but surely, a calling to the games start-up world emerged again … At Antihero, our mission is clear: to create ‘Games Worth Sharing’ by building multiplayer games that not only to connect people, but allowing them to become lifelong friends. I hope to bring the insights from ESG, Blizzard and Supercell to push multiplayer gaming to the next level.”