New Orleans natives and entrepreneurs Sami Khan and Beau Button are on a mission to redefine the location-based games ecosystem through their mobile game studio Cerberus Interactive.
Founded in 2017, the company’s Austin-based team currently has 16 employees, but plans to add several dozen more over the next few years following their global rollout.
As of early June, Cerberus Interactive has raised $4.25 million from investors including Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman and both the founders of financial services company Acorns.
The Cerberus Interactive team’s approach to game design from a unique angle by vetting every idea from a marketing perspective, proving demand and pre-selling titles prior to development.
“We believe our marketing-driven approach to game design is a new way forward for mobile game development that has double fold benefits — players get features which are important to them, and studios are able to mitigate financial losses,” said Khan.
The founders believe games and technology that incorporate the world around us will dominate the future of mobile gaming.
The Cerberus Interactive game Atlas Empires, currently in beta in Australia and New Zealand, takes the class framework strategy of games like “Age of Empires” and combines it with the mapping and location-based technologies of today. Over 150,000 people are on the waitlist for their chance to play.
“We believe location-based gaming is the next wave of games that hasn’t yet been fully fleshed out,” shared Khan. “In a world where commuting is becoming more autonomous and everyone has better and better remote internet access, being able to interact with your surroundings seems like the obvious next step.”