Hamdorf and Rössig Aim to Found “Indie Studio Builder”
– 1 min read
Playing Mantis CEO Thomas Rössig and marketing veteran Thorsten Hamdorf are looking to found a "butler" company for indies, helping bring games from concept to release as fractional CxOs for these studios. They are currently seeking a third founder.
Thomas Rössig, CEO and founder of Playing Mantis Studio, and Thorsten Hamdorf, sales and marketing veteran with experience from Jung von Matt Nerd, the former games association BIU and more, are aiming to build a new kind of “studio builder” company. The two are acting as CEO and CMO of a central company and offer their services as fractional CEO and CMO for indie studios. For this, they are currently looking for a third CxO with extensive experience in producing or publishing.
In a statement to GamesMarkt, Hamdorf explains the move: “The games industry is at a crucial point of change. As AAA publishers are under pressure, and player behaviour is shifting, indie studios are uniquely positioned to deliver authentic, genre-defining experiences. We believe indie studios have a unique opportunity to scale their games and budgets to serve niche and special-interest genres. Yet too often, great games never reach their audience - not for lack of creativity, but for lack of business infrastructure. Our mission is to change that and enable these teams to focus on their creative work, while we handle the rest.
Ultimately, we want to help creative talent turn their ideas into commercial success. We are currently looking for a third co-founder who shares our mission and values, ideally bringing expertise in production and publishing.”
The idea of the company is to assist indie studios from concepts and prototyping over strategy validation to self-publishing or any form of product release on any step of the way. “We will be their ‚butler’ - taking good care of all the admin, HR, marketing, sales, and more - so their teams can focus entirely on what they love the most: developing great games”, as Hamdorf explains it in his LinkedIn post.
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