Lucien
Parsons

I've been working in games for 22 years. I've been a studio founder, a production lead, a platform builder, an IGDA board chair, and founded an accelerator. Most of what I know about building game companies I learned by building one from nothing.

ZeniMax Online Studios started as three people with a mandate to make a massively multiplayer Elder Scrolls game. I ran production, developed the $300M+ budget, and built the team from 3 to 150 in 18 months.

At AWS I built the global games partner ecosystem from zero to 300+ companies, working with studios, middleware providers, tools companies, and services companies across every market and stage. That work generated $750M+ in AWS revenue impact and gave me a working understanding of the games ecosystem that no single studio role could provide.

I've served as Chair of the IGDA Board of Directors and founded MAVRIC, the XR Accelerator at the University of Maryland. I hold an MBA from the Wharton School and a Masters in International Economics from Johns Hopkins.

I told my dad at age 8 that I was going to make video games. It took a detour through FinTech and 2 graduate degrees before I got here, but I've been so happy and humbled to get to work with some of the best game developers in the world.

The industry is hard. I've seen even good games fail because they didn't build their audience, didn't understand what it meant to run a business, or even fail to get their contracts right. Today, you have to be good at so many things other than making the game to succeed. That's the gap I work in.

I work with studios, tools companies, serious games developers, and services companies across the industry. The specific context varies, but the underlying challenge is usually similar: the people who are best at making games often haven't had much help building the companies around them. That's what OpsCat exists to provide.

I operate out of Washington, DC and work remotely with companies worldwide. I'm available for speaking engagements, boot camps, and on-site work; contact me for details.