Petricore, a video game development company based in Worcester, celebrates the start of its fifth year of business in May while developing its first release for console and PC.
Founded by a group of students in their senior year at Becker College in 2015, the company has developed games for mobile that have accumulated over 750,000 downloads.
Petricore has also completed projects for Bose, Mitsubishi, Yale University, The Ellen Show and Star Trek.
The company was among the first group of companies accepted into the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and CEO Ryan Canuel was the Chamber’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2016.
Along with Canuel, CTO James Spavold, Lead Artist Christina Andriano and Lead Developer Oliver Awat were all members of the founding team in 2015 and remain with the company today. Their team also includes two full-time employees, two part-time employees, and two freelancers contribute frequently.
The team’s decision to develop for mobile when it launched was to get to market more quickly. Over time, relying on advertising revenue and in-game purchases has been a point of frustration.
Building a game for console is a much larger undertaking, according to Canuel. The amount of artwork, content and coding required is substantially larger. The ability to depend on their own product for revenue, rather than third-party advertising, was a factor in deciding to take on the more complex product.
Business considerations were the only reason for the decision. Mobile gaming wasn’t as prominent in the younger years of the team members’ lives. Building games like they loved as kids is part of Petricore’s identity.
According to Awat, “Though it takes a lot of coordination and effort to get them out, there’s no greater privilege than when others play our games, and we share onto others that same feeling we had growing up.”
Petricore’s next release, Dogfight, is planned for release in the second quarter of 2021. Players interested in the game can add it to their wishlist on Steam.
