Anthony Brown, CEO of AMPD Technologies, was selected as the Canadian Investment Champion for G-STAR in South Korea last November. We caught up with him to hear about some of the highlights from the conference… one of which involves winning an international beer pong competition!
Originally hailing from Ontario, Anthony decided to make the move to B.C. more than 20 years ago. Initially, it was just for the mild climate and beautiful scenery, but it didn’t take him long to find his niche in the technology infrastructure sector. Through his first start-up, Seven Group, he found his calling by working with studios in the media and entertainment market that crossed over with technology. He found B.C. to be the leader in Canada for these areas, so he couldn’t have picked a better place to be. Fast forward to current day and Anthony is now co-founder and CEO of AMPD Technologies and Rabid Games. AMPD builds out technology infrastructure with a focus on digital media studios and high-performance computing. They also do hosting, ISP services, and cloud hosting for both development and running live games. Rabid Games is a publishing company focused on high-end PC titles that are based on well-loved IP. They are currently partnered with Piranha Games, who are developing and publishing MechWarrior 5, and are concentrating on building out new markets in Asia and Europe.
It was because of this partnership that Anthony became a strong candidate to be the Canada Investment Champion. CIC is a federally run program that selects an industry executive in a particular field/market to represent the country to key target companies as a place to invest and grow their companies. In this case, it was the games industry in South Korea. Attending G-STAR opened up many doors and enabled face-to-faces with key people Anthony would never have been able to connect with otherwise. DigiBC was on hand to help set up and facilitate meetings with important target companies and introductions to government representatives. Some of the highlights from the jam-packed week included doing a town hall at NC Soft’s building in Seoul, having executive level meetings with BlueHole, Smilegate, Kakao Games, Pearl Abyss, and Webzen, and giving a couple keynote speeches. Last but not least, there was also winning the 3rd annual Beer Pong Championships (games industry vs. Canadian government)!
If you’re a video game company looking to make contacts and expand your business into international markets then DigiBC can help. Through our extensive network, we can facilitate introductions and provide valuable information to our member companies. Sign up today to become part of our industry association and get connected! For more information on membership benefits and fees, please visit our membership page.