we are
about making the best games ...
We want to make the best mobile games available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Not just in Vancouver or Canada, where we started our company in 2006, we want to be the best in the world. Period. We create the concepts, develop the best games, and publish them. We want to lead the way with our destiny in our hands. Welcome to our world.

top 100

 We are one of the top 100 mobile game developers in the world.

Number 1

 Our games have reached #1 on the App Store & Google Play charts in over 60 countries.

Over 1/4 Billion

 Our mobile games have been downloaded by millions of gamers from all over the world.
Meet our leadership team

Ian Wilkinson

CEO

Vlad Ceraldi

Director of Development

Joel DeYoung

Director of Technology

Mike Inglehart

Creative Director

Oliver Birch

Director of Marketing

Shelley Bubb

VP Finance

Cathy Lim

HR Director

Ian Wilkinson, CEO

"Persevere. Always mutate and adapt. Like cockroaches."

Ian co-founded Radical Entertainment, Canada’s largest independent game company, in 1991. He sold the company to Vivendi Games in 2006, and retired as CEO and President in 2008. Ian joined Hothead the following year, steering the company toward record profitability and honing the company vision in the mobile game space. Ian sat on the advisory boards of the BC Institute of Technology and the BC Advanced Systems Institute, and was Chair of New Media BC. He is a winner of Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and a graduate of the Ivey Business School at Western University.

Vlad Ceraldi, Director of Development

"Our formula is simple: hire the best talent, craft world-class teams, create amazing games."

Vlad has 20 years of experience building and leading teams to deliver top-performing games. Co-Founder of Hothead Games and formerly President and CEO, Vlad was instrumental in the company’s 2011 transition from console to mobile. He has since returned to his true love, overseeing game production. In his career, he has held a diverse range of roles from Lead Programmer and Exec Producer to his current position giving him the ability to approach development from a technical, production and business points of view. Vlad is a former Business in Vancouver Forty Under 40 Winner and a graduate of the Royal Military College of Canada. Occasionally, he makes us salute him.

Joel DeYoung, Director of Technology

"Mobile is changing everything. And we’re going to lead the way."

In his 20 years in the industry, Joel has gone from commercializing facial animation technology to producing games for consoles, but he found his true passion in the mobile space. He has co-produced three of Hothead’s beloved Big Win games and now oversees all technology aspects of the company including server infrastructure, cross-platform game engine and analytics systems. In his spare time, Joel makes beer and develops flight simulation software for an online community of pilots, but not at the same time. He earned his Master’s in Computer Science from the University of British Columbia, and is a Business in Vancouver Forty Under 40 Winner.

Mike Inglehart, Creative Director

"You're only as good as your next game!"

A veteran of the games industry for 16 years in the discipline of game design, Mike created the original concept for the Big Win Sports series and produced the first five Big Win games. He is now responsible for the creative vision of all Hothead products. As game director at Next Level Games, Mike shipped highly successful products for Nintendo and other large international publishers. Before that he was a line producer at Electronic Arts and a lead designer at Radical. A long-suffering Buffalo Bills and Sabres fan, Mike has great taste in everything except sports teams.

Oliver Birch, Director of Marketing

"The fans are massively important, we would be nothing without them."

Oliver brings 17 years of marketing experience to his role, seven of those focused on games. He has worked with top software publishers and developers in North America and Europe; managed advertising network, media agency, creative supplier and platform relationships; and brought new mobile, console and PC products to market with chart-topping success. Before joining Hothead, Oliver set up and managed an agency that marketed downloadable games for global clients including EA, SEGA, and Paramount Digital Entertainment. He says he’s from England, but we’re pretty sure he’s making that accent up.

Shelley Bubb, VP Finance

Shelley is a CPA, CA who brings over 18 years of finance experience to her role as VP Finance of Hothead Games, including significant experience in financial reporting and controls and helping growing companies. Prior to joining Hothead, Shelley was the Senior Director of Finance at quantum computing company D-Wave Systems Inc. and has also held senior finance positions in publicly listed mining companies and was an audit manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Cathy Lim, HR Director

"If you love your job and the people you work with, that's most of your life that is spent being happy!"

As a seasoned HR veteran in the tech industry, Cathy brings over 15 years of HR and recruitment experience to Hothead. She has worked for some of Vancouver’s largest technology companies and also helped grow VFX and indie game studios prior. Cathy’s passion and talent for hiring, onboarding and developing people with red-carpet service is what makes her unique. Her goal is to improve employee engagement, build a solid HR foundation, and help Hothead become one of Canada’s 50 Best Workplaces.

our story all about hothead

THE BEGINNING

There’s no shortage of joking around that goes on between the game teams. We have our share of crazy giphy posts and videos that do the rounds on our slack channels. Not to mention the lunchroom heckling over sports results or the QA team’s oddly sadistic fighting game tournaments.

Our mix of personalities certainly creates a healthy dose of competition in most things we do, from fantasy sports leagues to early morning golf, fitness classes and playing hockey together, which a bunch of us have done at the same time and same place for 23 years. There’s a close-knit atmosphere among all the teams and we enjoy challenging each other, whether it’s work or play.

So if you took a tour of the studio on any random week, you would come across initiatives like our Lunch and Learn sessions. Some are run by the tech leads or by an SQL master or perhaps the company-wide meetup. Either way these are the forums for various teams present work projects and other team members check out what they’re doing, how they’re solving problems, or take lots of notes and ask thoughtful questions. We always want to learn and create a culture that allows this.

WORKING TOGETHER

We saw the future of gaming evolving, and in 2011 we chose to move into mobile games. Yeah it was risky. And yes our backgrounds in console games meant we had to alter our perspective on high-calibre mobile game experiences to be successful, but we did it. We made mistakes, we learned valuable lessons, and we got better. So here we are – one of the Top 100 mobile game developers in the world with chart-topping #1 success in over 50 countries as well as hundreds of millions of downloads on multiple titles across iPhone, iPad and Android devices. And we’re just getting started.

Things move fast here, so we had to give micromanagement the boot. Imagine a herd of creative thoroughbreds galloping free, driven to develop the next big iOS / Android game. You don’t put a fence up in front of charging horses. Instead, we prefer encouraging our talented Vancouver studios to be their best and invest in their skills.

Everyone has the opportunity to make a difference, whether it’s our team in Vancouver, QA or Marketing. We want people to spend a good portion of their time researching and experimenting with new tech or information so we’re constantly mutating and adapting ahead of other mobile developers. We know we can all count on each other, because we’re reaching for a bigger company goal together. All team contributions are respected and you don’t have to be an industry veteran to be recognized. We will persevere and succeed.

TRANSPARENCY

Our success is measured by our statistics, so each day we reveal the performances of all our games with everyone in the company along with access to all the analytics data. This gives each team a chance to review and compare game results. Is there a sense of competition that’s created? Yeah there is. But it also gives people a sense of ownership and fosters openness for rewarding collaboration among teams.

OUR DATA

We build more around the story of our audience every time they touch their phone or tablet screen. Big data is an exciting way to learn more details about how people are playing our mobile games through predictive models. It helps us measure our engagement and financial success to make sure we’re achieving our goals. Although we have some smart PhDs crunching the numbers, we know the role of data is about finding a healthy balance between science and art. There’s no substitute for creative problem solving and intuition is always important for us in making decisions.

Transparent We involve all company employees in our revenue performances for our games.
75 terabytes Our players generate over 75 terabytes of data on our servers - that is a lot of number crunching.

WE’VE GOT CULTURE

So what’s it really like working with a bunch of ambitious personalities on a trajectory for success in a video games industry without a rulebook? We make sure it’s a lot of fun.

There’s no shortage of banter that goes on between the game teams. We have our share of crazy videos that do the rounds on Slack. Not to mention the QA team’s oddly sadistic fighting game tournaments.

Our mix of personalities certainly creates a healthy dose of competition in most things we do, from fantasy sports leagues to early morning golf and playing hockey together, which some of us have done at the same time and same place for 23 years. There’s a close-knit atmosphere among all the teams and we enjoy challenging each other, whether it’s work or fun.

So if you took a tour of the company on any random week, you might come across things like our Lunch and Learn sessions. This is where teams present work projects and other team members checkout what they’re doing, how they’re solving problems and ask an insane amount of questions.

On your journey you could also walk head-on into a rather intense Bubble Hockey match or a chin-up competition going on in our Olympic calibre in-house gym, or perhaps a heated discussion about icons while sunbathing on our rooftop terrace. You may also enjoy winding down the week on Beer Friday at the kegerator, which is always entertaining. Perhaps you’d get to see our monthly poker tournament in action. Caps and sunglasses are optional.

We also like to get out of the office to have some fun. You could join the team for our summer picnic at Jericho Beach or travel with us to watch sports events locally and in Seattle. We have tickets for the Canucks and Whitecaps, Summer BBQs at Canadians games, and an annual trip to Seattle to watch the Seahawks play! All in the spirit of sports related research and hangout time. And to top it all off, in celebration of our hard work every year, there’s our unforgettable, themed Xmas parties in Vancouver. But don’t take our word for it – best you experience it for yourself.

We hope you enjoyed your tour. The bottom line is we’re all about big entertainment for small screens everywhere. And when we focus on something, we work to be the best. That’s just our competitive desire to learn and grow. Oh, and did we mention there’s a ping pong table too?