Adam Powell

Adam James Powell (born 20 December 1976 in Newport, Wales) is a game designer and businessman. He is the co-founder of Neopets and Meteor Games.

Career

Powell attended the University of Nottingham from 1995 to 1998 studying for a computer science degree. During his time at Nottingham, Powell created Dark Heart released in 1996, a popular MUD based on the DikuMUD code.^[1]

In 1997, Powell started Shout! Advertising, a UK-based advertising company which operated the third largest click-through program on the Internet by mid-1999. He also co-founded Netmagic, a successful business which designed and sold online banner advertising. Then in July 1999, he founded Powlex, which focused on web page design.^[2]

Neopets

Powell first had the idea of Neopets in 1997, while studying at Nottingham University. He and Donna Powell (formerly Donna Williams) started programming the site in September 1999, and launched the site two months later on November 15, 1999. Powell programmed the entire site, and created most of the original activities and games.^[3]

In April 2000, Powell negotiated a significant investment in Neopets.com and transferred the company from the UK to Los Angeles, US. After the relocation, Powell remained on staff as creative director and technical lead. Under Powell's management, Neopets went from its initial launch to over 140 million accounts and 5 billion pageviews per month. On 20 June 2005, Viacom bought Neopets, Inc. for US$160 million.^[4]

Powell continued to work for Neopets.com until June 2007, aiding the transition following the purchase and continuing to develop high-end concepts for the site.

Powell has creative design and writing credits on a wide variety of Neopets products including SCEA's 2006 PlayStation Portable release Neopets: Petpet Adventures: The Wand of Wishing, Wizards of the Coast September 2003 release the Neopets Trading Card Game and Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc's 2005 release Neopets: The Darkest Faerie, for the PlayStation 2.^[5]

Meteor Games

In 2007, Adam and Donna Powell founded Meteor Games,^[6] an independent online gaming studio committed to developing fun, immersive, and innovative games spanning the web, social networks, and mobile devices.

Meteor Games' first project was Twin Skies,^[7] a 3D MMO that blended casual gaming and social networking elements with traditional massively multiplayer online role-playing games.^[8] Meteor Games released their first web-based game Vikings, Pirates and Ninjas in March 2009. The game was free to play on the web and Facebook.^[9]

In the company's shift to the rapidly growing social gaming market^[10] it released several games based on internal intellectual property including: Island Paradise which became a large commercial success^[11], Serf Wars, and Ranch Town.

Meteor Games is headquartered in Los Angeles and has 100 employees.^[12]

Meteor Games suffered through major financial turmoil throughout 2011 due to them failing to find financing or an interested buyer for the company. Meteor Games laid off most of the 100 employees it had towards the end of 2011, only leaving a few to do maintenance the remaining active games it ran until they were laid off somewhere in the first few months of 2012.

Meteor Games has currently went bankrupt in January 2012 and is currently facing the threat of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy as their creditors are attempting to force this and liquidate the company.

The popularity of their Facebook games has swiftly declined leaving only Island Paradise as their last remaining success until April 2012 when Island Paradise suddenly and without any warning closed down as well as the Meteor Games website being removed from the net.

Dedicated fans of Meteor Games blame the companies current business crisis on their removal of the highly successful and critic-acclaimed game of Vikings, Pirates, Ninjas in 2009 with no explanation or notice to its fans of its removal.

It remains unclear when Adam left Meteor Games but people are thinking he left when then CEO of the company, Zac Brandenberg left towards the end of 2011.

References

1. ^ Meteor Games About Us Page
2. ^ Neopets Press Kit Biography
3. ^ "The Neopets Addiction". Wired Magazine. 2005-12-01. Archived from the original on 10 December 2005. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.12/neopets.html. Retrieved 2005-12-01. 
4. ^ Viacom MTV buys Neopets for $160m
5. ^ IMDB Game Credits
6. ^ "New MMO games startup, Meteor Games, to target youth demographic". Venturebeat.com. 2008-07-01. http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/01/meteor-games-founders-hope-to-duplicate-neopets-success-with-new-online-world/. Retrieved 2008-07-01. 
7. ^ "Neopets creators enter the MMO world with Twin Skies". Massively. 2008-07-13. Archived from the original on 17 July 2008. http://www.massively.com/2008/07/13/neopets-creators-enter-the-mmo-world-with-twin-skies/. Retrieved 2008-07-13. 
8. ^ "Neopets Founders Announce Innovative MMO Twin Skies". Kotaku. 2008-08-05. Archived from the original on 8 August 2008. http://kotaku.com/5033313/neopets-founders-announce-innovative-mmo-twin-skies. Retrieved 2008-08-05. 
9. ^ "How Meteor Games Plans For Virtual Goods Success". Virtual Goods News. 2009-04-23. http://www.virtualgoodsnews.com/2009/04/how-meteor-games-plans-for-virtual-goods-success.html. 
10. ^ "Social Gaming Market to Surpass $1 Billion". 2011-01-12. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008166. 
11. ^ "How an Older Social Game Keeps Making Money". The Wall Street Journal. 2011-02-24. http://allthingsd.com/20110224/how-an-older-social-game-keeps-making-money/. 
12. ^ "About Meteor Games". Meteor Games. 2010-10-29. http://www.meteorgames.com/about/.