OverviewGoldFire Studios was founded in 2002 and began business operations with its incorporation in June of 2008. GoldFire Studios is located in the heart of the United States in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and currently employs 1 person: James Simpson (Founder, President, Developer, etc). We started off as a general purpose web development shop for fun, hacking away at different ideas until something caught on. What caught on most was games, so GoldFire Studios has become a truly next generation online game studio, focussing on new web technologies in order to push the envelope of what is possible in your browser while providing the best possible user experience for everyone involved.
History
In 2002, I (James Simpson) was 14 years old and had just entered the online world. My interest in programming, design, and business grew quickly with my first computer as I scoured the internet for ways to improve my skills and learn my craft. Soon I had created several websites and was well on my way to turning GoldFire Studios from a nightly hobby into a full-fledged business venture.
The first game I created was a virtual pet game called SchooglePets that had reached about 5,000 registered users by the time of its closure due to hackings. You lean quickest when making mistakes, so I spent the entire summer sharpening my programming and security skills before starting my next project. I decided to try my hand at virtual pets again and began a new game called Venetopia in early 2003, launching in May of that year. The game was a huge success and was later acquired by Carriere Entertainment, Inc. in early 2004 when I decided that I wanted to move out of the virtual pet realm and challenge myself again with a new project.
Around the same time I began work on Venetopia, I also began work on a site that would become one of the gaming industry's leading sources for online games. Apex Web Gaming started from humble beginnings on a free hosting service, but quickly grew and never slowed down. It has managed to surpass large sites of similar content that had been in the business for many years before I had even used the internet, and it is my humble opinion that personal interaction with and caring about my customers and users led to this success.
Soon after the sale of Venetopia, I began making non-game related services such as Free Image Upload, allVolume, and Build A Tone which all grew very quickly and enjoyed great success for varied lengths of time. After this foray into the non-gaming world, I decided to get back into game development in the summer of 2004 and began work on a medieval strategy game called Eternal Kingdoms. This game went into beta testing on Christmas Eve of 2004 and enjoyed the most success of any of my games up to that point. I ran and expanded Eternal Kingdoms for the next 11 months before selling the game to Bored.com in order to provide more time and funds for my next big idea that I would begin to plan in the fall of 2005.
In the spring of 2006, I began work on GoldFire Studios' largest success to date: PokerRPG. This game combined the ever popular online poker with role playing and has been a huge and innovative success. This game has undergone many changes and enjoyed many highs as well as weathered many lows, but it continues to be a cornerstone of GoldFire Studios and should help to propel the studio into the next wave of online entertainment.
In the summer of 2008, work began on BC Wars, The Prehistoric MMORPG. Beta testing ended at the end of 2009 and has been successful in expanding the reach of GoldFire Studios. BC Wars remains the second flagship game in GoldFire Studios' portfolio.