Orange County Business Journal
Blizzard Offshoot Adjusts to Video Game World's New Normal
By SARAH TOLKOFF- 3/17/2010
Orange County Business Journal Staff
Irvine’s Crazy Pixel Games LLC has had to roll with the punches since its founder left a cushy gig at Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment Inc. to go out on his own.
Chief Executive and Creative Director Brian McRae, 34, had big ambitions for Crazy Pixel, which produces art, 3-D animation and other digital content for video games and movies.
“We had dreamed of building up a 40-man team and signing on for a massive video game release,” McRae said. “But that era has come and gone.”
Making it big on a blockbuster game is a pipedream these days for many small video game companies, which have seen budgets shrink along with falling sales for computer and console games.
Last year, U.S. sales of games for consoles such as Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 were down 8% to $20 billion, according to market researcher NPD Group Inc. of New York. PC game sales were $538 million, down 23%.
With a big video game release costing millions of dollars to produce, many publishers aren’t willing to risk tapping an up-and-comer for work.
“It was sort of a dinosaur way of thinking,” McRae said. “A publisher will not give you that money unless you have an established team of all senior guys.”
McRae didn’t.
He started the company about five years ago from his apartment in Irvine. He was a lead artist at Blizzard, part of France’s Vivendi SA and the world’s biggest maker of online games with $1.3 billion in yearly sales.
Crazy Pixel is among a local cadre of hardscrabble video game companies that have been started by former Blizzard workers in recent years. They include Ready at Dawn Studios LLC and Red 5 Studios Inc., both of Irvine.
When McRae left Blizzard some five years ago, he said he didn’t have much of a plan.
“I wanted to start my own thing,” he said. “I left Blizzard not having any idea what to get into. I didn’t have any clients or leads. But the goal was always to create my own projects and see them all the way through.”
The startup was funded by McRae and since has grown to about a dozen workers.
To survive, Crazy Pixel Games has had to morph into a jack-of-all trades.
The company does design, programming, art and animation. The only thing it outsources is sound engineering.
Crazy Pixel does work mainly for others. Its animation appears in online promotional videos and advertisements, movies and in PC and console games, where Crazy Pixel has made characters and backgrounds.
It’s also tinkering with applications for the iPhone and iPad, the tablet computer from Apple Inc.
Customers include Nintendo, Google Inc., Atari SA and Ubisoft Entertainment SA.
The company has also done work for some smaller names, including the Netherland’s Codeglue BV, Austin, Texas-based Red Fly Studio and Washington’s Mean Hamster Software Inc.
The closely held company doesn’t disclose financial information. It’s profitable, according to McRae.
An animator, McRae said he had to buff up his skills to appeal to customers who wanted good programmers as well as artists under the same roof.
“There was a huge learning curve,” he said.
Crazy Pixel is currently working with an undisclosed publisher on a Microsoft Xbox Marketplace game, which will be sold and downloaded in an online store run by Microsoft Corp.
Some of its other game credits include “Ghostbusters: The Video Game” for Nintendo’s Wii, “’Splosion Man” for Xbox Marketplace, “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves” for Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 and “God of War III,” which is due out this year for the PlayStation 3.
The company is focusing on what’s called “digital download” games, which are sold directly to consumers over the Internet.
“When I first started the company, digital downloads were just starting to be talked about, and it’s now the new standard,” McRae said. “There is less interest in doing a game-in-a-box release because it’s more expensive.”
Crazy Pixel eventually wants to develop and produce its own multiplayer online game, as Blizzard does.
It’s currently scouting out a venture capital investor to raise about $3 million to start production on the game, which is geared toward 8- to 14-year-old kids and has an educational theme.
“I think it’s a game that parents would be proud of their kids playing,” McRae said.

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