Lockwood Publishing, a leading British metaverse game developer and publisher, has added substantial firepower to its development team with three key strategic hires.
VP of Engineering James Cox, VP of Production Rob Hendry, and Studio Design Director Chris Tilston will join Lockwood as it strives to solidify Avakin Life as one of the world’s best metaverse and web3 experiences.
Lockwood Publishing CEO, Halli Bjornsson stated, “Being able to attract such amazing talent to Lockwood is a testament to our ambition in an industry that’s only really now catching on to the immense possibilities that games such as Avakin Life have in the metaverse. James, Rob and Chris bring to Lockwood a combined 80 years of experience in the games industry. That kind of talent is invaluable to our company’s maturation and transition plans to be market leaders in the web3 space. We’re confident that this is just the start of a massive year for Avakin Life and for Lockwood, both of which are evolving at pace.”
As a proto-metaverse that was released on mobile in 2013, Avakin Life has amassed more than 200 million user accounts and up to 6 million monthly active users.
Cox, being an industry veteran joins Lockwood from NaturalMotion, and has previously worked at Konami and PlayStation, where he was Head of Development for PlayStation Home for almost ten years.
In collaboration with Lockwood, Cox will lead the client, server, systems and tools development for Avakin Life as well as future projects. He will also supervise cyber security, QA, live operations for Avakin Life feature development, drive R&D initiatives for new metaverse products and automated testing.
Hendry was Executive Producer of RuneScape, a storied fantasy MMO, at Jagex before joining Lockwood as VP of Productions. He has more than 25 years of experience in the gaming industry with previous roles at Warthog Studios, Marmalade and NaturalMotion. He will work closely with the executive team as well as Lockwood’s team of developers to create and deliver the strategies to meet ambitious goals that’ll shape the Avakin Life metaverse and other future product developments.
And lastly, Chris Tilston, Lockwood’s new Studio Design Director who started off at Rare close to 30 years ago and has worked in senior roles at Konami, DICE studio and recently worked as Head of Design at Smilegate Barcelona. Tilston will mainly focus on improving not only the monetisation aspect but also the fun aspect of Avakin Life, and building a talented in-house design team.
Lockwood continues to grow and recruit development talents around the world for its metaverse plans as it looks to create a reimagined version of its acclaimed Avakin Life game.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
