 |
Peter D. Adkison, CEO of Hidden City Games, has played a key role in publishing some of the world's most iconic trading-card and fantasy games. A self-proclaimed “game mogul,” Adkison’s most cherished childhood memories are of playing games with his family and friends. He recalls playing pinochle on his grandparents’ farm and playing war boardgames with his father, a former army serviceman. When Adkison discovered Dungeons & Dragons as a high school student in 1978, his inner gamer geek was officially born.
As an adult, Adkison resolved to turn his passion for games into a profitable career. He founded game-publishing company Wizards of the |
Coast in 1990 and guided the development of the world’s first collectable card game, Magic: The Gathering. Published in 1993, Magic: The Gathering exploded onto the marketplace, earning $100 million over the course of its first two years. The game still boasts an estimated 6 million players in more than seventy countries worldwide.
In 1997, Adkison’s gaming passion came full circle when he negotiated the acquisition of Dungeons & Dragons and its original publisher, TSR. He went on to coordinate the redesign of the game for the successful release of its third edition. Resuming his role as a key player in the trading-card phenomenon, Adkison led Wizards of the Coast to another groundbreaking success with the 1999 launch of the Pokémon Trading Card Game in worldwide markets outside of Japan.
By this time Wizards of the Coast had enjoyed a long run of financial success, catching the attention of Hasbro, the world’s second-largest toy maker. Adkison negotiated the sale of Wizards of the Coast to Hasbro for nearly $500 million, remaining CEO of the company until 2001. He then departed the company and, honoring a timed noncompete clause in his contract, took time off to travel the globe for rock climbing and snowboarding adventures.
Just under two years later, Adkison acquired Gen Con, LLC, from Hasbro, which no longer had a place in its brand mix for the growing convention business. Adkison helmed the Gen Con hobby-gaming convention, making it the largest in North America. Gen Con, LLC later branched into management of new and established large-scale conventions such as Star Wars Celebration, the official Star Wars convention held biannually.
In November 2004, Adkison rejoined forces with Jesper Myrfors, the original art director for Magic: The Gathering. The combination of Adkison’s eye for innovative gaming products and Myrfors’s game-design talent developed into Adkison’s founding of Hidden City Games, a new game-publishing company. Hidden City Games, Inc., a venture-backed game publisher, develops and markets tabletop and online games to interactively engage players and collectors of all ages.
In October 2006, Adkison returned once again to trading-card products by announcing a deal between Hidden City Games and conceptcard, a Denmark-based game company, to publish and market Bella Sara™ worldwide outside of Scandinavia. Bella Sara, a combination of horse-themed trading cards and an online world for girls, was launched nationwide in the United States in March 2007. Bella Sara was developed by Gitte Odder Brændgaard, a former social worker in Denmark, with the goal of empowering and inspiring girls with positive messages. A global phenomenon and the most successful trading-card product ever developed for girls, Bella Sara has sold more than 30 million cards through 65,000 retail points of sale worldwide and has amassed more than 1 million registered website users from 240 countries.
Adkison currently resides in Seattle, Washington
