A Thinking Ape

A Thinking Ape is a Canadian mobile free-to-play game studio focused on social, strategy and massively multiplayer experiences for iOS and Android. Founded in 2008, it builds original games designed around long-running player communities, emergent social play, clan systems and player-driven virtual economies.

Its early releases, including Kingdoms at War and Party in My Dorm, established a design approach centred on multiplayer interaction rather than conventional single-player mobile mechanics. The studio has since expanded that approach across narrative, social-simulation and strategy games such as Kingdoms of Heckfire, Single City: Social Life Sim and Witch Arcana: Magic School.

Games and live operations

A Thinking Ape combines game creation with ongoing live-service operations. Its work spans:

• Original mobile game and IP development
• Client- and server-side engineering
• LiveOps, community management and user acquisition
• Game-economy design, systems balancing and analytics
• Narrative, 2D art and 3D art production

The company’s games are built to support persistent communities and evolving economies over extended lifecycles. This includes social mechanics, strategic competition, trading systems and data-informed product scaling.

Company history

The company was founded by former Amazon engineers Kenshi Arasaki, Wilkins Chung and Eric Diep. After participating in Y Combinator’s Winter 2010 programme, the founders moved permanent operations to Vancouver in January 2011.

In November 2020, Embracer Group acquired A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. alongside Item Box Apps Ltd. The studio continues to operate autonomously within the DECA Games operating group, with a focus on original free-to-play IP and live-service games. It maintains a distributed, remote-first operating model while retaining its Vancouver corporate headquarters.