Margaret Wallace | |
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Born |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
May 30, 1967
Occupation | Video game and media entrepreneur, CEO |
Website | www.playmatics.com |
Margaret Wallace (born May 30, 1967) is an American entrepreneur, gaming and media professional. In 2009, she co-founded Playmatics with Nicholas Fortugno in New York, New York. The company focuses on bringing new kinds of immersive experiences to casual gamers. In 2006, she was named one of the hundred most influential women in the game industry.
While in high school, Wallace participated in the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholarship, which allows students to study a year abroad in Germany. Under the scholarship, she attended a one-month language and cultural preparation course at The Experiment in International Living (now World Learning) in Brattleboro, Vermont and spent her final year of high school at the Gymnasium Mellendorf in Mellendorf, Lower Saxony, Germany.
As an undergraduate, she attended Boston University, where she studied Communication and Philosophy and received a Bachelor of Science with Distinction in 1989. Wallace subsequently studied Communication and Cultural Theory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning an MA in 1996.
After Boston, Wallace moved to San Francisco, California, where she became professionally involved in the Internet and gaming, particularly casual games.
In 1996, Wallace joined PF Magic, a video game developer founded in 1991 and located in San Francisco, CA. Though it developed other types of video games, PF.Magic was arguably best known for its virtual pet games, such as Dogz, Catz, and Oddballz; Wallace participated in the development of:
After Mindscape, Inc.’s acquisition of PF.Magic in early 1998, Wallace continued employment with the company’s online content group. The Learning Company (TLC) acquired Mindscape, Inc. in March 1998 for $150 million.Mattel soon purchased TLC in 1999 for $3.8 billion, renaming it "Mattel Interactive".
The copyright on the Petz, Oddballz and Babyz titles was eventually acquired by Ubisoft. Currently, Petz is Ubisoft’s number six top-selling brand, having sold over thirteen million units to date.