About Monte Singman
Monte Singman started as a programmer in Taiwan in the 1980s, writing the island's first graphical entertainment software and its first graphics library, and went on to engineering and production work in California on titles including John Madden Football, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Final Fight EX and the Test Drive Off-Road series.
He later founded two companies. Zona, started in Silicon Valley in 2000, built network middleware for online games and was acquired by Shanda. Radiance Digital Entertainment, founded in Shanghai, developed online games such as Beach Volleyball Online and GoGo Racer and was acquired by iDreamSky. Both acquirers went on to list on NASDAQ.
Much of his recent work has been licensing and business development: bringing international games such as Monument Valley, Toy Blast, Gardenscapes and Sonic Dash to new markets, negotiating directly with Bruce Lee Enterprises, and co-designing Gordon Ramsay: Chef Blast with a UK developer. He writes about game design, player psychology and the games business in UX Magazine and in his LinkedIn newsletter, Rigging the Games, and he works natively in English and Mandarin.
Milestones
- Designed the virtual experience of the USA Pavilion at Expo 2010 Shanghai for the U.S. Department of State.
- Founded Zona, Inc. in Silicon Valley in 2000, later acquired by Shanda.
- Founded Radiance Digital Entertainment in Shanghai, later acquired by iDreamSky.
- CEO of Wormhole, the game publishing label Jinke Culture launched in 2020 around the Talking Tom and Friends IP, and later CEO of Jinke International, where he secured the exclusive mainland China license for Sonic Dash and Sonic Dash 2 from SEGA in 2022.
- Author of the Chinese-language university textbook 游戏产业概论 (An Introduction to the Game Industry), with a foreword by Nolan Bushnell.
Mentoring, teaching and community
- Mentor, Chinaccelerator
- Mentor, MOX (Mobile Only Accelerator)
- Has taught game development at Shanghai Theatre Academy since 2005.
- Guest professor at Jilin Institute of Art.
- Founder of the IGDA Shanghai chapter.
Work with Radiance Strategic Solutions
Tell us what you have and what you want to build. Monte reads every inquiry himself and replies personally.