Our Mission
Our goal is to cultivate a more social and active lifestyle for our users.
We’re starting by gamifying fitness.
By combining the fun digital enhancements that video games have with the social and active aspects of real sports, we’re pioneering a new video game genre that will change the way people exercise and lead to generations of healthy gamers in the future.
Realm Rivals is the first game we’re making in this genre. It is currently in pre-production so there is limited access. If you are interested in playing the game you can find more info below:
Our Story
Our mission has been in the works since January 2020. Below is the story of how it all came together, split up into four stages. Today we are still in the growth stage, but we also are continuing to test within our communities. If you are interested in joining one of our community building events, check out our testing page for more information on ways to get involved.
01
The Inception
In January of 2020, David Shields and Josh Francis, two high school seniors, began work on Realm Rivals, which was originally conceived of as a way for anyone to play capture the flag on their phone with their friends. David and Josh knew that they wanted to build an app that would lead to more meaningful social interaction and physical fitness among their already active friends. They quickly fell in love with the design process and soon expanded their original idea from capture the flag to a game where users raced their friends from flag to flag. In the initial months the app could only be tested on a laptop, but that didn’t stop David and Josh from playing their game. They could be seen running around the lawn outside of their classroom with their laptops in hand, creating the foundations of Realm Rivals.
02
Early Development
When the COVID pandemic hit, David and Josh were unable to access the classroom that had become their development headquarters. However, with work on their classes cut dramatically, they were able to spend more time developing Realm Rivals. By the end of the school year they had an app with enough basic gameplay that David and Josh’s close friends were able to start playing the game. The game quickly became popular amongst their friends, who were soon playing it weekly.
03
Community Building
After graduating high school and moving on from the height of the pandemic, the founders began to lead Realm Rivals testing events on Stanford University campus, gifting cookies and boba to users who played the game and provided feedback. By the end of the school year, David and Josh had hosted over a dozen successful testing events, gaining hundreds of users and invaluable feedback. From these tests, they also found that Realm Rivals fostered community building through physical activity, their express goal going into development.
04
Growth
By the end of the summer, David and Josh were able to raise pre-seed capital and hire two more employees. One of these employees, Jack, became the third co-founder and an integral part of the Flagon Entertainment team.
With the newly improved team now working full-time on Realm Rivals, development speed increased rapidly. Realm Rivals gained an entirely new server network that is now capable of scaling with user growth, and a complete UI overhaul leading to the easily navigable and intuitive UI that is in use today. As well, with the help of their new developers they were able to do a complete overhaul of the gameplay, from the simple Gold Rush gamemode to the full Capture the Flag mode in use today.