Having spent the previous 18 years building and ultimately selling a large game developer in the US, brothers Douglas and Richard Hare returned to Scotland in August 2010 to set up Outplay.

After securing venture capital funding, they opened their office in Dundee in April 2011 and set about hiring their team. They released their first games on Facebook in autumn 2011.

Since then, they have brought out three more games for mobiles and their biggest game to date, Monster Legacy for iOS, has received the Editors’Choice feature slot in over 50 countries.

Outplay has grown to a workforce of 55 and their ambition for the year ahead is to substantially grow their business and selection of games.

Q&A with Doug Hare, co-founder of Outplay

We asked him about his experience and reflections on starting up.

What was your experience of starting in Dundee?

There’s a lot to commend the city for. It’s a city that’s gone through quite a transformation over the last couple of decades. I would say there’s a very bright future for it. That said, when hiring we do occasionally run into challenges of convincing people that they’d want to move to the area, and that’s generally because most people don’t really know how good Dundee is.

Do you think that being a serial entrepreneur helped building Outplay?

With decades of experience in the game industry and having built and sold a significant game developer in the US, I think we had a pretty strong track record to help our case when raising money. However, based on conversations with other business owners, it appears that access to finance remains a challenge for most.

How does the experience of starting up in the UK compare to the US?

I think the US, and California especially, is particularly business and entrepreneurially focused. It’s a very frictionless environment to setup and do business. I think that there are more friction points in setting up a business in the UK. On the other hand, I think there is significantly more public support for those businesses - both Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International played a significant part in helping us secure our initial round of funding and making the decision to locate the business in Dundee.