This is the story of an unusual games company making unusual games, built by a woman who followed an unusual career path.
Melanie (Mel) Langlotz is the founder and CEO of Geo AR Games, a game design studio that utilises augmented reality for “creating digital experiences that positively impact the world, fostering education and empowerment with simulations and serious games.”
Under her guidance, the company has plotted its own course over the past decade, designing an impressive stable of interactive AR games, including its flagship product, Magical Park, which had been sold and adapted in dozens of cities around the world.
With its unique work culture, shaped around the idea that difference is a superpower that can drive innovation – Mel is living proof that passion for an idea and understanding the ‘Why?’ behind it will drive success far more than expertise on its own.
As the company looks ahead to celebrating its 10th anniversary later this year, we asked Mel about where it all began, and how she found herself – as a non-gamer and with no background in game design – on the unusual career path of founding a game development studio at age 45.
Manifesting the idea
“The story of how the company started is not something I’ve told many people,” says Mel. “It all began in a single moment at a personal growth and development course I attended where we had to make a declaration to the whole group about what we wanted to do with our lives.
“I remember being all shaky and declaring to the team that I had decided I wanted to open an augmented reality game studio. I had no clue about coding, no clue about games – I didn’t even know developers, let alone gamers, but I knew that this is what I wanted to do.”
Following many years working in the often tumultuous and unforgiving film and television industry focused on visual effects, Mel’s big idea popped up after finding herself at a midlife crossroads, having undertaken the challenge of a degree in entrepreneurship and business, and wondering what lay beyond the medium she had worked in for so long.
“I thought that television was outdated, and something was needed that would hold people’s entertainment attention that went beyond television. People want to interact. People want to be ‘in’ it. So, how could they be ‘in’ it?” she says.
“My thinking was probably a little bit inspired by Star Trek and the Holodeck on the Starship Enterprise. I remember reading everything I could find about this ‘beyond television’ idea. Is it going to be holograms? Is it going to be AR? What’s it going to be?”
“Then in 2011, I came up with the idea which eventually became Magical Park, the world’s first digital playground. In my head, it was creating a life-size game in a park that you could interact with, just like if you were dropped into a Playstation game.
“I really believe in the power of declaring your vision publicly, even when you don’t know how you’re going to achieve it. After that declaration, I told as many people as possible about my goal and actively looked for people who had already done it. Public declaration creates accountability and gives others permission to help you.”
By 2013, Mel’s idea was further inspired while working at a startup called Augview that was using geospatial augmented reality for city infrastructure – nothing to do with games whatsoever – and she met the person who would become the co-founder of her studio.
“Amie Wolken walked into Augview one day in 2012 and said, “I’m fresh out of uni. I love AR. I want to be a developer. I want to work here.” – so we gave her a job. And within a short space of time, she worked her way up to an executive boardroom position.”
However, like so many enterprises before it, the business faced significant challenges and in 2015, three quarters of the team was made redundant, including Amie and Mel.
“When we left Augview, Amie came to me and said, “I really like your vision around augmented reality in a park and games. I want you to know that I’ve never programmed a game in my life, but I would love to give it a go,” she says.
“It was in the culmination of those moments, having finished my entrepreneurial degree and wondering what I could do with it, declaring that I’m going to build an AR studio, and both of us being made redundant, when I realised that with Amie on board, I had the beginning of a team. I’m no longer on my own and together we can do this. It’s now or never.”
But, at age 45, Mel had to face her fear of financial insecurity – but with some redundancy insurance coverage that gave her six months of leeway to build up the studio, she also secured funding from a well-known incubator, Start Up Chile, which got the company on track.
“It was a combination of having the theoretical business knowledge – how to build a business with a framework that helped you put that into practice, which is delivering your first pitch and understanding your value proposition, understanding your customer, your market.
“And sure enough, we pitched the first project that we built under Start Up Chile after three months, and I realised that we would never make enough money with that model to survive.”
Mel and Amie secured funding from another incubator, Lightning Lab XX in Wellington, which gave them another few months of runway to get Magical Park off the ground. By the end of the incubator – just six months after starting the company – they had earned their first $10,000 of business.
“I think a lot of founders who wear so many hats and are also the creatives often have imposter syndrome and so find it hard to sell their products. When you do sell your first product and get your first customer, it’s product validation, but it also means ‘Now repeat the sales process again and again,” says Mel.
“As a gaming startup, you either get funding from a grant like CODE (https://www.nz-code.nz/) or NZ on Air, or you have enough money saved up so you can build a game in your garage with a couple of mates, where you don’t have to worry too much about overheads and how to live.
“But you do need a certain amount of money, and you need to think about where your revenue is going to come from, such as if it is a premium game, or if it has in-game mechanics to get you paid.”
They realised cutting through the noise of the games that are already in market and finding enough players to drive revenue would have required an exorbitant marketing budget.
“That is why we made the decision to stop selling a premium game and shift towards a very niche market of selling to City Councils. We started selling them the idea of the world’s first digital playground. Nobody had ever done that! We even brought it out before Pokemon Go.”
Magical Park uses augmented reality to turn physical urban parks into a “magical wonderland” filled with fantastic creatures. By completing missions in the game, kids will need to run an average of 1.45km within a safe park environment.
“Once they have played our game, they tend to go back to normal kids’ activities like climbing trees, riding bikes or kicking a ball around.”
“The first $10,000 that we earned was a major milestone. It was the proof of concept that we could actually do this. We could sell something. We could sell ourselves.”
Upping their Game
With their target market identified and first revenue secured, Amie and Mel started expanding the company.
“Going forward, we continued to build through listening closely to our government clients – who weren’t directly the players, but the middleman between us and the players – and really listening to them to understand what they want,” she says.
“Through those conversations with government, we discovered our assumptions about the market were completely wrong. What we thought was our value proposition wasn’t what they actually needed.
“City Councils had to show that they were giving their citizens reasons to go to green spaces and modern parks. They were looking for solutions for digital-native families, but they also needed it to be educational. They wanted people to be able to learn about topics related to parks, such as littering, biodiversity, health, healthy eating, and climate change.
“Initially, we created games focused purely on getting kids active, but councils told us: ‘That’s nice, but we need you to educate them about taking their litter home, not just run around.’
“That was our ‘Aha!’ moment, where we came to understand the difference between the paying client and the end user. The councils were our clients, but the families were our players – and we needed to solve the councils’ problem through the players’ experience.”
Mel says one of the biggest lessons that she learned early on – together with Amie’s very strong sense of ethics – was about taking a stand for values.
“We had a lot of discussions around that. Because of my background in advertising and film, I came from a completely opposite approach. But she was younger than me and so was more tuned-in to climate change matters than I was. You could say I was a bit old school!”
In 2017, Mel was contacted by Auckland Civil Defence (ACD), who had seen Magical Park, and were impressed by their ethical approach. Together, they developed a serious emergency preparation game called ‘What’s the Plan, Stan?’
“This was our first big job, which also provided the next learning curve of how cities think about community education. But what really got us that job was our value system, that showed we were diligent and took things seriously. We thought the way a city would think about the community, and took responsibility for it. We weren’t flippant about anything.”
Mel says she learned how important it was to develop games with the community, not for the community.
“Those are two very different things, especially as it relates to understanding how game content lands with the community. What are their expectations and assumptions? Do they perceive it or translate it? And then, what are the government’s issues in communicating it?
“We started to learn that games are a new vehicle for government to communicate to people, especially to the younger generation.”
Since then, Geo AR has developed a total of 21 games including Stand Tall, a financial literacy game which was nominated for a NZ Hi-Tech Award in 2024; My Coastal Futures Township Flood Challenge, developed for NIWA, which explores climate change and its impact on coastal areas; as well as Cat Angel’s Triumph, which teaches the importance of responsible pet ownership and desexing and microchipping of cats.
Reshaping the company
Mel’s co-founder Amie left Geo AR Games in 2018, which Mel says was a tough decision and prompted a painful time of reshaping the company.
“It was almost like a marriage breakup. It was hard because she had been there from the start, and because I wasn’t a developer, it put me in a situation where I wasn’t willing to give up the studio, but I also didn’t know how to move forward.
“So I started to partner with InGame and we formed a strong relationship. We started to share more projects and resources and helped each other with insights, game design, people – you name it – and that really helped.”
With this lifeline of collaboration with other studios, and support from game industry leaders including Stephen Knightly, founder and CEO of InGame who also was involved in starting NZ Game Developers Association before moving on to be Chief Operating Officer for Rocketwerkz – Mel started to rebuild her team.
“Funnily enough, I met my new development team around the coffee machine at GridAKL, where we are based today. I met Gabriel Mugadza from RageQuit, who said he made games and was looking for work, and I said I need developers! RageQuit eventually became part of Geo AR Games – a great example of game studio collaboration.
“So that is how we organically grew. I wouldn’t say that it was easy, but to my surprise – and I can now say that looking back – the value alignment and the ethics and listening to the clients was essential. The value alignment that Amie laid out for Magical Park at the beginning essentially set us on the trajectory of working with government today.”
Today, as well as City Councils, Geo AR Games clients include universities, government departments, and research institutes – and as she reflects on how far the company has come over the last 10 years, she is already planning for the next decade.
“When I look back, I think we’ve succeeded because I’ve been extremely stubborn. I was willing early on to endure the low pay, to sacrifice financial security for having a game studio and following a dream,” she says.
“Ultimately, what I realised was that having creative freedom and control over my life and my working hours was just worth it for me. Since we spend so much time working, we should enjoy it, right?”
“My journey has also taught me that you’re never too old to start a business, get into games or get into tech. It’s about finding your tribe, and other people who believe in your vision. And oftentimes, it’s better to collaborate with others rather than just compete.
“Through everything, I’ve learned that it’s OK to admit that you got a product wrong and do a hard pivot. You can always take your learnings with you and build better the next time. What’s more, pivoting shows your company is agile and can be flexible with constant change.
“Above all though, I believe our values and culture are the competitive advantage that has won us business, because our clients felt we shared their core values and they could trust us.”
Story by Brendan Boughen
Innovation Nation is a series celebrating stories of innovation and diversity in entrepreneurship from around New Zealand.
