KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Round Rock, Texas. Founded in January 2005 by Elie Akilian, the company operates a development studio in Round Rock, Texas, which hosts the majority of its staff. KingsIsle is best known for its massively multiplayer online role-playing games, Wizard101 and Pirate101. History KingsIsle Entertainment was founded in January 2005 by Elie Akilian. Inspired by his teenage son, who was a fan of video games, Akilian established KingsIsle in Plano, Texas, and started hiring former employees of id Software and Ubisoft to work on what would become Wizard101. To do so, Akilian used funds generated from the 2004 sale of his communications software company Inet Technologies to Tektronix for . J. Todd Coleman, who had sold his company, Wolfpack Studios, to Ubisoft in 2004, joined KingsIsle in December 2007 after being introduced to Akilian through mutual contacts. Coleman became the company's third employee and the first to be located in Austin, Texas, where he was joined by former Wolfpack Studios co-founder Josef Hall shortly after. On April 25, 2008, KingsIsle formally announced its existence after "three years of lock down secrecy". At this point, the company had 100 employees in Plano and Austin, and was run by Akilian as chairman and chief executive officer, and David Nichols, formerly of Midway Games, as president. For the company's first project, Wizard101, Coleman headed the development, while Tom Hall, the co-founder of id Software and Ion Storm, served as creative director. Later that year, KingsIsle released Wizard101 as a card-battling massively multiplayer online role-playing game aimed towards children and teenagers, in which players take on the role of student witches and wizards in a fantasy world. In September 2012, Wizard101 had over 30 million registered users. To accommodate the growth of its Austin studio, KingsIsle leased 18,000 square feet of office space in the Domain 5 building of Austin's The Domain complex in December 2008. In February 2010, KingsIsle released WizardBlox, a free game based on the Sorcery Stones mini-game from Wizard101, for iOS. By September 2010, Austin hosted the majority of KingsIsle's 120 staff. The employee count rose to 135 by February 2011, and to 220 by August 2012. In October 2012, KingsIsle released its second online game, Pirate101, which takes place within the same universe as Wizard101. The following November, KingsIsle released Grub Guardian, a tower defense game where players defend