PRODUCTION COMPANY

Cliffhanger Productions creates and acquires project ideas and designs for computer- and videogames, identifies the most promising ones, and then evolves these ideas in co-operation with experienced development teams and individuals into full fledged project offers. These project offers are then presented to potential investors and publishers for financing and distribution. Additionally Cliffhanger Productions options and buys licenses from other media (movies, books, music), and combines them with the right game design to maximize the market chances of products.

Once financing is secured Cliffhanger Productions oversees and manages the whole development process in order to guarantee the delivery in time, budget and quality by means of its highly experienced Producers.

Combining a long standing experience in the industry across all major platforms with an international network and a wide range of competent partners, Cliffhanger Productions can reduce the development and market risk for game products and investments considerably.

TEAM

Cliffhanger Productions has a decades of experience within the international games industry and has contacts in Europe, USA, Australia and Japan. They also have extensive experience in the licensing of IP from reputable companies such as MGM, Time-Warner and Universal. The members of the team also have successful particiapted in such world-wide hit series as Diablo, Warcraft, Half-Life, Max Payne, SpellForce and Gothic.

MICHAEL PAECK (Managing Director, Founder)

Michael has been active within the games industry since 1997, both in the areas of development as well as publishing. His career began when he opened his own development studio which employed some 27 people, where he was responsible not just for the overall management but also the production and design of internal projects. The studio developed 9 titles, the most successful, 'Alien Nations' and 'Neighbours from Hell' sold over 1 million units worldwide and were translated into 14 different languages.

After this Michael moved into the publishing arena joining JoWooD Productions AG as  an Executive Producer where he was directly responsible for a development budget of over 20 million Euro and the development control of up to 12 development projects in parallel including worldwide successes as 'Gothic' and'Spellforce'.

He has also been teaching at the SAE College Vienna and is one of the special people owning both a cat and a dog.

  
JAN WAGNER (Executive Producer, Creative Director, Founder)

Jan has been involved in the industry for almost 20 years with his experience spanning Marketing, PR and Product Management along with Game Design and Producing. He was Head of Product Management at Vivendi Universal Games running a department of over 40 people and worked on over 100 titles during this time, some of which were the internationally renowned top ten hits as 'Half-Life', 'Warcraft', 'Empire Earth' and 'Diablo'.

During this time at Vivendi he was also responsible for the restructuring of the European Community Management and Support Service.

He then went on to run the Brand Management/Product Management department at JoWooD before forming Cliffhanger Productions.

Jan is a lecturer at the University of Darmstadt, member of the Advisory Board for Casual Connect Europe and jury member for several national and European games awards. He has published smaller works for pen and paper RPGs like Ars Magica and would spend more time playing if his kids would let him.