Team - Akupara Games

Taking Names and Making Games.

Akupara Games is a (mostly) Los Angeles-based collective of game industry veterans with extensive experience in development for games, alongside young rising stars of the field. Together, we temper experience with forward-thinking vision, allowing us to be on the forefront of industry trends and opportunities while maintaining a strong respect for the history and process of getting games made.

We specialize in development using Unity, with a strong mix of Unreal Engine 4, GameMaker Studio, and even some light VR, AR, mobile, and app development. We are experts in porting and developing across all current gen consoles, and are among the pioneers of bleeding-edge and proprietary hardware. Akupara Games provides development support services for creatives looking to bring their visions to life, co-develops and co-finances projects we believe in, publishes award-winning indie titles from development teams across the world, and creates our own original IP.

As a fully remote company, we proudly boast employees and clients from across the globe!

Our Beliefs

Growth Opportunities – It is important that people feel that there is the opportunity to grow in their positions. This can be in the form of more senior or managerial roles/titles, which in turn are tied to wage increases. This can also be in the form of taking on more projects, more hours, or more types of tasks outside their immediate purview.
Collaborative Vision-Building – The company involves stakeholders in helping to drive the overall vision and direction of the company. This includes opening up brainstorming documents for feedback, voting on priorities, and having the team give feedback when considering projects to sign.
Ownership – People should feel as though they have ownership over their work, as well as a
stake in the company. We trust in our team to be experts in their fields and to drive the overall vision of their department.
Visible LGBTQ+, minority, female-identifying, marginalized group focused – We actively support organizations, initiatives and projects that support marginalized groups. We operate under a moral compass of inclusion and compassion and actively seek out diverse candidates for roles. Additionally, we look to highlight these groups in the games we create and publish.
Improvement and Accountability – Akupara encourages and supports regular assessment of the work that we do, and collaboratively problem solves where we can improve.
Access to Information – Akupara values documentation and ease of access to information, including practices, pipelines and resources. This is not only true for internal usage – we also share these resources with other developers, publishers and students, including giving industry talks, writing informative blogs, curating and distributing an event calendar and providing free 1-on-1 consultation services.
Work/Life Balance – Akupara rarely has overtime, preferring to instead prioritize the health of its employees. We avoid overtime by committing to extensive up-front and reactive planning to mitigate the need for long hours. We are committed to no-crunch culture, and that work should remain at the office at the end of the day.
Retention – Akupara strives to build long term relationships with our employees, contractors, developers and partners.

Benefits and Perks

Remote Working – Akupara is a mostly-remote company. While the majority of us are based in Los Angeles, we have clients, partners and contractors working throughout the globe. LA-based employees are welcome to work at the home-office in Granada Hills once or twice weekly, if they want!
Flexible Time Off Requests and Work Hours – Due to the international and remote nature of our team, we only require 4-5 hours of work time overlaps with the “core working day” of 9-5 PT.
Employer-Sponsored Healthcare – The health and well-being of our team are of paramount importance at Akupara Games. We offer a range of employee healthcare plans tailored to meet the diverse needs of our employees, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.
PTO and Paid Holidays – Every four weeks of full-time work (40 hours/week), employees and contractors will accrue 1 day (8 hours) of PTO for a maximum of 10 PTO days a year. Akupara also currently offers 9 paid US national holidays, with the option to date swap to the national holidays of the employee’s home country, for international employees. We also are closed between Christmas and New Years.
Employer-Matched 401k – At Akupara Games, we are dedicated to securing the long-term well-being of our team members. Our 401K plan includes a matching contribution from the company up to 5%.
OT Dinners/Lunches – Comped meals for game launches and any (rare) mandatory OT days.
Paid Flights and Event Accommodations – Akupara showcases games at several in-person events, showcases, and expos each year and provides paid flights, hotels and meals for anyone who attends to represent Akupara in an official capacity.
Company-Wide Playtests – The Akupara Weekly Playtest is a standing, opt-in/optional meeting every Friday. All active employees will be invited to play builds and give directed feedback on upcoming in-development titles.
Professional Development Fridays – Professional development day is 1 Friday a month where we step back from our project-specific tasks and focus on self-directed learning. This can be anything from watching GDC Vault talks, running through a tutorial, working on competitive analysis and R&D, practicing a skill, etc.
People and Culture Team – The People & Culture team is an internal special interest group, responsible for helping drive company-wide voluntary extracurricular culture building activities, DE&I and accessibility initiatives, charitable outreach and endemic partner-driven efforts. We aim to do roughly 1 social/culture event per month, and a comped meal is provided for anyone who attends. Some examples can include: Lunch n learns, movie, trivia and game nights, company contests with prizes, GDC watch n talks, accessibility efforts, sustainability and eco-friendly practices, burnout and mental health initiatives, partnering with charitable organizations such as Extra Life, Halp Network, or Girls Make Games.
Team-Driven Game Scouting – The Akupara Biz Dev team is a rotating team of six Akupara Games team members who test and give feedback on games we are considering publishing, helping to shape the future of our portfolio of published titles.
Annual In-Person Company Retreat – Every year, Akupara hosts an in-person company retreat in Los Angeles called “Shellout!” Out-of-state and international team members are flown in for a week of in-person bonding and culture-building activities. This includes everything from parties to sightseeing.
Game Jam – The game jam is an annual open-ended, 2 week long collaborative creative exercise at the end of each year. It encourages people who may not normally work together to create games under a strict timeline.
Employee Referrals – For any hires that are recommended by someone working already at Akupara, who remain at the company for at least 6 months, we will pay a finder’s fee.
Lunch N Learns – Any member of our team can prepare an educational talk or tutorial session for other members of the team. Akupara provides lunch for anyone who attends this opportunity.
Commitment to Growing of Perks/Benefits – Akupara is always actively assessing opportunities to bring on additional efforts. As Akupara grows in success and financial stability, we aim to bring back as much as possible to our contributors. This includes input from the team about benefits and perks they most want to see.