Douglas Hare

Co-Founder & CEO Outplay Entertainment Ltd.

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Douglas Hare is a games industry entrepreneur on his third company. With his brother Richard he co-founded The Collective in California in 1997, grew it into one of the larger independent console developers of its era, and through its 2005 merger with Backbone Entertainment helped create Foundation 9 Entertainment. The brothers then returned to Scotland after nearly two decades in the United States and founded Outplay Entertainment in 2010, opening a Dundee studio in 2011. Outplay develops casual mobile puzzle games built around strong licensed brands — Gordon Ramsay’s Chef Blast, Angry Birds POP!, Subway Surfers Blast — and describes itself as the largest independent mobile games studio in the UK, with more than 160 million downloads. In June 2025 Hare cut around 15 per cent of the studio’s staff and set a new direction: partnering with established publishers on future releases rather than self-publishing everything.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded The Collective, Inc. in Newport Beach, California in 1997 with his brother Richard Hare and Gary Priest, after all three left Virgin Interactive.
• The Collective’s output included Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen (2000), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002), Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb (2003), Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) and The Da Vinci Code (2006), several built on the studio’s proprietary Slayer Engine.
• Co-founded Foundation 9 Entertainment in 2005, formed by the merger of The Collective with Backbone Entertainment.
• Co-founded Outplay Entertainment in August 2010 and opened the Dundee studio in April 2011, backed by venture funding raised with support from Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International.
• Grew Outplay past 160 million downloads with Gordon Ramsay’s Chef Blast, Angry Birds POP! and Subway Surfers Blast.
• Led a June 2025 restructuring — 21 roles cut, roughly 15 per cent of a 135-person studio — alongside a strategic shift toward publisher partnerships.

Professional Journey

Hare’s career begins at Virgin Interactive, the British publisher that was one of the significant European forces in games through the early 1990s. In 1997 he left alongside his brother Richard and Gary Priest to found The Collective, Inc. in Newport Beach, California — a move that placed the new studio in the heart of the American console development industry rather than in the UK.

The Collective built its business on licensed properties, which in that period meant working closely with film and television rights holders on tight production schedules. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen shipped in 2000, followed by Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 2002 — the first title to use the studio’s own Slayer Engine, which then underpinned everything that came after. Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb, Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up and The Da Vinci Code followed through the mid-2000s. Not everything shipped; projects based on Witchblade, Dirty Harry and Dracula were cancelled in development, which is the ordinary attrition of licensed work.

Scale came through consolidation. In 2005 The Collective merged with Backbone Entertainment to form Foundation 9 Entertainment, and Doug Hare is credited as a founder of that group as well as of The Collective. Foundation 9 assembled a portfolio of development studios at a moment when independent developers were finding it harder to survive alone against rising console production costs. The Collective’s own chapter closed in October 2007 when it was merged with Shiny Entertainment; the combined studio became Double Helix Games in March 2008.

The brothers then went home. After roughly eighteen years in the United States they returned to Scotland and established Outplay Entertainment in August 2010, opening the Dundee studio in April 2011. Dundee was a deliberate choice — it has one of the densest games talent pools in Europe, seeded by Abertay University and the DMA Design lineage. Their American track record was what made the raise possible; Hare has been candid that this was the exception rather than the rule, describing the US as a comparatively frictionless environment for founders and noting that access to finance remains a real obstacle for most UK entrepreneurs. Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International supported the initial funding round.

Outplay’s strategy diverged sharply from The Collective’s. Instead of premium licensed console titles, it built free-to-play casual games for mobile and social platforms, starting with Facebook games in autumn 2011 and reaching an early milestone when the iOS title Monster Legacy took the App Store Editors’ Choice slot in more than fifty countries. The studio grew to 55 staff by the mid-2010s and later to around 135. Its commercial model still rests on recognisable brands, but now applied to the puzzle genre: Angry Birds POP!, Gordon Ramsay’s Chef Blast — its most successful title, launched in 2021 with voice work from Ramsay himself — and Subway Surfers Blast. Cumulative downloads passed 160 million.

In June 2025 Hare restructured. Outplay cut 21 roles across several departments, about 15 per cent of the studio, with Hare stating the aim was to align operations with current business realities and to support a shift toward partnering with publishers for future game releases. That is a meaningful change of model for a studio that had operated as an independent developer-publisher, and it moves Outplay closer to the work-for-hire and partnership structures Hare knew from the Foundation 9 years.

Education

No school, college or university record for Douglas Hare was found in any source reviewed for this profile.