Update

Muzzy Lane Aims for Major Growth with New CEO in Place

To listen to them talk, the team behind Muzzy Lane Software has spent the last 12 years getting ready for this moment.

Just days after announcing a January launch for the latest installment of their strategic history game “Making History: The Great War,” the company announced a reorganization at the top of the firm aimed at dramatically growing the firm.

"Making History" is one of Muzzy Lane's most popular consumer games and its latest iteration "The Great War" launches Jan. 29.

“Making History” is one of Muzzy Lane’s most popular consumer games and its latest iteration “The Great War” launches Jan. 29.

Dave McCool who started the company in 2002, is moving over to become the Chief Technology Officer and Conall Ryan will join the company as its new CEO. Ryan is an experienced academic publishing and technology leader who headed Sunburst, Houghton Mifflin’s educational technology division.  He also has held executive positions with Knowledge Adventure, ON Technology, NeXT Computer, and Lotus Development.

“Conall brings a deep background in developing successful digital learning businesses,” said McCool.  “As research continues to validate the efficacy of game-based learning, we’re looking to Conall to build Muzzy Lane’s brand and drive a new phase of growth.”

Ryan stressed he would be focused on expanding the business in both the commercial and educational learning game markets.

“We’re going to be relentless about accelerating the use of our platform across the education and consumer markets, and tackling the global opportunities in front of us,” he said in a release.

Connal Ryan (left) is set to become Muzzy Lane's new CEO and founder Dave McCool will focus on his new role as CTO.

Connal Ryan (left) is set to become Muzzy Lane’s new CEO and founder Dave McCool will focus on his new role as CTO.

McCool added that Ryan has track record of creating and running full-scale businesses.

“Conall’s experience running several software and publishing enterprises adds operational and marketing capabilities and allows me to concentrate on leading our engineering efforts,” McCool told gamesandlearning.org this weekend.

The Newburyport, Mass.-based company has spent more than a decade building learning games.

As McCool put it: “Muzzy Lane has been focused on education and game-based learning for some time.  Making History has a tremendous base of users and we expect that community to continue growing with the imminent release of our Great War title. The Practice series from McGraw-Hill has an established market leader in Practice Marketing. Practice Government and Practice Operations have been in the market for a couple of years now. Practice Spanish and Practice Medical Office are just shipping so we’re also excited about releasing products in language learning and job training. You will hear more from us in both of those categories. Also take a look at The Underground Railroad which we developed in partnership with National Geographic, and Hungry Birds, an exciting short game that teaches natural selection.”

These games have done more than just sustain a business, they have allowed them to create a solid foundation of design and assessment skills that they say creates a platform on top of which they can construct new games and products.

Our game based learning platform underlies everything we do as a company. It allows us to develop and deploy game-based learning experiences for both the education and consumer markets that are mobile and browser friendly. The core capabilities of the platform are multiplayer (group work), data capture and analytics, adaptivity, and integration into learning environments.  The same underlying platform can power solutions for young kids, high schoolers, college students, and lifelong learners. We need to leverage those capabilities whether the channel we’re selling through is B2C or B2B.

Dave McCool, Muzzy Lane Founder and CTO

That set of skills, along with products like the Making History games and the Practice series, has Muzzy Lane, McCool hopes, on the verge of creating a learning game firm at scale.

“We want to raise the profile of Muzzy Lane as an established leader in this… space,” McCool said. “We need to expand our strategic partnerships and explore new ones. You’ll see plenty of exciting enhancements to our technology platform as well as improvements to our key product offerings. By that we mean better production values, simplicity, and ease of use — the stuff that’s easy to talk about but fiendishly difficult to produce consistently at scale. We need to get there.”

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Lee Banville Lee Banville is editor of Gamesandlearning.org. He is also an Professor of Journalism at The University of Montana. For 13 years he ran the online and digital operations of the PBS NewsHour, overseeing coverage of domestic and international stories.