After a lot of convincing, Samson Mow (left) finally persuaded Nat Mak to move from Vancouver to Shanghai to restart their game company Pixelmatic. Photos Provided to China Daily

Game developer Samson Mow sees Shanghai as the ideal place to make an impact on the Chinese game industry, Eric Jou reports.

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Originally from Vancouver, Canada, game developer Samson Mow always had a craving for something more, somewhere else. While Vancouver is a world-class city, Shanghai was the place he wanted to be.

"I kind of have an affinity for Shanghai. In Shanghai everyone's driven by more of that big city vibe," he says.

In 2011, Mow decided the time was right to do something new and Shanghai was where he wanted to do it. So he quit his job with Ubisoft in Chengdu and relocated to the city of his dreams.

"In big companies things move slowly and in every developer's life after a while you kind of ask yourself do you want to be safe and secure or do you want to be doing your own thing," he says.

Mow had decided the time was right to revive Pixelmatic, a startup company he had launched in Vancouver with two friends Cong Ly and Nat Mak. The company never really took off back then and was put on the back burner as the three went their separate ways.

But with his heart set on rebooting the company in Shanghai, Mow set about trying to persuade his friends to get back on board.

"He was very persistent. Every once in a while, he would get me into a conversation and then jump in and ask me when I was going to come to Shanghai," Mak says.