Þorsteinn Baldur Friðriksson (born 30 June 1979), commonly anglicised as Thor Fridriksson, is an Icelandic businessman. He was the founder and
chief executive officer
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization.
CEOs find roles in variou ...
(CEO) of
Plain Vanilla Games
PV Hugbúnaður hf., doing business as Plain Vanilla Games, was an Icelandic video game developer based in ReykjavÃk. Founded in October 2010 by Thor Fridriksson, the company is best known for developing the trivia-based mobile game ''QuizUp' ...
, a
ReykjavÃk
ReykjavÃk is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...
-based
video game developer
A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...
, until its defunction in August 2016.
Personal life
Thor was born in
ReykjavÃk
ReykjavÃk is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...
on 30 June 1979. He graduated from the
Menntaskólinn à ReykjavÃk
Menntaskólinn à ReykjavÃk (MR; official name in English: Reykjavik College) is collegein Iceland. It is located in ReykjavÃk.
The school traces its origin to 1056, when a school was established in Skálholt, and it remains one of the oldest ...
in 1999 and studied at
Reykjavik University.
Career
Thor was working with the broadband-ISP startup Hive until it was purchased by Vodafone in 2007.
Deciding to explore a different industry, Thor became a local TV news reporter.
After studying at the University of Oxford, Thor started Plain Vanilla Games in
ReykjavÃk
ReykjavÃk is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...
during the
Icelandic financial crisis.
Thor and his team at Plain Vanilla Games spent over a year developing an educational app for children called ''The Moogies'',
that failed to gain popularity on the
App Store
An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...
. Despite the country's economic issues, Thor decided to keep the Plain Vanilla Games' headquarters located in ReykjavÃk to help support job growth and other start-up companies.
In June 2020, Thor released a new game titled ''Trivia Royale'' that "lets users compete in a 1,000-person, single-elimination trivia tournament."
In 2022, Thor launched a new gaming platform, ''Rocky Road,'' which debuted a "hyperlocal social mobile gaming experience" in Iceland, and subsequently raised $5.2 million from Luminar Ventures, Crowberry Capital, Sisu Ventures and David Helgason, the founder of
Unity Technologies
Unity Software Inc. (doing business as Unity Technologies) is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment and changed its name in 2007. Unity Techn ...
.
References
1979 births
Thor Fridriksson
Living people
{{Iceland-business-bio-stub