Alex Masse

Overview

Alex Masse is a French Canadian game developer from Montreal and the creator of Paralives. He is a professional software engineer, game designer, and artist who has been making games since high school, accumulating over 13 years of experience in game development. He currently leads Paralives Studio and oversees every aspect of the game's design and production. Alex speaks both English and French.

Education and Early Career

Alex studied at the Ecole de technologie superieure in Montreal. Throughout his career he has worked on a diverse range of projects spanning mobile games, educational titles, and experimental technology demos. His professional experience includes contributing to PewDiePie's Tuber Simulator, the popular mobile idle game published by Outerminds, where he gained firsthand experience shipping a commercially successful product to millions of players.

Alex also worked on demo projects for Unity's Project Tiny, an initiative by Unity Technologies focused on building lightweight, high-performance experiences for web and mobile platforms. In addition, he developed educational games for children and participated in numerous game jams, which sharpened his ability to prototype ideas quickly and iterate under tight deadlines.

Starting Paralives

Alex began working on what would become Paralives in September 2018 as a personal side project. By January 2019 he had committed to full-time development and quit his previous job to focus entirely on the game. As a lifelong fan of simulation and city-building games, he saw Paralives as the ideal opportunity to create the powerful building tools and simulation systems he had always wished existed in the genre.

He publicly announced the project in June 2019 through a brand-new Twitter account, sharing early clips of the Build Mode tools he had been developing. One of his key design inspirations was the road tool in Cities: Skylines. He adapted a similar spline-based approach for placing walls and structures in Paralives, which gives players the freedom to draw curved walls, angled segments, and non-rectangular floor plans without being locked to a rigid grid.

Patreon and Community Funding

Shortly after the public announcement, Alex launched a Patreon page to fund development. He chose Patreon over crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter because Paralives was envisioned as a long-term, evolving project that would benefit from sustained monthly support rather than a single funding round. He was partly inspired by the success that the game Ooblets had found on the service. By November 2023 the Patreon had grown to over 15,000 supporters contributing more than $35,000 per month, making it one of the most successful game-related Patreon campaigns.

Growing the Team

Paralives was a solo project for its first several months, but the success of the Patreon allowed Alex to begin hiring. The first team member, Lea Sorribes (3D Game Artist), joined in October 2019. Additional hires followed, including Anna Thibert (Programmer/Designer) and Christine Gariepy (Marketing Manager), forming the core of Paralives Studio. Over the following years the team continued to expand. As of mid-2025, the studio has grown to approximately 14 to 15 people, all working remotely or from Montreal.

Vision for Paralives

Alex's vision for Paralives centers on giving players genuine creative freedom. The game's grid-free Build Mode, deep customization system, and open-world neighborhood all reflect his belief that life simulation games should empower players rather than constrain them. He has committed to a no-paid-DLC model, stating that as a small independent team without shareholders to please, the revenue from base game sales will be sufficient to fund free content updates for years to come.

Alex regularly engages with the Paralives community through Patreon dev diaries, Discord Q&A sessions, Reddit AMAs, and social media updates. He has emphasized that community feedback directly shapes the game's design through brainstorming sessions, polls, and playtesting programs.

Key Facts