Seattle may be well known as a creative incubator for the game industry, but Renton is also on the map as home to innovative game companies too. Lone Shark Game Design Studio has had success in Renton and boasts clients like Disney, Sony, Lucasfilm and Microsoft, to name a few.

President and CEO Mike Selinker in 10 years has turned a hobby project into a thriving business.

He started Lone Shark Game Design Studio with friend James Ernest in October 2003. Based in Renton, Selinker now has a core team of seven full-time staffers, other offices and locations in Seattle and a creative network of contributors who span the country and abroad.

Previously, Selinker was a Wizards of the Coast creative director and lead designer for eight years. When he left that Renton firm, he started Lone Shark, thinking it would be lucky to just get a couple years out of his small business venture.

“We ended up being the company that can do everything, which is not where we intended to be,” Selinker said. “But now we’re the company people call when they’ve gotten their project in a bit of a jam or they’re not sure which way to go.”

The busy entrepreneur shared some insight on his company in an interview Monday at Common Ground Coffee & Cupcakes in downtown Renton.

When he left Wizards of the Coast, Selinker knew how to create card games, board games and role-playing games. Lone Shark started creating more interesting and bigger versions of those types of games, he said. Then the company was asked to work on online and computer games, launch company events and all sorts of other projects. Fundamentally, Lone Shark’s primary activities are making board and card games, puzzles, puzzle events and puzzle books.

“We host events that take place all over the place, whether they are in large conventions, or in the community, or at company, corporation headquarters,” Selinker said.

For four years, Lone Shark has also hosted the Renton River Days Rubber Duck scavenger hunt throughout the city. Selinker’s wife Evon came up with the idea.

“When we’re at River Days, people from the town we live in tell us how much they like us, which is really great,” Selinker said. “That’s a great way to feel after doing a project, is to have your fellow community members tell us that they think you did something good. So it (the duck hunt) is a great project and we love doing it.”

Staff at Lone Shark is excited about the company’s latest project that’s due for release later this year. It’s the puzzle book “The Maze of Games.” The pages of the book are out of order and readers must solve the puzzles to work their way through the book. The project included the work of 35 contributors from all over the U.S. and England, including work by Will Shortz, New York Times crossword puzzle editor.

“The great thing about having this company is I can work with whoever I want on whatever I want them to do, assuming they’re interested,” Selinker said.

Lone Shark has a big Rolodex of contacts with a thousand different skills to do everything from creating and building games to staffing events and conventions, the business owner said.

“It’s just exciting to be right in the center of the time when games are bigger than sports, bigger than movies, bigger than rock music,” Selinker said. “Everybody plays something.”

He remembers when the game industry was a small portion of the economy and a very niche audience. Today he notices that the top-selling product on Amazon is a game.

“It used to be mostly men who played games; now it’s more women than men who play games,” Selinker said. “It used to be thought of as a kid thing; more adults than kids play games (now).”

Lone Shark is “pretty unique,” said Selinker, and has formed partnerships with freelancers based on his efforts to be socially active all the time. He’s met his business partners through his hobbies, events, conventions in the game industry and gotten to know them personally over time.

Over Labor Day Weekend, Lone Shark Game Design Studio will host a lot of events at the Penny Arcade Expo or PAX 2013. Selinker is a curator at PAX DEV, the developer convention for PAX.

For more information about Lone Shark Game Design Studio, visit www.lonesharkgames.com.

Tracey Compton can be reached at 425-455-3484, ext. 5052.