Powered by Passion: How Martin Horstman ’06 Turned Creativity Into a Career

When Martin Horstman ’06 started building out technology to make his own video games during his senior year at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he never imagined it would lead to a successful video game-making platform geared toward children. And now that platform, Pixicade, has gone global. 

As an applied mathematics and statistics major, with a minor in computer science in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Horstman got into game programming because of Professor Richard McKenna, but not for the reasons you may think. He wanted to take McKenna’s game programming class during his junior year but wasn’t eligible because he didn’t have the prerequisites. “I really wanted to learn all about it, so I bought the book they used in class, and I read it end to end to teach myself computer science, data and structure,” Horstman said. “That was really the push that set off my career path in programming.” Horstman was eventually able to take McKenna’s class.

Using those skills, he and his art teacher wife, Alysha, developed Pixicade, a platform that takes drawings and turns them into a video game. “Inside the book, we give you prompts to draw different elements of a video game, such as the main character, hazards, goals, etc.,” said Horstman. “Then you can take a picture of your drawings with your phone or tablet and play the actual game you thought up within seconds.”

Earlier this year, Abacus Brands acquired Pixicade, which will allow the digital game platform to be distributed to a wider market. Horstman will remain chief technology officer and run operations, while his team, made up of other Stony Brook alumni, will continue to develop the software. Horstman sat down with Stony Brook Matters to discuss how his time at Stony Brook shaped his career and what inspired him and Alysha to develop Pixicade.

Why did you choose Stony Brook? What was your experience like?

When I graduated high school, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Since my father was an engineer, I knew that I wanted to do something in the math, science or engineering space. And I knew that Stony Brook offered a lot of opportunities for those fields.

For the first few years, since I was a commuter, I would spend a lot of time in the Student Activities Center or the library finishing my homework in between classes. In my senior year, I joined Professor Yuefan Deng’s molecular dynamics research group. He was building a protein folding software to run on supercomputers, and my task was to build a 3D volumetric FFT [Fast Fourier Transform algorithm] that scales across the supercomputer nodes and the specific supercomputer architecture. I was also a teacher’s assistant for a few classes, which was a lot of fun working with other students. And I participated in Professor McKenna’s Game Programming Competition. In fact, I was a finalist in that competition my senior year.

Did you have any mentors while you were at Stony Brook?

My two biggest mentors were professors Deng and McKenna. As part of Professor Deng’s research group, he took us to China to collaborate with a Korean professor there to help build the protein folding software we were working on. I learned a lot from that experience as well as from Professor Deng and Professor McKenna. I don’t think I would have had the career I have had without that game programming class. It was those experiences that set me off on a solid career path. In fact, within two weeks of graduation, I had a full-time job as a software engineer with a fantastic company, Dell EMC.

How else has Stony Brook shaped your career?

The skills that I developed within my core classes definitely helped prepare me for a career in engineering and programming. I would say one of my favorite classes that pushed me to think outside the box — and helped me grow and start my own company — was a philosophy class. That class taught me logical and critical thinking skills. I would say that Stony Brook gave me the drive to explore and do things on my own. My free time transformed from simply playing video games to trying to build my own game engine. And that’s actually how the Pixicade technology, which we built our company on, ultimately got started. 

What drove you to develop and launch Pixicade?

My wife is an artist and an art teacher. We would always play around with creating video games for fun. I would do the programming, and she would create the artwork. I had always thought that creating games is hard work, and I could probably make it a lot easier. So, what started as a hobby turned into building a game engine that I hoped would grow. Eventually it did. About 10 years into my career, we had this idea to turn drawings into a game. And it was right around the time that my wife noticed the students in her classroom were relying more on their phones and less on thinking creatively. So, we wanted to come up with a way to get these kids thinking outside the box and get them excited about their own ideas. I built the software for Pixicade, and when she tried it in her classroom, it was a hit. And then we just kept growing from there. 

What was the journey like from conception to eventually selling Pixicade to Abacus?

It took about three years from conception of the idea to building the consumer product. At the time, I was working a full-time job during the day at a company called FAST Technology as a software engineer. So, when I got home, I would spend time on developing Pixicade at night. When we finally started selling the actual product, it was me, my wife and a friend doing it from our living room. As it gained popularity and we secured investors, I was able to quit my full-time job and focus solely on Pixicade, which was in 2019. And, of course, when COVID hit, we had to sort of shift our business approach, since stores were closing, and we started selling Pixicade on Amazon. By the end of 2020, we were able to get a large investor, which allowed us to run an advertising campaign. This past summer, we sold Pixicade to Abacus Brands, which manufactures educational and VR toys for children. Abacus will manufacture and sell the products, while my team and I will continue to develop software and run operations. It’s really exciting because we’re signing major licensing deals to build out different versions of Pixicade. And we have some deals in the works to bring Pixicade products to Walmart and other major retailers.

What has been the reaction from kids and parents who use Pixicade?

We spent a lot of time at Maker Faires and direct-to-consumer shows to get the word out about Pixicade. We love seeing kids’ reactions when they realize that they could make and play their own video games within seconds. I remember at one Maker Faire, a kid was so excited about it, and before he tried it his mother rolled her eyes and said, “All he does is play video games.” We let him try it out, and as he watched his game come to life, he had tears in his eyes. He was so proud of what he had done, his mother too. It was such an empowering experience for us knowing that we enabled his dream to come true because that was our goal all along — giving kids a creative outlet to get excited about.

What advice do you have for students?

Pursue work that genuinely excites you — passion gives you an edge, especially when others are just as driven. Starting a business takes grit, patience and resilience; rejection is part of the journey, but belief in your vision, backed by data and persistence, can turn a few yeses into real momentum. It’s a demanding path, often requiring late nights and personal sacrifice, but with support, preparation and unwavering commitment, it’s possible to build something meaningful.

-Christine McGrath