Hatching dragons: Aussie game tops Apple's augmented reality apps

"In the future, everyone will be walking around with virtual pets," Gerry Sakkas says.

Sakkas is the founder and chief executive of mobile gaming start-up PlaySide Studios and is already responsible for thousands of those pets through PlaySide Studio's hit game AR Dragon.

AR Dragon uses augmented reality, which overlays images, videos and games on the real world to enable users to hatch, train and care for their own virtual baby dragon.

It's the most downloaded augmented reality game of the 2.2 million apps on Apple's app store, which includes more than half a million games. While AR Dragon is free to download, it makes money through users buying additional accessories for their virtual dragons.

Sakkas started PlaySide Studios in 2012 after the gaming company he was working for closed down. He's grown the business to a staff of 50 and turnover of more than $8 million.

"Every year we have been growing at almost a double multiple," he says. "I knew I had to do something to get out of being poor, I knew I didn't want to do the same thing as my parents, so I literally just worked my arse off. I was here for every second in the beginning, we were here at 8am and leaving at 12am for every day for the first year. We just hustled before entrepreneurship was even a thing."

Sakkas says he's grown Playside Studios by always looking to the future and that future is augmented reality.

"I see a future where everyone's wearing glasses or some form of thing on your eye that will allow you to see augmented reality all the time," Sakkas says. "Right now, we look a lot at our mobile phones and we think that it's perfect ... but every time we get a message we have to pull it out of our pocket and look at it. I see a future where we can have this conversation where things will be popping up and telling us things." Read more