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2007 Casual Games Summit - FACULTY |
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Daniel founded Sandlot Games and has served as president and CEO since its inception in 2002. Sandlot Games is a premier publisher and developer of entertaining casual games across a variety of platforms. Daniel has over 10 years of content strategy, game development, publishing and production-related experience having successfully launched over 20 game titles with Kesmai Studios, Monolith Productions and WildTangent. Prior to starting Sandlot Games, Daniel held the position of director of product strategy at WildTangent, where he devised and executed a successful online fee-based games business. An accomplished composer, Daniel also writes music for most of the games developed and published by Sandlot Games.
Erik Bethke is the founder of GoPets and currently resides in Seoul. He has been developing games for over 12 years. Previously, he was responsible for overall corporate operations, leading design and business development. Starfleet Command real-time tactical starship simulator one of Taldren's projects. He acted as the lead designer and producer/executive producer throughout the series, including SFC 1, SCF: Neutral Zone, SFC II: Empires at War, SFC: Orion Pirates and Starfleet Command 3. Prior to founding Taldren, Erik worked for both large publishers and small developers. Projects include I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream for Cyberdreams, PlanetNET for MPGNet and Caesars Place Windows 95 for Interplay. Erik is the author of the book Game Development and Production. The book is currently used by the game design departments of at least half a dozen universities and colleges.
Lee Crawford is founder and CEO of Twofish, Inc. a next-generation platform provider for casual, online games. Prior to Twofish, Lee was responsible for the Engineering teams at Yahoo! games, arriving at Yahoo! through the acquisition of Stadeon, a mobile multiplayer technology company he co-founded in 2001. Prior to this Lee was VP of Engineering at Shockwave.com. Lee was at Segasoft Networks from 1998-1999 where he led the Engineering and Operations teams for the Dreamcast Network. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Florida State University.
Jon is an Art Director and veteran member of San Francisco-based Three Rings, developers of massively multi-player games for the mass-market casual audience. Complementing our flagship PUZZLE PIRATES, we launched our second title, BANG! HOWDY, earlier this year.
As Vice President and Executive Producer, Kenny Dinkin oversees the PlayFirst games portfolio, including content acquisition, creative direction, and game production. Kenny brings nearly a decade of success in consumer technology where he has designed, produced and directed design on a wide array of award-winning consumer products and interactive platforms. Prior to joining PlayFirst, Kenny was the worldwide head of product design for The Learning Company/Broderbund, where he was creative lead for a portfolio of premiere children's software brands, including Reader Rabbit, Carmen Sandiego and KidPix as well as licensed properties such as Scooby-Doo, Strawberry Shortcake, Batman, Powerpuff Girls and Arthur. A visual artist, writer, musician, game designer and avid comic book reader, Kenny was also the co-creator of the critically acclaimed, top-selling brand The ClueFinders. Kenny earned a Bachelor's degree in History from Brown University and an M.F.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design.
Chris Early is studio manager for Microsoft Casual Games. A gaming industry veteran, Chris leads Microsoft's Casual Games in expanding Microsoft's casual gaming audience and game experiences across multiple platforms. Microsoft's approach to casual gaming reaches beyond the traditional online segment, tapping into diverse markets that span MSN Games, MSN Messenger, MSN Games for Mobile and Xbox Live Arcade. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris served as chief operating officer of GameSpy and executive vice president and general manager of Mplayer. Chris holds a BA in Economics and International Management from Claremont Men's College.
Brad, co-founder and CTO of PlayFirst, is responsible for setting company-wide technical strategy and driving the creation of its platform and products. Brad has spent the past 25 years participating in the evolution of interactive computer graphics and applications, from Apple II video games to Internet video conferencing. Before founding PlayFirst, Brad was a key contributor to several successful commercial applications including Adobe PageMill, and Macromedia Flash. Brad is also the founder of Uccello Games, a successful game development studio and creator of TRICLOPS, a critically-acclaimed downloadable puzzle game on multiple platforms. Brad earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Justin Everett-Church, Sr. Product Manager for Adobe® Flash® Player, is a long time Flash developer focusing on advergaming for the web, connected applications, and mobile devices. Prior to Adobe, Justin was Flash Platform Manager for Yahoo! and Interactive Director for Blitz Digital Studios. Justin has co-authored a number of books on Flash game development and keeps a blog at http://justin.everett-church.com.
Nick Fortugno is a game designer and game educator. As Director of Game Design at Gamelab, Nick worked on dozens of digital and non-digital game projects, and served as lead designer of the downloadable hit Diner Dash and the political game Ayiti: The Cost of Life. In his academic guise, Nick teaches courses on Game Design and Interactive Narrative in the Design and Technology department of Parsons The New School of Design, and has participated in the creation of game design curricula. Nick is also a co-founder of the Come Out & Play street games festival.
As president and CEO of Her Interactive – the pioneer in interactive entertainment targeted towards female play preferences – Ms. Gaiser is responsible for short- and long-term corporate strategy as well as day-to-day operations of the company. Under her stewardship, Her Interactive has experienced continued growth, increasing revenues more than 377%, and achieving combined sales of more than three million units worldwide for the company’s Nancy Drew PC game franchise. The series has garnered 12 consecutive awards for excellence from the respected Parents’ Choice Gold Awards and for the last two years has been the #1 PC adventure title in units in the US. Prior to joining Her Interactive in 1997, Ms. Gaiser spent eleven years as Editor and Producer of several award-winning documentaries as well as corporate, educational and public service announcements. She then went to Microsoft Corporation as producer of CarPoint, the company’s first online-specific product. Ms. Gaiser also produced the Microsoft’s first online surround video segment, a virtual online chat environment and several promotional ads, one of which received Microsoft’s Consumer Division CD Sampler Award in 1995. She is the recipient of over fifteen Cine Golden Eagle awards, three New York Festival awards and the International Documentary Milano Award. Ms. Gaiser has also contributed works to the International Film & Video Congress in Zurich, and the International Eko Film in Czechoslovakia.
Jim Greer is the founder and CEO of Kongregate, a startup aiming to become the leading user-generated web games community. Wrapping all uploaded Flash games with extensive community features, Kongregate strives to the best place to play games – or to create and profit from them. Jim has been in the games industry since 1991 and his credits include Ultima 7-8 (Origin) and NetStorm: Islands at War (Activision). In 2000 he started his web games career at Shockwave.com and moved to Electronic Arts in 2001, where he remained until founding Kongregate in 2006. As Technical Director for Pogo, he led the game and web development teams for both the free and subscription service, as well as launching development of connected downloadable titles. Jim has spoken at both casual and core game conferences, and contributed to Game Programming Gems III. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Princeton University.
Juan has been involved in the casual games industry even before the casual games term was coined. He is currently focusing on the production of innovative casual games for PC, mobile and consoles. Previously, and as one of the first members of the Yahoo! Games team, Juan was the lead producer for the downloadable games area and community manager of multi player games. In the last year of his tenure at Yahoo!, Juan was the head of Yahoo! Games Studios, producing the first 8 mobile titles the company has released. Juan holds a BFA in Electronic Media from the University of Illinois.
James is responsible for leading expansion into Asia for PopCap Games, a leading casual game developer in the U.S. He also directs PopCap’s new platform initiatives. A co-founder of two other game studios, including one console developer and one casual game developer, James has a broad understanding of the game industry. Beyond his PopCap duties, James is a member of the IGDA Casual Games Steering Committee and is often a featured speaker at industry events worldwide. He is credited on nearly a dozen casual games. He graduated from Harvard with a computer science degree.
Hailing from the jade phoenix dojo of artistry and game design, Tysen Henderson has mastered many forbidden game developer arts. Joining PopCap Games in 2002 as one of its first employees, Tysen has played key roles on many of PopCap's best-selling titles. Most recently, Tysen acted as designer, producer and artist on Bookworm Adventures before shifting into the studio Art Director position. When not eating, dreaming and breathing games, Tysen has been witnessed poking stingrays, firing an automatic rifle out of a helicopter and training his dog Mojo to "transform and roll out" on command.
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Daniel is founder and CEO of Three Rings, a San Francisco developer and operator of massively multi-player online games for the mass-market casual audience. Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy are Three Rings' titles. Prior to Three Rings Daniel consulted on game design, toiled for many years on Middle-earth Online, and co-founded two profitable UK internet startups, Avalon and Sense Internet.
Greg Lanz currently serves as Vice President of Publishing and Sales for iWin, Inc., a leading casual games publisher and online website. Mr. Lanz has over 8 years of game industry experience in sales, distribution, licensing, and online advertising. Before joining iWin, Mr. Lanz spent 2½ years at Trymedia Systems managing North American sales and business development and was a contributing factor in the acquisition of Trymedia by Macrovision (MVSN) in August 2005. Prior to Trymedia, Mr. Lanz held sales and management positions at GameDAILY, Sega Dreamcast, and KPMG’s Channel Management Group.
Alexis Madrigal first started studying the PC and video game industry for a technology hedge fund in San Francisco. When he began his association with DFC Intelligence, he returned to his native Northwest to head DFC's Seattle office. Madrigal's research focuses worldwide on online games and emerging technologies; he has been quoted in a variety of mainstream, business, and industry publications. He graduated from Harvard University, magna cum laude.
Chris is Sun Microsystems' Chief Gaming Officer and a self-proclaimed video game addict. His responsibilities include the development of Sun Microsystems programs, offerings, and vision targeting the electronic entertainment industry. He is responsible for driving an industry-wide movement toward Java’s technology-based game development and directing the development of next generation online game environments. Melissinos' speaking resume includes high profile conferences such as the Consumer Electronics Show, Electronic Entertainment Expo, Game Developers Conference, Harvard's Cyberposium, JavaOne, iHollywood, Java Conference in Milan, Italy, and Ziff-Davis’s Electronic Gaming Summit.
Steve joined Blue Fang, developers of the bestselling Zoo Tycoon games, in late 2006. Steve has been designing games since 1982, starting with the legendary adventure game company, Infocom. His titles there included Planetfall, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a collaboration with Douglas Adams), Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and Zork Zero. He co-founded Boffo Games, where he created Hodj 'n' Podj and The Space Bar. He was Creative Content Director for 5 years for the skill game site WorldWinner.com, where he continues to serve as an advisor. Prior to joining Blue Fang, Steve was Lead Designer for mobile game developer Floodgate, and has also done consulting work for Activision, Blizzard, Disney, EA, Harmonix, Hasbro, Legend, and many others. Steve is a former member of the Board of Directors of the IGDA; he co-founded Post Mortem, the monthly gathering of Boston game developers; and he is a co-organizer of the annual Game Designers Workshop.
Charles Merrin is Vice President of North America Games at RealNetworks. He is responsible for RealArcade's direct-to-consumer, syndication, and wholesale efforts in the Americas, and for the development of the RealArcade platform worldwide. Prior to joining RealNetworks, Charles managed worldwide Sales, Marketing and Product Management efforts for TikGames, an emerging casual game publisher. In this role, he was intimately involved in all aspects of the games development, publishing, and distribution business. Prior to TikGames, Charles helped lead the emergence of Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) as a major force within online computer gaming as Vice President of Sale & Business Development at Trymedia Systems. Charles has been involved in a number of other entrepreneurial e-commerce businesses, including Genealogy.com, Ancestry.com, and Broderbund / The Learning Company. Charles currently serves on the Casual Games Steering Committee for the IGDA Casual Games SIG. He also speaks regularly at industry trade events.
With extensive experience in video games, online games, and mobile entertainment, Robert Nashak is General Manager of Yahoo! Games. Prior to joining Yahoo! Nashak lead creative development at Glu Mobile, was vice president of product development at Acclaim Entertainment and was executive producer at Vivendi Universal Games. He has also held positions as adjunct professor in interactive design at University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television and was a producer at Disney Online.
Mr. Olmert joined MTV Networks in 2005. In his current role, he manages the company's Kids & Family division's business of premium digital content, which includes games, wireless, digital video and online premium services. Prior to joining MTV Networks, Mr. Olmert was the Director of Business Partnerships for Oberon Media, a casual games publisher and distributor. He holds a bachelor degree and a masters degree in interactive telecommunications from New York University.
In his role as Executive Producer for Pogo, Andrew Pedersen oversees the Pogo.com studio, and is intricately involved in the creation of new and innovative products and services for the online casual game player. An industry veteran with over 15 years experience in the entertainment software business, Andrew started working at Electronic Arts' Pogo.com six years ago. During that time, he has been instrumental in the growth of the brand, and driven efforts to launch Pogo.com over multiple platforms and business initiatives, including Pogo's extremely popular Club Pogo subscription gaming service, downloadables, retail distribution and mobile. In the past year alone, Andrew and his team have produced over 35+ new games and 10 new innovative features, including Avatars (called Minis) and Premium Badge Albums. Andrew was also influential in the introduction of badges when Club Pogo launched in July 2003. Prior to joining Pogo.com, Andrew worked for companies including Mattel, Mindscape, Berkeley Systems and Broderbund Software. He has worked on both the marketing and development sides of the business and understands what it takes to create and launch successful products for a wide range of platforms.
Heidi oversees product, channel, and brand marketing for PlayFirst, a leading casual game publisher. With ten years of consumer technology experience, Heidi has specialized in the marketing and distribution of casual games. Prior to her role at PlayFirst, she led marketing for Yahoo! Games and helped the early AtomShockwave founders prove the commercial viability of premium games content for the mass market. Heidi has also worked as a consultant for Microsoft in the US and UK and began her career at interactive and technology agencies. Heidi holds an MBA from Oxford University and a BBA from Emory University.
Ron was one of the three principals behind GameHouse and created some of the first key strategic relationships with MSN, AOL, EA, Shockwave, and RealNetworks. Ultimately, these partnerships became the conduit by which all other casual game developers would distribute their titles. In addition to establishing this early distribution network with the industry’s largest portals, Ron was also responsible for creating the publishing business for GameHouse. He created relationships with the leading casual game developers and negotiated agreements that ranged from acquisition of key titles to pure distribution.
Dan Prigg is Senior Manager of Developer Relations for RealArcade at RealNetworks. Mr. Prigg’s primary responsibilities include identifying content opportunities and securing new developer relationships and distribution rights to games, contract negotiations, game design and production, and general partner account management as well as creating strategic opportunities to enhance the service. Prior to this role, he was Senior Producer of Games, responsible for overseeing third-party licensing for RealArcade. Mr. Prigg is on the Advisory board for the Casual Games Conference as well as several Bellevue Community College programs in Bellevue, Washington.
Dave is a highly-regarded producer and designer of casual games. He currently serves as the founder and general manager of PopCap Games’ San Francisco Studio, where he is producing multiple original games for the downloadable market. Before joining PopCap, Dave spent five years at Pogo.com, EA’s casual gaming group, where he was producer or executive producer on more than two dozen titles. Dave’s achievements at Pogo included conceiving and launching Pogo To Go, Pogo’s downloadable games service, where he led product development and content selection. Dave also served in multiple roles at The Learning Company/Mattel Interactive, including leading the Oregon Trail business and producing and/or designing 10 edutainment titles for PC and Mac.
Don Ryan is the Vice President of Publishing for Oberon Media. He is responsible for Oberon’s cross-platform casual games publishing business worldwide. Prior to joining Oberon, Don was General Manager, Microsoft Game Studios overseeing all of Microsoft casual games efforts (MSN Games, Messenger Games, Xbox Live Arcade) as well as managing two other game studios building PC and Xbox games. Don is credited with spearheading Microsoft’s cross-platform casual gaming initiative as well as being one of the creators of the Xbox Live Arcade service.
James C. Smith has been working in the game industry for 11 years developing "casual" and "core retail" games for PC, Xbox, and Xbox 360. In 1997 he co-founded Reflexive Entertainment where he has primarily worked as a producer/lead programmer. In this role he has led the development teams of many commercially successful causal games including several versions of Big Kahuna Reef and many Ricochet games. James’ ongoing hobby project is tracking the casual games top 10 sales charts. His Game-Sales-Charts.com web site tracks the top 10 lists of all the major casual games portals and provides many unique views into this archive of data.
Nick Stern, a seasoned game art director, has more than 20 years of experience in CD-ROM games, arcade games, digital animation, traditional animation, motion picture effects animation and storyboarding. In his previous position as Art Director at Riverdeep–The Learning Company, Nick was responsible for art direction for all educational brands, including “Reader Rabbit,” “Oregon Trial” and “Carmen Sandiego,” and he was the lead artist and designer on “The Cluefinders” series. At Atari Games, Nick was the lead artist on such hit coin-op games as “PitFighter,” “Guardians of the Hood,” and “Hydra.” Additionally, Nick has contributed to the animation of such movies as “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” “ Willow,” “*batteries not included,” “The Golden Child,” and “Howard the Duck,” and such television shows as “Smurfs” and “Scooby-Doo.” Nick graduated from Ealing School of Art and Photography in London, England with a degree in Animation.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Skunk Studios (www.skunkstudios.com), Margaret Wallace has been on the forefront of interactive entertainment. Whether as creator, designer, producer, or innovator, she has long evangelized the promise that Online Software Distribution holds for both new and more traditional players in the ever-evolving games publishing space. Prior to forming Skunk Studios, Margaret collaborated with a series of top-notch publishers and development teams to make wildly popular hits while at Shockwave.com, PF.Magic, and Mindscape/Red Orb Entertainment. These early associations pointed to the rewarding potential that the online distribution of premium content has for attracting substantial audiences worldwide. These experiences culminated with the establishment of Skunk Studios, a place dedicated to making deep, original, and accessible games that everyone can play and enjoy. As people, our creative, technical and design skills are honed by years of working together on numerous titles. We created Skunk Studios because we share the vision of reaching millions online, selling premium games that both raise the bar on quality and captivate players worldwide. Some of Skunk Studios most recent titles include Spelvin tm, QBzv tm, Word Up tm, Gutterball 3D tm, all playable on www.skunkstudios.com.
Dave Walls is founder and president of Funkitron, Inc, one of the first casual game companies. At Funkitron, Dave has designed such hit games such Scrabble Deluxe, Scrabble Blast, Boggle Supreme, Slingo Deluxe, Poker Superstars II and the just-released Slingo Quest. Before starting Funkitron, Dave Walls was Creative Director at Hasbro Interactive and oversaw the design of such games as Monopoly II, Risk II, Scrabble II, Game of Life, Boggle, Frogger PSX, Centipede PSX, and NERF Arenablast, among others. Funkitron can be found at www.funkitron.com and has a casual game store at www.blueribbongames.com. Dave has also started a wiki dedicated to casual games at www.casualgamewiki.net and invites game makers to add their games to it.
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Originally from Chicago, Jeff was raised by feral robots. Jeff joined PopCap as one of the first employees back in 2002 when the company was first starting to expand. He was the programmer on TyperShark, AstroPop and most recently, Bookworm Adventures where he shared a design credit. Understanding that casual games are played predominantly by people not used to video games, Jeff is adept at making games intuitive and engaging and doesn't shy away from spending as long as it takes to make a top quality product. In addition to his background in the casual gaming industry, Jeff has an avid music interest and ran a techno (not trance) record label for 2 years. He also has eye-lasers.
John is the president/CEO of PlayFirst, the pioneering full-service publisher dedicated to bringing popular games to the mass market. Prior to founding PlayFirst, John spent five years at AtomShockwave (now owned by Viacom) as VP of Games and Product, where he helped build Shockwave.com in to one of the Internet's top games portals and worked with some of the world’s top independent game developers. John served as a founding steering committee member of the IGDA Online Games and Casual Games groups. John has also held posts at SEGA and Anderson Consulting. He holds a bachelor's degree from MIT and a masters' degree from the University of Massachusetts.
Dave is a 15+ year marketing online media veteran with extensive experience in digital media and entertainment. He heads up S hockwave and AddictingGames, where he has overseen 40-50% growth rates for the past two years. Both sites attract audiences of over 19 million users per month and host hundreds of online and downloadable games, creativity applications on other digital media. Prior to his role in online games, Dave led the design and development of the Rhapsody music service as VP of product management at Listen.com and then General Manager of music products at Real Networks, following Real’s acquisition of Listen.com. Rhapsody broke ground in digital music as the first fully licensed music subscription service on the web and went on to become the largest service of its kind with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Prior to his Rhapsody experience, Dave held senior product and marketing roles at online pioneers, CitySearch and DoubleClick. He began his career the ad agency DDB Needham, and also spent several years in product management at beverage company Cadbury Schweppes before jumping into the web business in 1996.
Josh serves as GarageGames' CEO. At GarageGames, he has been the co-architect of the Torque Game Builder and several other technologies and tools. Josh now leads GG's overall threefold mission: to make great games, to help other game developers get audience for their creative products, and to bring game making tools to the masses.
Patrick has a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from the University of Washington. While going through application processes for medical schools, he became fascinated by the making of games, technology and the fledging Internet. It was while taking programming classes that Patrick realized that healing people wasn't nearly as inspiring as entertaining them. Patrick started his career at Humongous Entertainment, the cornerstone of children's edutainment software. The company was established by a handful of former Lucas Arts employees who had a vision of making fun, though educational, games for children. Patrick led several projects as a Senior Producer and during his tenure released many successful games on several platforms for domestic and international markets. By 2005, he was ready to take on yet another platform and new market—casual gaming on the Web. Pat joined Big Fish Games in 2005 as the head of the internal development studio. Since joining, Studios released the hugely successful Mystery Case Files franchise and many other hit games.