audio & slides (39 MB)
This is a panel discussion with some of the major players in the games space. From the big, traditional publishers like Sierra, the new school like PlayFirst and rising stars like Zynga there's no topic off limits in this session. Can we all just get along or will someone dominate? What are the strategic advantages and disadvantages of size and experience? What does history tell us and how will it all shake out in the future?
Delivered at Casual Connect Seattle, July 2008
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Ed Zobrist (email)
Ed Zobrist is president of Sierra Online, a division of Vivendi Games. Sierra Online is the leading third party publisher of titles for Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade, publishes FreeStyle Basketball within the U.S. market and is creating an original casual MMO scheduled for release in 2009.
Prior to joining Vivendi Games, Ed was a founding partner and president of Zono, Inc. and ASAP Games, a consulting and videogame software development company. Among his clients were Electronic Arts, Sony, Sega, Fisher-Price, Universal Studios, PopCap and Disney Interactive. While consulting for Disney Interactive, he led the company’s marketing efforts to achieve three top-10 selling games including the number-one PC hit , Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Previously, Ed held several senior level marketing positions for Mattel including director of Marketing, Hot Wheels and senior marketing manager for the Boy’s Toys division. His experience also includes a role as product manager for the Kenner division of General Mills where he led The Real Ghostbusters product line to more than $100 million in sales.
Ed holds a master’s degree in business administration from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Columbia University.
Mark Pincus (email)
Mark Pincus is a leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and established four successful companies. His latest venture, Zynga Game Network, the largest social gaming network, marries his knowledge of social networks with his desire to create the next mass market video game phenomenon. With a visionary eye, Mark foreshadowed the popularity of social networks when he founded Tribe Networks (tribe.net) in 2003, one of the first online communities and social networking sites. Tribe partnered with major local newspapers and was funded by The Washington Post, Knight Ridder Digital and Mayfield Venture Capital. Four years later, Cisco purchased the core tribe.net assets to provide an initial platform for its digital media services group.
Prior to Tribe, Mark co-founded SupportSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPRT), originally known as Support.com, a provider of service and support automation software. Mark served as chairman and CEO and led the company through its successful IPO to become one of the world’s leading publicly traded enterprise software companies. Mark’s initial Internet success began with Freeloader, the first web-based consumer push information service. Freeloader was acquired seven months after launch by Individual, Inc. for $38 million. Prior to Freeloader, Mark worked in various capacities in venture capital, business development and financial services.
Mark earned his BS from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and an MBA from Harvard Business School. A native of Chicago, Mark has lived in several cities across U.S. including Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Denver and currently resides in San Francisco.
John Welch (email)
John Welch is a co-founder and the President and CEO of PlayFirst, the leading publisher focused exclusively on casual games. One of the most visible figures in the casual games industry today, John is responsible for the strategic direction of the company.
Prior to forming PlayFirst, John spent five years at Shockwave.com (now owned by Viacom) as the company’s Vice President of Games and Product where he drove the product strategy and acquisitions for the site. John helped build Shockwave.com into one of the Internet’s top games portals and discovered some of the top independent game developers in the world.
Before Shockwave, John worked at SEGA where he led the specification effort for the Sega Dreamcast Network. He has also served as a steering committee member of the International Game Developers Association’s(IGDA) Online Games and Casual Games groups. John launched his career as a systems integration consultant at Andersen Consulting, then co-founded his own firm which specialized in enterprise solutions.
John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with Computer Science from MIT and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts.
Don Daglow (email)
Don Daglow has served as president and CEO of Stormfront Studios since founding the company in 1988. At the 2008 Emmy Awards for Technology and Engineering he accepted the award for creating Neverwinter Nights, the first graphical Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), and in 2003 he received the CGE Award for “groundbreaking achievements that shaped the Video Game Industry.” He is one of only three game designers or producers (with id Software’s John Carmack and Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime) to be selected both for a Technical Emmy and to accept an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Achievement Award. Electronic Games has called him “one of the best-known and respected producers in the history of the field.”
Prior to founding Stormfront, Don served as director of Intellivision game development for Mattel, as a producer at Electronic Arts, and as head of the Entertainment and Education division at Broderbund. He designed and programmed the first-ever computer baseball game in 1971 (now recorded in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown), the first mainframe computer role-playing game ("Dungeon" for PDP-10 mainframes, 1975), the first sim game (Intellivision Utopia, 1981) and the first game to use multiple camera angles (Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball, 1983). Don co-designed Computer Game Hall of Fame title Earl Weaver Baseball (1987) as well as the original Neverwinter Nights for AOL (1991-97). He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences in 2003 and again in 2007. He also is a past winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities New Voices playwriting competition. He speaks extensively on the topics of game design, Interactive Media and the video games industry, and has delivered keynote addresses in Canada, Germany, the UK and the United States. Don holds a BA in Writing from Pomona College and an Ed.M. from Claremont Graduate University.
Keith Boesky (email)
Keith Boesky has been active in the content and technology communities as an attorney, a senior executive, an agent and now as principal of Boesky & Company. Boesky & Company closed more intellectual property and game development deals, making more money for its clients, than any other agency in the world. The Company’s clients include The Robert Ludlum Estate, Clive Barker, Spark Unlimited, Liquid Entertainment and GDH. The company also provided guidance regarding the structure of the game industry to Morgan Stanley and Thomas Weisel Partners.
Mr. Boesky draws upon his experience as an attorney in intellectual property and public and private finance where he represented Qualcomm, Presto Studios, Angel Studios, The Neverhood and The Upper Deck Company; as president of Eidos Interactive where he expanded the Tomb Raider franchise from games to other media; and as an agent with International Creative Management where he worked with talent and properties like Peter Jackson’s King Kong and Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia, to bring value to the company’s clients.
