Mobile Mavens

Our panel of experts drawn from all sectors of the mobile gaming industry

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2014 in Review: Monetizer Mavens on Hearthstone, chart stasis, and waiting for the next big change MONETIZER MAVENS Dec 29th, 2014

2014 in Review: Monetizer Mavens on Hearthstone, chart stasis, and waiting for the next big change

Future trends from the remembrance of things past

Eric Seufert UA consultant

Author of Freemium Economics, published by Elsevier in 2014: http://amzn.to/19zaPQB

Owner / Editor at Mobile Dev Memo: http://mobiledevmemo.com

Ethan Levy Monetization design consultant, writer of FamousAspect.com
Jon Walsh President Upsight
Jordan Blackman CEO Bright Black Associates

Jordan Blackman is a lead designer and producer with over ten years of experience designing, producing, and managing hit content for companies like Zynga, Ubisoft, NovaLogic, & Disney.

Over 80 million people have played games that Jordan worked on as either a producer or designer.

Jordan’s credits include Lead Designer on FrontierVille & CastleVille, Senior Producer and Original Concept on CSI: Crime City (Facebook), Producer on Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, and Writer on Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising.

Mark Robinson CEO DeltaDNA

With over 15 years’ data mining experience, Mark co-founded deltaDNA, formerly GamesAnalytics, to unlock big data to drive player understanding, introducing the concept of Player Relationship Management to build better games.

Mark Sorrell Consultant
Michail Katkoff Founder of DeconstructorofFun.com
Mikkel Celinder Owner, AppCrimes.com
Nicholas Lovell F2P consultant Gamesbrief
Tim Rachor Creative Director Evil Grog Games GmbH

Recent articles

2014 in Review: The Mavens choose their Game of the Year MOBILE MAVENS Dec 24th, 2014

2014 in Review: The Mavens choose their Game of the Year

From Hearthstone to Monument Valley, Flappy Bird and Kim K...

Adam Telfer Consultant MobileFreeToPlay

Adam has been in the mobile game industry since 2007, creating games independently. He's since grown into a full 50+ person studio manager.

Recently he's taken a position at Wooga in Berlin to sharpen his design skills and work with the world's best to create amazing, well-crafted products onto the mobile marketplace.

Alexey Sazonov CEO Panzerdog
Dave Castelnuovo Owner Bolt Creative
David MacQueen Executive Director Strategy Analytics
Dmitry Terekhin CEO Nekki

In 2002 Dmitry Terekhin founded Moscow-based Nekki with a focus on creating original, quality gaming content for mobile and social platforms.

The company has released the popular games Shadow Fight, Shadow Fight 2, Vector, and others, earning more than 160 million installs to date.

Dmitry graduated from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute with a degree in mathematics and systematic programming, and received his MBA from the Skolkovo School of Management in 2014.

Harry Holmwood CEO Marvelous Europe

A games programmer before joining Sony’s early PlayStation team in 1994, he then founded developer Pure Entertainment, which IPO’d and launched a free-to-play online gaming service way back in 1999.

He was also a director of pioneering motion gaming startup In2Games, which was sold to a US group in 2008.

Along the way, he’s been a corporate VP, troubleshooter, and non-exec to a variety of companies and investors in and around the games sector.

Harry was European CEO of Marvelous AQL, a Japanese developer and publisher of social, mobile and console games, known for console games like No More Heroes and Harvest Moon, but now highly successful in the free-to-play mobile and web space in Japan and Asia.

Harry is CEO of Magicave.

Jared Steffes Co-founder Muxy
John Ozimek Co-founder Big Games Machine

John is co-founder of PR and marketing company Big Ideas Machine. Also an all-round nice guy...

Kevin Corti Principal Spidershed Media
Oscar Clark Chief Strategy Officer Fundamentally Games

Oscar Clark has been a pioneer in online, mobile, and console social games services since 1998. He is also author of the book, Games As A Service – How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games.

Scott Foe Chief Product Officer Ignited Artists
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
2014 in Review: Mavens on Flappy Bird, fetishisation of the underdog, regulation, end of the gold rush, and moving beyond mobile MOBILE MAVENS Dec 22nd, 2014

2014 in Review: Mavens on Flappy Bird, fetishisation of the underdog, regulation, end of the gold rush, and moving beyond mobile

Future trends from the remembrance of things past

Adam Telfer Consultant MobileFreeToPlay

Adam has been in the mobile game industry since 2007, creating games independently. He's since grown into a full 50+ person studio manager.

Recently he's taken a position at Wooga in Berlin to sharpen his design skills and work with the world's best to create amazing, well-crafted products onto the mobile marketplace.

Alexey Sazonov CEO Panzerdog
Christopher Kassulke CEO HandyGames
Dmitry Terekhin CEO Nekki

In 2002 Dmitry Terekhin founded Moscow-based Nekki with a focus on creating original, quality gaming content for mobile and social platforms.

The company has released the popular games Shadow Fight, Shadow Fight 2, Vector, and others, earning more than 160 million installs to date.

Dmitry graduated from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute with a degree in mathematics and systematic programming, and received his MBA from the Skolkovo School of Management in 2014.

Harry Holmwood CEO Marvelous Europe

A games programmer before joining Sony’s early PlayStation team in 1994, he then founded developer Pure Entertainment, which IPO’d and launched a free-to-play online gaming service way back in 1999.

He was also a director of pioneering motion gaming startup In2Games, which was sold to a US group in 2008.

Along the way, he’s been a corporate VP, troubleshooter, and non-exec to a variety of companies and investors in and around the games sector.

Harry was European CEO of Marvelous AQL, a Japanese developer and publisher of social, mobile and console games, known for console games like No More Heroes and Harvest Moon, but now highly successful in the free-to-play mobile and web space in Japan and Asia.

Harry is CEO of Magicave.

Jas Purewal Lawyer & Partner Purewal & Partners
John Ozimek Co-founder Big Games Machine

John is co-founder of PR and marketing company Big Ideas Machine. Also an all-round nice guy...

Jon Hare Owner Tower Studios

Jon Hare is one of Europe's best known creative directors and game designers with over 10 international number one games to his name and nearly 30 years of experience in the games industry.

Jon co-founded and managed the legendary 1980/90s development company Sensible Software, creating games such as Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder and Wizball to great critical acclaim and commercial success and has also worked in senior posts in two of the UK's biggest games developer/publishers Codemasters and Jagex.

Since 1999 Jon has been one of the top game design and business development consultants in Europe working for many different publishing and development clients.

His own new company Tower Studios specializes in developing, publishing and licensing games on mobile and digital formats enjoying recent international success with the release of Speedball 2 Evolution and Word Explorer across numerous mobile and digital platforms.

Jon has also been a full BAFTA member for over 10 years, serving on the BAFTA Games Committee and is a regular Chairman of juries for BAFTA Games awards, as well as acting in a mentor capacity for both BAFTA and NESTA.

Kevin Corti Principal Spidershed Media
Kyu Lee President (Gamevil USA) Gamevil

Kyu has been at GAMEVIL since the beginning in 2000 and has constantly played a key role in the evolution of Korean mobile gaming, continuously introducing innovation to the world.

Kyu graduated from Seoul National University with a BS in Physics and is currently on the board of advisory at GDC Mobile.

Oscar Clark Chief Strategy Officer Fundamentally Games

Oscar Clark has been a pioneer in online, mobile, and console social games services since 1998. He is also author of the book, Games As A Service – How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games.

Scott Foe Chief Product Officer Ignited Artists
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
2015 will define whether it's boom or bust for wearables and VR WEARABLES MAVENS Dec 15th, 2014

2015 will define whether it's boom or bust for wearables and VR

Where are we with wearables, and how real is virtual reality?

Ana Ribeiro Indie game designer

Game Designer/Developer programmer, artist and cosplayer.
Pixel rift is a reflection of my life experience playing games since I can remember.
This game is my final Project is for my masters degree in Games Design and Development at The National Film & Television School. Back in Brazil I ran my own Pie business, but that's another story.
I almost forgot to report that I also love cooking sushi and no one beat me eating ice cream.

Bertrand Nepveu CEO & Founder Vrvana
Brent R. Blum Practice Lead Accenture Technology

I founded the Wearable Technology Practice at Accenture and lead day-to-day operations. In 18 months, the Wearable Practice has grown to include three Fortune 100 clients and several hundred Community of Practice members. My responsibilities include oversight of R&D, business development, sales, delivery and thought leadership.

I've co-authored a patent on Augmented Reality Safety Glasses, led the development of a ground-breaking Google Glass medical Proof of Concept for Philips (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssldTFWBv3E) and written the whitepaper "Putting Wearables to Work in the Enterprise (http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture-Putting-Wearable-Displays-to-Work-in-the-Enterprise.pdf).

In 2006, I worked as a developer to build a technology solution for a Wearable shirt prototype known as the LifeShirt.

Christopher Kassulke CEO HandyGames
E McNeill Indie game designer

In November 2012, I quit my job, moved across the country, and started working full-time as an indie game designer. My second commercial title was Bombball for Ouya, Mac, and PC. In late 2013, I won the Oculus VR Jam with a prototype called Ciess. Now, I’m working on turning Ciess into a full game called Darknet, set to release alongside the Oculus Rift. It’s by far the largest project I’ve ever worked on.

So far, this whole game development thing has been awesome.

Tomas Mariancik Designer

VR game developer.

Will Luton Founder/CPO Village Studio Games Village Studio
 Indie Mavens on 2014: The year of Threes, 80 Days, GamerGate and the promise of VR to come MOBILE MAVENS Dec 12th, 2014

Indie Mavens on 2014: The year of Threes, 80 Days, GamerGate and the promise of VR to come

It is the time for retrospection

Andy Wallace Developer Andy Wallace
Eline Muijres Producer Game Oven
Jon Ingold Creative Director Inkle Studios

Jon's focus is on content, working from the initial outline, through the development of the authoring tools, to the writing and scripting of final content.

Previously, Jon was a lead designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and before that a secondary school teacher, so he loves to talk. He's a published author of short stories and over a decade's worth of award-winning interactive fiction.

 

Mike Rose PR Manager and Developer Relations Ripstone
Nicolas Barrière Designer Double Stallion
Richard Perrin Owner Locked Door Puzzle
Shawn Allen Founder Nuchallenger
Can promotional events like Red and Black Friday drive monetisation? MOBILE MAVENS Dec 1st, 2014

Can promotional events like Red and Black Friday drive monetisation?

Our Mavens debate charity, sales and engagement

John Ozimek Co-founder Big Games Machine

John is co-founder of PR and marketing company Big Ideas Machine. Also an all-round nice guy...

Oscar Clark Chief Strategy Officer Fundamentally Games

Oscar Clark has been a pioneer in online, mobile, and console social games services since 1998. He is also author of the book, Games As A Service – How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games.

Scott Foe Chief Product Officer Ignited Artists
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
In the app store world, what's the point of publishers? MOBILE MAVENS Nov 27th, 2014

In the app store world, what's the point of publishers?

Our Indie Mavens consider independence

Ahmed Samea CEO / Founder Amidos Games
Christian West Developer Christian West
Jon Ingold Creative Director Inkle Studios

Jon's focus is on content, working from the initial outline, through the development of the authoring tools, to the writing and scripting of final content.

Previously, Jon was a lead designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and before that a secondary school teacher, so he loves to talk. He's a published author of short stories and over a decade's worth of award-winning interactive fiction.

 

Richard Perrin Owner Locked Door Puzzle
Simon Smith CEO / Owner thumbfood
Carrots and sticks: How F2P designers should balance wither and daily rewards MONETIZER MAVENS Nov 26th, 2014

Carrots and sticks: How F2P designers should balance wither and daily rewards

Our Monetizer Mavens talk appointment gaming mechanics

Ethan Levy Monetization design consultant, writer of FamousAspect.com
Jordan Blackman CEO Bright Black Associates

Jordan Blackman is a lead designer and producer with over ten years of experience designing, producing, and managing hit content for companies like Zynga, Ubisoft, NovaLogic, & Disney.

Over 80 million people have played games that Jordan worked on as either a producer or designer.

Jordan’s credits include Lead Designer on FrontierVille & CastleVille, Senior Producer and Original Concept on CSI: Crime City (Facebook), Producer on Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, and Writer on Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising.

Justin Stolzenberg Director, Product & Monetization Flaregames
Kevin Oke F2P Design and Production Consultant
Mark Robinson CEO DeltaDNA

With over 15 years’ data mining experience, Mark co-founded deltaDNA, formerly GamesAnalytics, to unlock big data to drive player understanding, introducing the concept of Player Relationship Management to build better games.

Mark Sorrell Consultant
Michail Katkoff Founder of DeconstructorofFun.com
Mikkel Celinder Owner, AppCrimes.com
Nicholas Lovell F2P consultant Gamesbrief
Tim Rachor Creative Director Evil Grog Games GmbH
Was it okay for ustwo to charge for Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores? MOBILE MAVENS Nov 19th, 2014

Was it okay for ustwo to charge for Monument Valley: Forgotten Shores?

Or should it have been a free release?

Dan Gray Chief Creative Officer Ustwo games
Dave Castelnuovo Owner Bolt Creative
Harry Holmwood CEO Marvelous Europe

A games programmer before joining Sony’s early PlayStation team in 1994, he then founded developer Pure Entertainment, which IPO’d and launched a free-to-play online gaming service way back in 1999.

He was also a director of pioneering motion gaming startup In2Games, which was sold to a US group in 2008.

Along the way, he’s been a corporate VP, troubleshooter, and non-exec to a variety of companies and investors in and around the games sector.

Harry was European CEO of Marvelous AQL, a Japanese developer and publisher of social, mobile and console games, known for console games like No More Heroes and Harvest Moon, but now highly successful in the free-to-play mobile and web space in Japan and Asia.

Harry is CEO of Magicave.

Jani Kahrama Founder Secret Exit
Kevin Corti Principal Spidershed Media
Oscar Clark Chief Strategy Officer Fundamentally Games

Oscar Clark has been a pioneer in online, mobile, and console social games services since 1998. He is also author of the book, Games As A Service – How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games.

Will Luton Founder/CPO Village Studio Games Village Studio
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
Is South Park's criticism of F2P games valid? MOBILE MAVENS Nov 14th, 2014

Is South Park's criticism of F2P games valid?

Indie Mavens debate the situation

Dan Menard CEO Double Stallion
Dave Gilbert CCO Wadjet Eye Games
Hugo Smits Game Designer Goodbye Galaxy Games
Pavel Ahafonau Co-founder Happymagenta
Richard Perrin Owner Locked Door Puzzle
Vadim Starygin Founder Elite Games
Why mobile games have no future on your TV screen MOBILE GAMING MAVENS Nov 11th, 2014

Why mobile games have no future on your TV screen

Industry luminaries talk Apple, Google and Amazon's assault on your TV

Christopher Kassulke CEO HandyGames
Jared Steffes Co-founder Muxy
Kevin Corti Principal Spidershed Media
Oscar Clark Chief Strategy Officer Fundamentally Games

Oscar Clark has been a pioneer in online, mobile, and console social games services since 1998. He is also author of the book, Games As A Service – How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games.

Thomas Nielsen Osao Games
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
It's not about ethics, it's about hate: The games industry closes the door on GamerGate MOBILE MAVENS Nov 3rd, 2014

It's not about ethics, it's about hate: The games industry closes the door on GamerGate

Our Mavens sum up the last few months

Adam Telfer Consultant MobileFreeToPlay

Adam has been in the mobile game industry since 2007, creating games independently. He's since grown into a full 50+ person studio manager.

Recently he's taken a position at Wooga in Berlin to sharpen his design skills and work with the world's best to create amazing, well-crafted products onto the mobile marketplace.

Dan Gray Chief Creative Officer Ustwo games
Dave Castelnuovo Owner Bolt Creative
Harry Holmwood CEO Marvelous Europe

A games programmer before joining Sony’s early PlayStation team in 1994, he then founded developer Pure Entertainment, which IPO’d and launched a free-to-play online gaming service way back in 1999.

He was also a director of pioneering motion gaming startup In2Games, which was sold to a US group in 2008.

Along the way, he’s been a corporate VP, troubleshooter, and non-exec to a variety of companies and investors in and around the games sector.

Harry was European CEO of Marvelous AQL, a Japanese developer and publisher of social, mobile and console games, known for console games like No More Heroes and Harvest Moon, but now highly successful in the free-to-play mobile and web space in Japan and Asia.

Harry is CEO of Magicave.

Kevin Corti Principal Spidershed Media
Patrick Liu Senior Product Owner, Spotify
Scott Foe Chief Product Officer Ignited Artists
Will Luton Founder/CPO Village Studio Games Village Studio
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
On F2P games' moral core, ability to unlock creative freedom and redistribute wealth MONETIZER MAVENS Oct 30th, 2014

On F2P games' moral core, ability to unlock creative freedom and redistribute wealth

Our Monetizer Mavens lead the fightback

Adrian Crook Founder Adrian Crook & Associates
Ben Cousins Vice President, Studios FRVR

Ben is a 15-year veteran of the games industry - he's worked as a senior executive, studio head, project lead, creative director and game designer at companies like DeNA, EA, Sony and Lionhead.

He started working on traditional games, but has been focussed on the free-to-play business model since 2006 - an extremely long time by western standards. During that time He's worked on a total of ten separate free-to-play games across five different platforms reaching over 50 million users.

Dimitar Draganov Director Product BoomBit Games

A game design and monetization analyst with professional gaming background and degrees in Social Sciences, Economics and Probabilities and Statistics, Dimitar also writes the Freemium Game Designs blog.

Eric Seufert UA consultant

Author of Freemium Economics, published by Elsevier in 2014: http://amzn.to/19zaPQB

Owner / Editor at Mobile Dev Memo: http://mobiledevmemo.com

Jon Walsh President Upsight
Mark Robinson CEO DeltaDNA

With over 15 years’ data mining experience, Mark co-founded deltaDNA, formerly GamesAnalytics, to unlock big data to drive player understanding, introducing the concept of Player Relationship Management to build better games.

Mark Sorrell Consultant
Mikkel Celinder Owner, AppCrimes.com
Mitchell Smallman Next Games

Mitchell Smallman is a Product Manager for Rovio Entertainment and a veteran of the free

Nicholas Lovell F2P consultant Gamesbrief
Tom Farrell Marketing director Swrve
VR is cool, but currently lacks commercial viability say our Indie Mavens MOBILE MAVENS Oct 28th, 2014

VR is cool, but currently lacks commercial viability say our Indie Mavens

Show us the retail units!

Jon Ingold Creative Director Inkle Studios

Jon's focus is on content, working from the initial outline, through the development of the authoring tools, to the writing and scripting of final content.

Previously, Jon was a lead designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and before that a secondary school teacher, so he loves to talk. He's a published author of short stories and over a decade's worth of award-winning interactive fiction.

 

Nicolas Barrière Designer Double Stallion
Pavel Ahafonau Co-founder Happymagenta
Richard Perrin Owner Locked Door Puzzle
Shawn Allen Founder Nuchallenger
Vadim Starygin Founder Elite Games
Yann Seznec Founder Lucky Frame
What Unity did next: Industry reacts to Riccitiello appointment MOBILE MAVENS Oct 27th, 2014

What Unity did next: Industry reacts to Riccitiello appointment

Is Unity looking to sell, float or..?

Dave Castelnuovo Owner Bolt Creative
Kevin Corti Principal Spidershed Media
Oscar Clark Chief Strategy Officer Fundamentally Games

Oscar Clark has been a pioneer in online, mobile, and console social games services since 1998. He is also author of the book, Games As A Service – How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games.

Thomas Nielsen Osao Games
William D. Volk Chief Futurist Forward Reality
Retail virtual reality: What does it need, and where the hell is it? WEARABLE MAVENS Oct 22nd, 2014

Retail virtual reality: What does it need, and where the hell is it?

Our Mavens look into the future of consumer VR

Ana Ribeiro Indie game designer

Game Designer/Developer programmer, artist and cosplayer.
Pixel rift is a reflection of my life experience playing games since I can remember.
This game is my final Project is for my masters degree in Games Design and Development at The National Film & Television School. Back in Brazil I ran my own Pie business, but that's another story.
I almost forgot to report that I also love cooking sushi and no one beat me eating ice cream.

E McNeill Indie game designer

In November 2012, I quit my job, moved across the country, and started working full-time as an indie game designer. My second commercial title was Bombball for Ouya, Mac, and PC. In late 2013, I won the Oculus VR Jam with a prototype called Ciess. Now, I’m working on turning Ciess into a full game called Darknet, set to release alongside the Oculus Rift. It’s by far the largest project I’ve ever worked on.

So far, this whole game development thing has been awesome.

Martin Caine Retroburn Games

Senior Programmer at @ticktockgames. Director of @retroburngames. Crafting games for Console, PC, and Mobile.

Scott Harber Owner Sc0tt Games

Sc0tt Games is run by Scott Harber, an eleven-year games industry veteran whose previous credits include The Getaway, Black, Burnout 3, Burnout Revenge, Burnout Paradise, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Need for Speed Rivals, and Battlefield Hardline.

Tipatat Chennavasin VR/AR Developer
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