Introducing our first speakers for the inaugural GamesBeat Summit May 5-May 6

We’re pleased to introduce our first two speakers for the first-ever GamesBeat Summit, an event that will be held on May 5 and May 6 at the scenic Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, Calif. This event will be all about the global business of gaming, which is expected to grow from $70 billion in 2014 to $100 billion by 2018, according to Digi-Capital. We’ve designed it to be a more intimate experience for the leaders of the gaming world.

Our goal is to make GamesBeat Summit the best event that brings together 180 gaming executives from all segments of the gaming platform ecosystem to develop a blueprint for the industry’s expansion in 2015 and beyond.

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Our speakers include David Haddad, the executive vice president and general manager of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment; and Peter Levin, the president of interactive media and games at Lionsgate. Yes, we’re starting out with the game makers from Hollywood. Warner Bros. has become a huge player in games with hits like the award-winning Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor to the Batman: Arkham series. Warner Bros. has been making games for decades, and it is the most successful example of the marriage of movies and games in entertainment. Haddad’s task is to lead Warner further into the digital gaming era.

Haddad has 25 years of online, entertainment, and game experience. Before being named head of the game group in January, he was previous head of publishing operations at Warner Bros.’ game division. He also was an executive at Activision Blizzard, Sierra Online, Mattel, and Disney.

Our second speaker, Levin, represents the upstart studio that has created movies like The Hunger Games and Divergent. Lionsgate is new to games, and it has begun investing in game studios and other kinds of alliances with game companies around the globe. We expect to be able to learn a lot about the games business from both of our speakers, and draw more out of them through question and answer.

Lionsgate appointed Levin as its the first head of gaming in April 2014. He previously served as cofounder of Nerdist Industries, a multiplatform entertainment channel. He was also an executive adviser to Japanese media mogul Yoshimoto Kogyo. He invested in Rovio Entertainment, the maker of the Angry Birds franchise. He started his career as a corporate adviser at Creative Artists Agency, and he worked in the corporate and strategic planning groups at Disney. At Lynx Technologies, he invested in early stage companies such as Applied Semantics (sold to Google), Gamespy Industries (sold to IGN), Ask.com (sold to IAC), and Atom Entertainment (sold to Viacom).

Game publishers find that their customers are increasingly international and on the move. The challenge for game makers in 2015 will be to create great gaming experiences that can appeal to audiences around the globe — and to then nurture these audiences to maintain their loyalty. The event is modeled after our Mobile Summit, which just concluded for the sixth year in a row at Cavallo Point.

New platforms from Amazon, Google, and Apple are rising to the global stage — clashing with established ecosystems of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, but also emerging platforms in China, such as Tencent/WeChat and Alibaba gaming platform. Meanwhile, entirely new platforms like virtual reality are taking shape, and large consumer companies all over are considering games — or at least gamification — as areas where they can make money.

Our GamesBeat Summit will attract innovative game creators and business people who are trying to bridge these trends — innovating with games, attracting wide audiences, while also making money. We want the Summit to be one of the most important gatherings in the gaming industry, featuring an intimate environment and great networking.

Attendees can participate in lively discussions via a series of small working groups designed to unlock greater opportunity for the gaming industry as a whole. In a separate event, we’ll do our larger GamesBeat 2015 event later this year, Oct. 13-14, in San Francisco.

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To request an invite, please click on this link.

Our advisers include:

• Riccardo Zacconi, CEO and cofounder of King Digital Entertainment
• Rick Thompson, partner at Signia Venture Partners
• Walter Driver, cofounder and CEO of Scopely
• Jay Eum, managing director of Translink Capital
• Peter Vesterbacka, chief marketing officer at Rovio Entertainment
• Reinout te Brake, CEO of GetSocial
• Sunny Dhillon, principal at Signia Venture Partners
• John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies
• Phil Sanderson, managing director at IDG Ventures
• Terence Fung, chief strategy officer of Storm8
• Dan Morris, director of game partnerships at Facebook
• Keith Boesky, principal at Boesky & Co.
• Michael Chang, managing director at Mavent Partners
• James Hursthouse, CEO of Roadhouse Interactive
• Michael Metzger, principal at Mesa Global