It’s about time I told you about some of the excellent speakers we have lined up for GamesBeat Summit 2025, which will take place on May 19 to May 20 at the Marriott Marina del Rey in Los Angeles.
Here’s a limited-time offer for buy one, get one free (BOGO) tickets for the event.
We’re returning to Los Angeles, the No. 1 city in the world for game jobs, at a time when the industry has had a tough time, as chronicled by observers like Matthew Ball. The industry went through 30 months of layoffs and studio closures, with daylight finally arriving in January when hiring started catching up with firing at game companies (per Amir Satvat‘s data). And just as things were looking up, we’ve got a self-inflicted tariff war and stock market crash — just in time to throw doubt into Nintendo’s Switch 2 launch.
Our hope is that the game industry will find its way back to growth, and we’ve collected some great minds to speak about the issues before us. How do we navigate our way back to balanced growth with better revenues, more jobs and continuous innovation?
We will cover topics including monetizing retention, AI tools, evolving live services, mental health in games, motion gaming’s evolution, listening to players, ad-supported cloud gaming, ageism in gaming, maintaining thriving game communities, raising money, investing in games, mobile gaming strategy, political/issue games and of course the state of games in various sessions.
And we will have our latest Women in Gaming Breakfast (moderated by Rachel Kaser of GamesBeat) and our first Accessibility in Gaming lunch.
Here’s a whole bunch of our speakers for our 2025 flagship event, and there’s more on the way.
GamesBeat Summit 2025 speakers
They include Mitch Lasky, partner at Benchmark Capital (former general partner) and co-host of the GameCraft podcast; Amir Satvat, game job champion and director of business development at Tencent; Tian Xiao, head of North America partnerships at Tencent; Matthew Bromberg, CEO of Unity; Jen MacLean, CEO of Dragon Snacks Games; Adam Boyes, CEO of Vivrato; Susanna Pollack, president of Games for Change; Andre Swanston, CEO of Phynd; Tom Kang, president of Nex Playground (formerly of Walmart); Jesse Meschuk of Savvy Games Group; Richard Browne of Blue Moon Production Company;
Dino Patti, CEO of Coherence and founder of Jumpship; Ben Kvalo, CEO of Midwest Games; Louis Gresham, CEO of Hydratac; Dan Bunting, investor at 1AM Gaming; Craig Abrahams, president and CFO of Playtika; Zachary Rozga of Thece; Matei Trebien of Voice Patrol; Ryan Jacobson, general manager of Marvel Strike Force at Scopely; Glenn Ginsburg, president of QYOU Media; Anna Ivanko, senior media
manager of global marketing at Ubisoft; Adam Waheed; Garrett Young, CEO of Empty Vessel; Jennifer Jo Day of Blair Durkee, associate director of gaming at GLAAD; Catalin Alexandru, game economist and author of the Intrinsic Economies newsletter; Jennifer Jo of Open Ocean Games; Justin Woodward, cofounder of the Media Indie Exchange (MIX); Aaron Farr, CEO of Jam & Tea Studios; Tsahi Liberman, chief business officer at C1 Innovations; Ashwin Raghuraman at AWS; Sarah Elmaleh, Zeke Alton and Andi Norris of the Screen Actors Guild; myself and GamesBeat’s own Rachel Kaser.
We also have some stalwart supporters of the GamesBeat community coming back in various speaking roles. These include Eric Goldberg of Playable Worlds, Sarah Parvini of the Associated Press, Michael Metzger of Drake Star Partners; Sheloman Byrd, CEO of Open Ocean Games; Stephen Machuga, founder of Stack Up; Rich Vogel, CEO of T-Minus Zero Entertainment; Jeonghee JJ Jin, CEO of NC America; Karla Reyes, CEO of Anima Interactive; Susanna Pollack, president of Games for Change and more.
GamesBeat 2025 emcees
Our crew of emcees includes Susanna Pollack of Games for Change, Garrett Young of Empty Vessel, Albert Lai of Parallelz, Chris Melissinos of AWS, Tadhg Kelly of Whenere, Shirley Lin of Blueberry AI, Ashley Trick of Kismet Capital, Desirée Rincón of Digital Fortress and Leah Hardy of Byowave.
GamesBeat 2025 advisers
I’d like to thank our advisers for the event. They include Adam Boyes of Vivrato; Jace Hall of Twin Galaxies; Jeff Karp; Ed Lu of Fandom; Mike Romo of DDM; Charmaine Duff of Women Led Games; Don Daglow of the Strong Museum of Play; Tammy McDonald; Eric Goldberg of Playable Worlds; Noah Falstein of the Inspiracy; Peter Levin of Griffin Gaming Partners; Perrin Kaplan of Zebra Partners; Michael Metzger of
Drake Star Partners; Elizabeth Olson; David B. Hoppe of Gamma Law; Mike Vorhaus of Vorhaus Advisers; Zsuzsa James; Kat Jones of Motiv PR; Wanda Meloni; Wanda Meloni; Lisa Cosmas Hanson of Niko Partners; Sibel Sunar of Fortyseven PR; Michael Chang of Mavent Partners; and Tara Bruno of Tara Bruno PR.
And our sponsors include Xsolla, Scopely, Tencent, Entertainment Software Association, Modulate, AWS for Games, Google Cloud, Lightspeed and VoicePatrol. Don’t be shy about contacting us if you’d like to sponsor. Send an email to sales@venturebeat.com.
Thank you to our hard-working staff including Gina Joseph, David Glass, Cathy Simpson, Mike Minotti, Rachel Kaser, Nicole Patricio, Marta Ordeig, Karen Horn, Matt Marshall, Mike Rosinski, Todd Bokin, Deb Sharp, Marc Gartenberg, Gloria Lukos, Alyssa Hill, Brian Thurman, and many others.