2013 Mentors
Elicia Basoli – Communications/PR Consultant
Elicia has 10 years of PR, marketing and events experience under her belt. Born and raised in Massachusetts, she is an avid supporter of the games business in the New England area. She sits on the steering committee of the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Games Circle, the Boston Festival of Indie Games, and also works with the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute. Elicia has helped to promote numerous games and the people that make them from companies such as Turbine / Warner Bros., Disruptor Beam, Demiurge Studios, Disney Interactive Media Group, gamerDNA, Wizards of the Coast and Upper Deck Entertainment.
Matt Durgavich – Demiurge Studios
Matt is a generalist programmer, with a focus on systems such as networking and graphics. A veteran programmer both inside and outside of the games industry, Matt is currently Senior Programmer at Demiurge Studios and working on an unannounced title for consoles, mobiles, and the web. Previously he worked with Game Show Network (GSN) focusing on casual games, and Rockstar New England, where he helped ship Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3.
Robert Ferrari – Bare Tree Media
Robert Ferrari serves as CEO and Founder of Bare Tree Media, a global producer and publisher of branded interactive entertainment based in Boston. With a mission to engage fan-based communities through branded entertainment, Bare Tree Media’s digital portfolio consists of well-known licensed properties such as Hallmark’s Hoops & Yoyo ™, Benton Art’s It’s Happy Bunny™, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty™, Garfield ™, The Three Stooges ™, Domo ™ and others. The company produces content across various platforms such as online games, mobile apps, social games, and internet enabled console and TV devices.
Robert previously served as VP Global Publishing and Business Development at Sanrio Digital based in Hong Kong. He led the global business strategy, marketing and distribution for online games, mobile apps, social games and console titles based on the Hello Kitty brand. Prior to Sanrio Digital, Robert was VP Global Business Development at Turbine, a leading developer and digital publisher of massively multiplayer online games, such as The Lord of the Rings Online™, Dungeons & Dragons Online™ and Asheron’s Call®.
Robert also serves on the board of MIT New England Game Circle, is an advisor to MassDiGi, MIT Business in Games conference, and Interactive Ontario. He is an active industry speaker having been featured at conferences such as the Game Developers Conference, LOG-in, Engage, LA Games Conference, CES and Digital Hollywood.
Eitan Glinert – Fire Hose Games
Eitan Glinert is the founder of Fire Hose Games, the Boston based game studio behind Slam Bolt Scrappers and Go Home Dinosaurs. He did graduate research at MIT on highly usable and accessible video game interfaces. He is especially impressed that you’re reading this, and can’t wait to play your game.
Ichiro Lambe – Dejobaan Games
Ichiro is Founder and President of Dejobaan Games, LLC, an independent Boston-area game development studio. He has worked in the industry since 1993, co-founding Worlds Apart Productions (later Sony Online Entertainment Denver) in 1995 and Dejobaan Games in 1999. At Dejobaan, he’s led development on the studio’s 16 titles, including the award-winning ”A Reckless Disregard for Gravity” and the now-in-progress “Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby” (no babies harmed), “Monster Loves You!” (it does), and “Drunken Robot Pornography” (the cleanest game on the Internet). Most recently, Metacritic named his 2012 title, (Force = Mass x Acceleration) the #10 top rated iOS title of the year.
Elliott Mitchell – Vermont Digital Arts
Elliott Mitchell is an artistic entrepreneur, maker of games, educator and founder of Vermont Digital Arts based in southern Vermont and Cambridge, MA. Elliott’s primary goal is to create new groundbreaking games that traverse media, disciplines and cultures.
Elliott’s passions include game design, 3D art, filmmaking, production pipelines, teaching, mentoring, networking and living close to the land with his family in Vermont.
Elliott is also an active member of the Boston area game development scene. Elliott co-founded two Boston based groups – The Boston Unity Group (BUG) and the North East Digital Artists Group (NEDAG). Elliott is an active member in the Boston Indies, the Mass Technology Leadership Council, Mass DiGI, MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Games & Entertainment Circle, Boston IGDA Chapter and Boston Game Jams. As of late, Elliott is a new member of the Boston Indie Game Collective.
Jay Piette – Turbine / Warner Bros.
Jay grew up playing many, many computer and video games in nearby Smithfield, Rhode Island. After attending the University of Rhode Island, he landed a TV Production internship at Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet network in Bethesda, Maryland. But still, gaming called! Jay got his start in the Game Industry in 1997 working at Discovery Channel Multimedia. After having shipped what should be anyone’s limit on edutainment titles, in 1998 he moved on to manage the QA Team at online gaming pioneer Kesmai in Charlottesville, Virginia. Kesmai was acquired by Electronic Arts a year and a half later. Over his 6 years at Kesmai/EA, Jay served as QA Manager for such projects as The Sims Online, Online Game Web Portal EA.com, Air Warrior 3, Aliens Online, Majestic, Legends of Kesmai and many other online games. In 2003, Jay returned to his old stomping grounds of New England to take on the role of Director of Quality Assurance at Turbine. In his ten years at Turbine/WB Games, Jay has led the QA teams responsible for The Lord of the Rings Online™, Dungeons and Dragons Online®, Asheron’s Call® 1 and 2, Expansion Packs, in-house Billing System Infrastructure, Turbine’s transition to a free-to-play model and more game content updates than he can still count.
In his spare time Jay enjoys, shockingly, playing tons of video games! Although he owns many consoles past and present, he’s quite insistent that PC gaming will never die. He also frequents the Boston club scene, enjoys watching/attending Red Sox games and is always willing to debate why Star Wars is better than your favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy story.
Jon Radoff – Disruptor Beam
Jon Radoff is an entrepreneur focused on the intersection of the Internet, entertainment and social communities. In 1992, he started NovaLink, an online game publisher that created Legends of Future Past, distributed commercially on the CompuServe network. Legends became one of the first independent, commercial game products on the Internet. In 1997, Jon founded Eprise, the creator of a content management system that was a forerunner of modern blog and wiki technology. At Eprise, Jon raised venture capital, established product strategy and recruited a management team that succeeded in taking Eprise into Fortune 500 customers, culminating in a public offering on NASDAQ in 2000. In 2006, Jon started GamerDNA, a venture-capital funded social media company that built products driven by real-time gamer behavior. GamerDNA’s advertising product reached over 10 million unique users per month and counted top-tier game publishers including Blizzard/Activision, Electronic Arts, Namco and Turbine amongst its customers. GamerDNA merged with Crispy Gamer in 2009.
Jon’s new startup, Disruptor Beam, is a game company that transports the fans of beloved literary and television series into the worlds they love. The company’s goal is to disrupt the current social game landscape by leveraging Jon’s experience with software platforms, analytics and online communities. Disruptor Beam is currently developing the first-ever social game based on the hugely popular Game of Thrones franchise, Game of Thrones Ascent.
Alex Schwartz – Owlchemy Labs
Alex Schwartz is the Founder and CEO of Boston-based Owlchemy Labs, a mobile-focused game development studio. Creators of the hit iOS, Mac, and PC title ‘Snuggle Truck’, as well as the hilarious lumberjacking saga ‘Jack Lumber’, Owlchemy Labs creates innovative downloadable cross-platform games using the Unity game engine. As “Chief Scientist” of the labs, Alex handles a bit of the design, a bit of the tech, a bit of the visual direction, most of the marketing / PR / business, and all of the janitorial duties.
Prior to forming Owlchemy, Alex co-founded the Boston Unity Group and played an active role in the East Coast game development scene, participating in the development of AAA console titles and speaking at various conferences on both technical and business-related topics.
Nick Sherman – Gamesville (Lycos)
Nick Sherman is the Lead Artist at Gamesville, a casual gaming portal and a part of the Lycos Network, based in the Boston-area. Since being there, he has created the art, animation, and design for a handful of casual Flash games on Gamesville.com from bingo and keno to card and puzzle games, as well as illustrating zombies for the iOS app Weather Zombie. Nick received his degree from Fitchburg State University in Communication Media with a concentration in Graphic Design. Prior to Gamesville he interned at FableVision Studios where he was then contracted to create add-on packs for their children’s writing software Stationery Studio.
Courtney Stanton – Women in Games Boston
Courtney Stanton is a game designer and project manager living and working in Boston, MA. She has worked in the past on games for PC, mobile, social, and browsers and is the founder of Women in Games Boston. She lives on the internet at SuperOpinionated.com and on Twitter as @q0rt.
Tarrnie Williams – Roadhouse Interactive
Tarrnie has been leading product innovation and creative teams in the interactive entertainment industry for over twenty years on games that have generated over $1.5 billion in retail sales covering almost every generation of consoles and the PC. His career includes stints at THQ as studio head of Relic Entertainment and at Electronic Arts in both LA and Vancouver in a variety of roles. He has overseen such hit franchises as Need For Speed, Medal of Honor, NBA Live, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, and EA SPORTS Active.
Passionate about innovation and creativity in games, as well as bringing the joy of interactive to an ever widening audience, Tarrnie now serves as President and Studio Head of Roadhouse Interactive Ltd., an online production company focused on creating the next generation of online, mobile and social games such as Family Guy Online and MechWarrior Tactics.
David Wingrove – Golden Hammer Software
David Wingrove co-founded Golden Hammer Software in 2009 to release Big Mountain Snowboarding for iPhone. He has since worked on porting to OSX, Blackberry, Android, and Windows 8, and also released Trick Shot Bowling, Scribble Worm, and Castle Dungeon. While working at Blue Fang Games, he was a programmer on Zoo Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon 2, and World of Zoo. Areas of expertise include C++, graphics programming, cross-platform development, and ad-supported apps. As part of a small team he works on a little of everything including art, design, and sound.
