
Snap Games Grows, Hiring Two New Leadership Positions
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
Santa Monica-based Snap continues to grow its gaming operation, announcing two new leadership hires for the division on Thursday.
Panayoti (Pany) Haritatos will be Snap's head of games. He will report to Will Wu, the company's director of product. Haritatos was most recently chief operating officer of game publisher and platform Kongregate, and was previously an executive at mobile games titan Zynga. He will be responsible for Snap's gaming strategy and expanding its gaming content, working across the company's product, engineering and partnership teams, as well as with external game developers.
Jessica Shetty is now head of games partnerships, North America. She will report to John Imah, Snap's head of games and entertainment partnerships. Most recently Shetty was head of mobile gaming partnerships, North America at Facebook, where she was a founding member of the company's Instant Games platform team. Her responsibilities will include Snap's gaming partner strategy and expanding Snap's developer ecosystem.
Jessica Shetty (L) and Panayoti (Pany) Haritatos (R) will join Snap's gaming division's leadership team.
In 2019, Snap introduced Snap Games to allow Snapchatters to play games – whether developed by Snap or external partners – directly in the app. The following year, the company highlighted its software development kit's integration with other applications, including functionality that allows users to bring their Bitmoji characters into other publishers' games. (Snap acquired Bitmoji in 2016, reportedly for $64.2 million.)
Over 100 million Snapchat users have played Snap's games, the company reports. Snap has 238 million daily active users, most of them young.
The new hires will seek to build on the company's gaming momentum.
Mobile gaming is the largest portion of the $150 billion+ gaming industry, which is expected to surpass $200 billion by 2023.
- Snap Beats Expectations, Up 17% Year Over Year - dot.LA ›
- Snap Surges as Earnings Beat Expectations, - dot.LA ›
- Snap Partners with Headspace For Meditation Tools - dot.LA ›
- Bitmoji Paint, Snap’s Latest Game - dot.LA ›
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
Subscribe to our newsletter to catch every headline.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are a novel form of ownership that could rejigger the financial landscape for creators. Even if the market for some of them proves frothy, this blockchain-based technology presents a unique way for artists to make money and engage their fans. With experimentation already underway, the gates are open for them to do what they do best: get creative.
Illmind is auctioning 10 NFTs linked to audio files he created that owners can use royalty free.
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
dot.LA VC Sentiment Survey: Lots of Hiring, a Partial Return to Offices but Hold Off on Conferences
Thanks to a sizzling startup scene and a receding pandemic, Los Angeles investors are feeling more optimistic this spring than they did at the end of last year.
They are expecting robust hiring, increasing valuations and a quick recovery of the U.S. economy, according to the dot.LA VC Sentiment Survey, a quarterly poll of the top VCs in Los Angeles.
Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.