We’re thrilled to announce the return of GamesBeat Summit Subsequent, hosted in San Francisco this October, the place we’ll discover the theme of “Taking part in the Edge.” Apply to talk here and study extra about sponsorship alternatives here.
Lightspeed Venture Partners and GamesBeat—along with industry-leading judges—have launched Game Changers, an annual prime sport startup checklist to showcase rising, modern gaming and interactive expertise firms.
Winners of the inaugural Sport Changers program will obtain widespread media protection by means of GamesBeat, entry to an unique rising Sport Changers group, and 1:1 mentoring and interactions with {industry} leaders throughout gaming, expertise, and interactive media. Every class can even see one standout winner that may obtain a particular prize.
Award honorees can take pleasure in all these advantages freed from cost and won’t hand over fairness of their firm within the course of. There’s additionally no requirement for startup representatives to look in particular person.
Apply or nominate right now
Peer nominations and self-submissions for Sport Changers 2024 are actually open online.
Gaming {industry} professionals can nominate startups or apply on behalf of their very own firm. The deadline for all submissions is Sunday, October 1, 2023.
Winners can be introduced in October and highlighted on the GamesBeat Summit Subsequent convention on October 24 – 25 in San Francisco.
Supported by an unparalleled group of {industry} leaders
To supply candidates for Sport Changers, GamesBeat writers and Lightspeed traders comb by means of the web submissions, and supply a narrowed checklist of candidates to a panel of impartial knowledgeable judges. Judges will then vote on the ultimate candidates in a single spherical of voting, with tiebreakers as wanted. And who higher to crown tomorrow’s leaders than right now’s?
That’s why the judging panel consists of main gaming executives and operators with senior management expertise throughout Activision Blizzard, Amazon, Animoca, ByteDance, DeepMind, Disney Accelerator, Google, Epic Video games, Digital Arts, Goldman Sachs, Kabam, Krafton, McKinsey & Co., Meta, Microsoft, Niantic, Oculus, Riot Video games, Roblox, Stanford College, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, TikTok, Unity, Valve, Xbox, YouTube Gaming, Zynga, and others.
Sport Changers judges embrace right now’s chiefs in gaming and interactive media.
- Anna Candy, Chief Govt Officer of Unhealthy Robotic Video games
- Ben Feder, Managing Accomplice of Tirta Ventures
- Bonnie Rosen, Normal Supervisor of Disney Accelerator
- Danny Lange, Vice President of BI & AI of Google
- Dean Takahashi, Lead Author of GamesBeat
- Holly Liu, Co-Founding father of Kabam
- John Hanke, Chief Govt Officer of Niantic
- John Thompson, Fr. Chairman of Microsoft
- Ken Wee, Chief Technique Officer of Activision Blizzard
- Kylan Gibbs, Chief Product Officer of Inworld AI
- Leo Olebe, International Head of Gaming at YouTube
- Manuel Bronstein, Chief Product Officer at Roblox
- Maria Park, Vice President of Company Improvement at Krafton
- Michael Chow, Chief Govt Officer at The Believer Firm
- Moritz Baier-Lentz, Accomplice & Head of Gaming at Lightspeed
- Ryan Wyatt, Fr. President at Polygon Labs
- V Pappas, Fr. Chief Working Officer at TikTok
Guiding rules
Sport Changers is a recognition of the explosion of sport startups and sport enterprise funding funds in recent times, even within the midst of adverse financial occasions. We need to draw consideration to the businesses that deserve recognition and higher attain, and so we hope to faucet the mixed analytical and journalistic attain of Lightspeed and GamesBeat.
A complete of 25 firms can be chosen throughout 5 main classes:
- Sport studios,
- Gaming platforms (e.g., user-generated content material or social),
- 3D applied sciences (together with AI),
- Prolonged actuality (i.e., AR/VR), and
- Blockchain & web3.
To be eligible, firms need to:
- Be a part of the gaming {industry} (see 5 classes above),
- Be not more than 5 years previous, and
- Have not more than 50 full-time workers
Our objective is to create an annual checklist that’s distinctive, authentic, and useful for the {industry}. The method can be honest and clear. Nominations can be globally out there (self-nominations are doable as properly). Friends can nominate one another, and our hand-selected judges will information the choice course of.
Along with a startup’s imaginative and prescient, caliber, and execution, we can even give attention to the staff’s range, guaranteeing the inclusion of traditionally marginalized folks (together with girls, folks of shade, and members of the LGBTQIA+ group).