GamesBeat Summit 2025 will feature Visionary and Up-and-Comer Awards

Today we’re announcing our eighth annual GamesBeat Visionary Awards and the team of judges we’ve selected to help pick the winners of this year’s awards. (You can sign up for our GamesBeat Summit 2025 event, where the awards will be celebrated, with 25% off using this code: gbs25dean25).

I started the GamesBeat Visionary Awards in 2018 to recognize industry leaders who took a daring, visionary approach to shaping the future of gaming, forging new paths that have mesmerized audiences and redefined the very nature of video games. We give out two awards every year: the Visionary Award and the Up-and-Comer award. This year’s ceremony will be hosted by Andrea Rene, president of Shortie Media and former executive producer of What’s Good Games.

Judging for the Visionary Awards for GamesBeat Summit 2024 (May 19-20 in Marina del Rey, California; see the agenda here) is now complete and we’ll have new winners to announce at our event. We’ve chosen a panel of 12 judges for this year’s contest. Leah Hardy, a marketing veteran at TikTok and Meta, will be our host for the session.

Judges for 2025

Sarah Bond is the president of Xbox, managing the P&L for Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar global gaming platform. In this role, she leads strategy, marketing, product, partnerships and business for Xbox including — Xbox Series S and X, Xbox Game Pass, Xcloud, ID@Xbox, Xbox Developer Acceleration Program Xbox & PlayFab.

Previously, Bond served as corporate vice president of game creator experience and ecosystem, where she led the division dedicated to building and commercializing products and services for game creators and partners. She was foundational to the success of Xbox Game Pass and has been instrumental in the growth of Xbox, playing a key role in the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, the largest deal ever for a US tech company. She led the development of strategic partner relationships that advanced the expansion of Xbox Game Studios and was core to establishing the product portfolio in support of cloud gaming.

Sarah is vice chair of the board of directors at the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and sits on the board of councilors at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She won our Visionary Award back in 2022.

Rich Vogel, CEO of T-Minus Zero Entertainment

Rich Vogel, a distinguished executive producer, has been a driving force in the gaming industry for over 25 years. As the founder and studio head of T-Minus Zero, Vogel’s leadership was instrumental in the success of three prominent studios: Sony Online Entertainment Austin, BioWare Austin, and Bethesda Games Studio’s Battlecry, which collectively generated a remarkable $ 3 billion in revenue. Vogel’s operational expertise was also evident in his oversight of LiveOps for four critically acclaimed MMORPGs: Meridia 59, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Rich’s contributions were recognized with the Up-and-Comer Award at GamesBeat Summit 2023.

Don Daglow, game developer and author

Don Daglow is an author, adviser and game narrative designer. He is an adviser to The Strong National Museum of Play, volunteer president of the AIAS Foundation, and member of the AIAS board of directors. He is an adviser at Founders Space, Devcom, and GamesBeat Summit. He has served as an adviser at Bit Fry Game Studios. Daglow was the founder of Stormfront Studios and served in roles at Broderbund Software, Electronic Arts, and Mattel. He has written books including Indie Games: From Dream to Delivery, The Last One on the Run, and The Fog Seller.

Perrin Kaplan, co-founder of Zebra Partners

Perrin Kaplan is a global strategic marketing and communications C-level executive known for her award-winning work in tech, entertainment, consumer products, gaming, mixed reality, AI and more. Noted in several books, documentaries, and publications, she co-founded female-owned Zebra Partners, a global communications and integrated marketing firm following her role as vice president, marketing, communications, and spokesperson for Nintendo.

Zebra Partners’ talented team advises partners from innovative startups to Fortune100s. She has directed hundreds of brand efforts, 1000’s of product launches including the industry-shifting global phenomena Wii, Pokémon, DS, and the ambassador movement. 

Prior to Nintendo, Kaplan’s career focused on environmental public affairs and crisis for regional and national companies, including Washington D.C. and state. Her career began as a reporter for Seattle’s NBC affiliate. She’s an advisor, board member, investor and speaker and has been honored for her continued female mentorship. In 2007 she opened doors of Saving Great Animals, a large active non-profit rescuing the abused, neglected, abandoned. The organization has homed more than 9000 dogs.

Elizabeth Olson, PR and business development consultant

Elizabeth Olson is the founder of Strategic Marketing. She has been doing public relations and business development consulting for decades in games. She is head of strategy & media at Indie Angels Marketing Services, and has held marketing/PR roles at Telltale Games, Inca Games, Double Forte, Pinnacle Systems, Adobe Systems, Roxio, 3DO, Panasonic Interactive, Sound Source Interactive, Cyberdreams, Virgin Interactive Entertainment and Funco, where she was the founding executive editor of Game Informer magazine.

Dinga Bakaba won our Up and Comer award back in 2022. He is a veteran of Arkane, where he has spent years working on games such as Deathloop, which he co-directed with friend Harvey Smith.

He started in the industry as a QA tester for mobile games before smartphones were a thing. He joined Wizarbox in Paris as a game designer, working among other things on Jane Jensen’s Gray Matter. He then moved to the Netherlands, working at Playlogic on unannounced projects until the company closed.

That took him to Arkane, the studio where was one of two game designer/producers on Dishonored and its DLCs. He was lead designer on Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider. He also worked on Wolfenstein Youngblood and Cyberpilot, and then co-directed Deathloop. He is currently Studio Director of Arkane Lyon and co-creative director.

Tara Bruno has nearly 30 years of PR experience within the video game industry. Tara’s career began at GT Interactive Software where she cut her teeth promoting classics like Duke Nukem, Unreal, and Oddworld. After GT, Tara moved over to the NYC agency side, where she remained until she resigned her position as VP of the HighWater Group PR agency to pursue opportunities as a freelancer.

At that point, Tara became an independent contractor and was instrumental in supporting campaigns for triple-A and indie games, technology platforms, and gaming hardware. In 2017, she began Tara Bruno PR. Some of the better-known games that Tara has worked on over the years include Marvel Rivals, Alan Wake 2, Warframe, League of Legends, Hitman 3, The Outer Worlds, Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Rock Band 4, Steel Hunters Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Disney Infinity 3.0, and Enter The Matrix.

Charmaine Duff is the founder of Women-Led Games founder and director of the Women-Led Games Showcase. She brings recognition to the hard working women in the games industry and aims to support more women in positions of leadership in the industry and their studios. Euff has several years experience in community and social media management, marketing, production, and influencer outreach.

Mark Chandler is a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience spanning over three decades in the gaming and technology industries. His recent roles and accomplishments highlight his expertise in mental health advocacy and strategic leadership.

Currently, Chandler serves as the founder of The International Games Summit on Mental Health (TIGS.CA), a platform addressing critical mental health issues among game communities and professionals. Since October 2016, he has led TIGS.GG in identifying key mental health challenges within games, gamers, and the gaming industry. Partnering with organizations like TakeThis.org, Safeinourworld.org, YouAreRad.org and other stakeholders, Chandler focuses on reducing stigma and increasing support for mental health within the game industry.

As a board member on The IGDA Mental Health SIG Steering Committee since February 2020, Chandler has continued his advocacy work by contributing to important conversations and initiatives aimed at promoting mental health awareness and support within the gaming community.

Meggan Scavio is president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Scavio was appointed to the position in August 2017 and serves as the representative of the 35,000+ Academy members. As the AIAS president, Scavio promotes, advances and recognizes the outstanding achievements in the interactive entertainment industry worldwide.

She oversees the AIAS’ many initiatives benefiting the video games industry: the D.I.C.E. Summit – the industry’s premier gathering of creative and business leaders, the AIAS member voted D.I.C.E. Awards show, the European-centric D.I.C.E. Europe conference and the AIAS Foundation. She won our Visionary Award in 2023.

Scavio spent 18 years at UBM, where she most recently held the position of general manager of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) for eight years. During her tenure as general manager at GDC, she was responsible for overseeing all of GDC’s domestic and international conferences, including: GDC Europe, GDC China, GDC Online, & VRDC. Scavio started off her career at UBM as an Operations Manager when GDC was held at the San Jose Convention Center.

Kat Jones established the award-winning agency Motiv with the goal of creating a communications partner that blends results driven strategies with invaluable collaboration. With 20 years of global communications and marketing experience, Kat has consistently delivered quality PR outcomes tied to people, brands and companies.

Kat was named one of the top PR pros by Business Insider three years in a row (2020, 2021 and 2022) and was profiled by ThinkLA in 2019, VoyageLA in 2020, ShoutOutLA in 2021, and Authority Magazine, Canvas Rebel and Bold Journey in 2023, and was featured on The PR Podcast in 2024. Lastly, she is an official Juror for The Webby Awards, the W3 Awards, the Communicator Awards, and the PRWeek Awards.  She also worked at Defy Media, Azubu, Machinima and Marvel Entertainment.

Shelley Andagan currently serves as the director of global game studio partnerships and executive producer within Qualcomm Gaming Technologies and Snapdragon Studios.

As a leader in the global facing Partnerships Team, Shelley bridges triple-A game developers, publishers, and service providers with next-in-class technologies, advancing and supporting the gaming ecosystem on Snapdragon powered devices. She also works closely with double-A and indie game studios, ushering them into a new era of technologies like AI across PC, Mobile, Handheld, XR, and Automotive Gaming.

Smedley, former studio head at Amazon Game Studios San Diego, received our third-annual Visionary Award, which honors people in the game industry who have been a visionary (seeing ahead and doing great things) throughout their careers. That’s an apt description for Smedley’s role in creating massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as Everquest. Our prior award winners include Ted Price of Insomniac Games and Rand Miller of Cyan.

Smedley ran Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) for 15 years, and he helped grow that business into a leader in the online games space, publishing hit such as Evequest in 1999. During his tenure at SOE, Smedley worked on 12 MMOs, such as Star Wars: Galaxies, PlanetSide, Free Realms, DC Universe Online, and H1Z1.

He helped spin out SOE from Sony in 2015 to an independent investor and renamed it Daybreak Game Company. Smedley got in a dispute with hackers, and he stepped down from Daybreak in mid-2015. He went on to create a new game company, Pixelmage, and worked on a game called Hero’s Song. That company shut down in 2017. Then he moved on to become general manager of Amazon’s new studio in San Diego. He left there and worked on a new startup.

Dean Takahashi, GamesBeat lead writer

Dean Takahashi is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He has been at VentureBeat since 2008. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, “Opening the Xbox” and “The Xbox 360 Uncloaked.” He organizes the annual GamesBeat and GamesBeat Summit conferences. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Not pictured: Tammy McDonald.

Past winners

Last year, the Visionary Award went to Sam Lake, creative director at Remedy Entertainment, maker of games like Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2. This award is bestowed upon an individual who has demonstrated a remarkable ability to envision the future of the video game industry. It’s reserved for a true leader who possesses a rare combination of foresight, creativity, and innovation, and whose trailblazing efforts have propelled the industry into uncharted territory.

Other past Visionary winners include Rand Miller, cofounder of Cyan and co-creator of Myst; Ted Price, founder of Insomniac Games; John Smedley, studio head at Amazon Game Studios San Diego; Laura Miele, the top gaming executive at Electronic Arts; Sarah Bond, vice president for game creator experience and ecosystem at Microsoft; Meggan Scavio, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.

The 2024 Up and Comer winner was Kahlief Adams, founder of Spawn On Me. This award honors someone who is an up-and-comer when it comes to achievements in the game industry. It isn’t based on age or experience in the game industry. Rather, it recognizes that the biggest potential of the honoree lies ahead of them.

Past recipients of the Up and Comer award include Eve Crevoshay (Kre-vo-shay), executive director of Take This; creator Natasha “ZombaeKills” Zinda; and Dinga Bakaba, studio head and co-director at Arkane Lyon, a Bethesda studio; and Rich Vogel, studio head of T-Minus Zero.