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It is an honor to announce our sixth year GamesBeat Visionary Awards and the team of judges we selected to help choose the winners of this year’s awards.
Judging for the Visionary Awards for GamesBeat summit 2023 (May 22-23 in Marina del Rey, California, and May 24 online) is now underway. You can submit your own suggestions to me via email or my Twitter DMs. And if you want to check out our excellent event and networking opportunity, use this coupon code for 25% off: GBSDEANWEB25. Our early bird deadline ends on April 5.
The GamesBeat Visionary Awards started in 2018 as a way to honor leaders in the games industry who demonstrated a real vision for the future. I see it as a resource to reward unrecognized people and a way to give back to our GamesBeat community. The prizes are meaningful and emotional as we ask friends of the winners to present the prizes to them.
And we’ve chosen a panel of 11 judges for this year’s contest. Checking out some of our speakers here.
Judges for 2023
Christina Heller, former CEO of Metastage
Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games
John Smedley, former studio head at Amazon Games
Ivan Lobo, founder of Gamelab
Tammy McDonald, advisor to Griffin Gaming Partners
Don Daglow, Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships, The Strong Museum
Shu Yoshida, Head of PlayStation Indies, Sony Interactive Entertainment
Samantha Ryan, senior vice president group general manager at BioWare, Full Circle, Maxis and Motive at Electronic Arts.
Sarah Bond, corporate vice president for Xbox at Microsoft
Dinga Bakaba, studio head and co-creative director at Arkane Lyon
Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat
Past winners
Our past winners of this award include Rand Miller, co-founder of Cyan and co-creator of Myst; Ted Price, founder of Insomniac Games; John Smedley, studio head at Amazon Game Studios San Diego; Laura Mi-el-e, the top gaming manager at Electronic Arts; and Sarah Bond, vice president of game creator experience and ecosystem at Microsoft.
Up and Comer Prize
As part of this program, we also present the annual Up and Comer Award. Our past winners of this 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. This award honors someone who is a newcomer to achievements in the gaming industry. It is not based on age or experience in the gaming industry. Rather, it recognizes that the honoree’s greatest potential lies ahead of them.
Every year we put together a jury in the peer group. The previous judges have included winners such as Eve Crevoshay, Ted Price and Natasha Zinda. Other judges included Dean Takahashi, Shelley Andagan, Don Daglow, Cathy Simpson and Ivan Fernandes Lobo.
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