Mentorship is a critical component of the Indie Games Accelerator curriculum. Participants of the program had an access to leading game experts from Google as well as from leading game studios and institutions around the world.
Mentorship sessions covered a broad variety of game topics including technical development, design, gameplay, user retention, user acquisition, monetization, and team leadership.
Meet the 2019 Industry and Google mentors below:
INDUSTRY EXPERTS
Alok Kejriwal
CEO and Co-founder, Games2win
Alok is a serial digital entrepreneur and the CEO and Co-founder of Games2win. Games2win is a global mobile games business that has 240 million game downloads and entertains over 10 million players monthly. In 1998, Alok created contests2win.com – India’s first online contesting site that spearheaded the creation of digital promotions in the world. In 2006, Alok sold his Mobile Startup, Mobile2win, to The Walt Disney Company and Norwest Venture Partners in China and India respectively.
Angelo Lobo
Veteran Game Designer. Ex Designer, Zynga
Angelo is a veteran game designer, with 18 years of experience. He spent 5 years at Zynga as the Design Director for games like FarmVille 2, FarmVille Country Escape and Empires & Allies. Angelo's main focus is casual and mid-core games for the mobile platform. For the last year, he has been mentoring indie studios across India.
Amir Yagil
General Manager, Jelly Button
Amir has twenty years of experience in business, marketing and management roles. For the last eight years, Amir is at Playtika, one of the largest global game companies, in various business management and cross-company management positions. These include COO, General Manager of Playtika Montreal and currently, General Manager of Jelly Button, a Playtika company.
Doron Kagan
Co-founder & CEO, Game of Whales
Doron is the founder of 3 top mobile games companies. Two were acquired and Deemedya with over 220,000,000 downloads, an international mobile game publisher operating from 3 different locations in the world. Doron is also the founder & CEO of Game of Whales, a cutting edge AI platform that allows game publishers to autonomously increase their users IAP LTV, retention and Ads optimization strategy.
Ezequiel Mottillo
Creative Director,
Etermax
Ezequiel is designer, journalist and photographer. He is born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and for the last 8 years he has been leading the creative team and product partnerships at Etermax as well as coordinating the development of educational content. During his first steps in communication, he produced Radio & TV shows. After collaborating with numerous startups, he joined Etermax in 2010 to collaborate in the creation of the most downloaded social game in history: Trivia Crack (Preguntados), declared as Cultural Interest by the ministry of Culture of Argentina.
Flavio Miyamaru
Partner, Tapps Games
Flavio is the Founder of Tapps Games which develops more than 400 causal mobile games, reaching more than 700 million downloads. He is currently overseeing Tapps Ventures.
Fawzi Mesmar
Studio Director, Production and Design, King
Fawzi is a passionate Creative Director, Game designer, Manager, author, public speaker and retired e-sports player who has been in the gaming industry for over 16 years working for companies such as King (Activision Blizzard), Gameloft and Atlus Ltd to name a few. He has worked on over 20 titles that have been enjoyed by millions of players world wide most notably Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, Kim Kardashian Hollywood (JP) and many more.
Kamina Vincent
Producer, Mountains Games Studio
Kamina is Producer at Mountains, a craft games company based in Melbourne. In early 2018, Mountains released Florence, an interactive story on love and life. Kamina previously worked at Tin Man Games, starting as QA and gathered several hats that included: Kickstarter Campaign Manager, Community Support, Editor, and Producer. Kamina is also proactive in the game development community, with a strong focus on the future ecosystem of the sector.
Mario Wynands
Managing Director, PikPok
Mario Wynands is the Managing Director and co-founder of PikPok, a leading publisher across mobile, desktop, and console. In his 22 years at PikPok, he has led the studio, built a successful game portfolio and overseen the creation of many engaging console titles as well as multiple hits in the mobile space. Wynands is a graduate of Victoria University in Wellington with degrees in business management and computer science.
Mark Skaggs
Gaming Expert. Ex- Zynga, EA
Mark is an award-winning game developer known for his track record of creating the worldwide phenomena “FarmVille” and “CityVille” on Facebook(300+ million players), mobile hits with 30 million downloads as well as successful console and PC games selling over 16 million copies at retail. With a career spanning more than 25 years, three AIAS awards, four console transitions, Mark is also known for creating multi-million selling RTS games.
Michael Thompson
UX/UI and Game Designer, Digipen Institute of Technology
Michael started his game industry career at EA/Blackbox in Vancouver, Canada, in 2002, working mostly on sports titles. This eventually brought him to Singapore, where he helped develop the first Fifa Online. Michael later moved to Ubisoft, working on Ghost Recon Phantoms and Skull and Bones. He currently teaches UX/UI and game design at Digipen Institute of Technology, Singapore.
Ngo Van Luyen
CEO & Founder, Divmob
Luyen is CEO and Founder of DIVMOB. He founded DIVMOB after spending some years working in France. DIVMOB has grown its staff strength by 10 times since its founding. Under Luyen's leadership, DIVMOB developed Ninja Revenge which got more than 20 million downloads on Google Play store.
Noah Falstein
Owner-Inspiracy. Ex-Chief Game Designer of Google
With 39 years' experience as a professional game developer, Noah has a wide variety of experiences. He is primarily a game designer/producer and have also worked as a programmer, writer, creative director and more. Noah is known for designing some iconic LucasArts adventure games, being a pioneer in Serious Games and for having worked as Google's Chief Game Designer. He is recently known to have designed games for health/Neurogaming.
Rami Ismail
Co-founder, Vlambeer
Rami is an independent video game developer and spokesperson within the video game industry on the topics of diversity and reaching out to game developers from developing countries. He also co-founded the studio Vlambeer in 2010, where among games they have developed include Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers, and Nuclear Throne.
Shainiel Deo
Founder and CEO, Halfbrick Studios
Shainiel is one of the original founders of Halfbrick. He has lead the company for over 16 years as CEO as well as being a Product Manager and Stakeholder on many of Halfbrick's games. Shainiel has a strong understanding of leadership, company culture and building great games.
Soo Jeong Bae
Director & Co-founder, LoadComplete
Soo is Director and Co-Founder at LoadComplete, an independent mobile game studio in South Korea known best for Crusaders Quest, FisherCat, Disco Panda and many others. Soo has been wearing various hats along the course of LoadComplete's growth from being the only artist among 3 founders, a sound designer, a producer, HR for 100+ ppl, to now focusing on branding of LoadComplete in various contexts and layers.
Wan Hazmer Bin Wan Ab Halim
Founder, CEO and Game Director, Metronomik
Out of his love for amplifying the role of audio in gameplay, Wan Hazmer co-founded Metronomik, a game studio based in Malaysia. Together with his team, he works on a PS4 and PC music-centric action game titled No Straight Roads.Prior to this, Wan Hazmer has worked in Square Enix Tokyo for 8 years as the lead game designer for Final Fantasy XV. His other notable works include Final Fantasy Type-0 and Monster of the Deep: FFXV.
Ziv Kitaro
Director of Product Management,
WhaleApp
Ziv is currently the Director of Product Management at Whaleapp LTD. He has more than 15b years of experience in the games industry. Ziv's main focal points are product management, creative direction and Game design. He has held both executive and creative titles. He led studios at Plarium Global, and Playtika, and consulted to companies like 888 Holdings and Men of Action.
Abe Haskins
Firebase Developer Programs Engineer, Google
Abe is a Firebase engineer at Google. For the past five years Abe has been helping engineers build Firebase-powered things so they can take over the world.
Alexey Kokin
Android Apps Business Development Manager, Central and Eastern Europe, Google
Alexey works with Google Play application partners in CEE and helps EMEA apps and games increase their product quality. Before joining Google Play team, Alexey worked in corporate and consumer mobility roles in SAP, Nokia and Microsoft.
Ashnil Dixit
Business Development Manager, Google Play Apps and Games, Google
Ashnil leads Google Play's Business Development for Malaysia and Philippines. He was a long time corporate strategist with Google and McKinsey. Ashnil had built banking apps at Standard Chartered Bank and has written codes for Appian.
Ben Gable
Partner Developer Advocate, Google
Ben has been a game developer for his entire professional career. With over 10 years of experience developing games, he now works at Google as a Developer Advocate for game developers on Android. His goal is to help developers make great games on Android platforms - especially indies. Prior to Google, Ben was an indie himself and co-founded the studio, PolyKid. His first game, "Poi," launched worldwide on PC and consoles in 2017.
Chi Chen
Head, APAC Growth Consulting, Google
Prior to joining Google Play as Head of APAC Growth Consulting, Chi worked in Product and Producer role in a wide ranging of industry such as travel, gaming and eCommerce.
Daniel Trocoli
Strategic Partner Development, Google Play Apps and Games, LatAm - Sao Paulo, Google
Daniel is a Business Development Manager at Google Play with more than 10 years of experience in the gaming industry.
Gaby Hien
Partner Manager - New Publisher Business (OPG SEA), Google
Gaby is a game enthusiast who has 10 years of experience in mobile gaming, marketing and advertising.
James Kavanagh
Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google Play, Google
Based out of Mountain View, California, James is focused on growing subscription and premium partners. Having spent 8 years at Electronic Arts across Production and Business roles, James is passionate about games.
Joe McGinn
Publishing Producer, Games, Google
Joe McGinn joined Google Singapore as a Publishing Producer to support VR and AR developers in the region. Prior to joining Google, he was lead game designer at Radical Entertainment, Activision-Blizzard, the Walt Disney Corporation, and Ubisoft. He led the design of Radical's breakout hit The Simpsons: Hit & Run, listed on Metacritic as the highest-rated Simpsons game of all time.
Nai Chang
Head of Games Consulting, Google Play Apps & Games, Growth Consulting, Google
Nai is currently the Global Head of Games Growth Consulting at Google. Previously, he held various leadership roles at NatulraMotion as Head of Product Management and General Manager of Dawn of Titans. Nai also spent time at Zynga, San Diego as General Manager where he led product development in the casual puzzle games space, and prior to that at Playtika Santa Monica as VP of Revenue and Monetization. Pre-games, Nai spent time in technology (Google) and management consulting (McKinsey & Co).
Rachel Cheung
Business Development, Google Play Apps & Games, Google
Rachel partner game developers to ensure they are launched successfully on Google Play and helps optimize their mobile business strategy. Prior to joining the Google Play team, Rachel has worked on Google's AdMob for more than 2 years. Originally from Hong Kong, she has been working in Taipei for the last 3 years. Rachel is currently part of the Business Development, Games and Apps' team in Google Play Taiwan.
Serena Shih
Business Development Manager, Google Play, Google
Serena is the Business Development Manager for Google Play, China. She helps local gaming developers succeed globally on the Google Play platform. In addition, Serena leads Google Play’s indie efforts to grow the Chinese indie community and enlarging their presence on the global stage.
Shala Seo
Business Development Manager, Google Play Games, Google
Shala is Business Development Manager for Google Play Games, Korea. She helps empower Android game developers build successful businesses.
Shalini Poddar
Head of Business Development, Google Play Apps & Games, India, Google
Shalini is Head of Business Development, Google Play Apps and Games in India. She is an impact-focused leader with 14 years of experience in consulting, strategy, business development, sales, partnerships and marketing. Shalini has a wide range of experience in launching and scaling digital marketing products, and accelerating growth of online advertising across industry verticals
Sharan Tulsiani
Business Development Manager, Google Play
Sharan works closely with indies as well as market leaders to help them bring fantastic games and apps to users and find success on the Play platform. A veteran of the gaming industry he has worked with game developers across India, South East Asia, Europe and other regions before joining Google and the Play BD team in India.
Tarik Kaya
Software Engineer, Google
Tarik is a Software Engineer in Google, building Android Game SDK. He has made games professionally for 8 years and is interested in physics simulation.
Tom Greenaway
Developer Advocate, Google
Tom Greenaway is the gaming lead for Chrome and Web Developer Relations at Google. He's also a multi-award winning game designer having created Duet for Android and iOS which was downloaded nearly 20 million times worldwide.
Truong Do
Account Manager, Mobile Ad Sales, Google
Truong Do is Account Manager, Mobile Ad Sales in Google. His role in Google includes helping both indie developers and mobile game publishers to grow their businesses with Google Ads globally. Prior to his role in Google, Truong Do has worked as a UA Manager for 3 years in Southeast Asia.
Vineet Tanwar
Business Development Manager, Google Play Apps and Games, Google
Vineet manages business development for Google Play in Southeast Asia. He has over 12 years of experience working in the gaming industry in product, analytics and business development roles. Vineet is passionate about startups and has been leading the indie game developer program for the region. Prior to Google, Vineet worked with a San Francisco based games startup, where he managed all operations, including game launch, analytics, monetization, partnerships and fundraising.
Wolff Dobson
Developer Programs Engineer, Google
Wolff is a Developer Programs Engineer at Google specializing in machine learning and games. Before Google, he worked as a game developer for 12 years, including writing AI for the NBA2K series and helping design the Wii MotionPlus. He has a PhD in artificial intelligence from the Northwestern University.