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Who are the People Behind YoYo Games?

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Here is a copy of a post taken from the original YoYo Games Glog. It was first posted in February 2007 and was intended to give a, slightly humorous, insight into the main people behind YYG.
Here is a copy of a post taken from the original YoYo Games Glog. It was first posted in February 2007 and was intended to give a, slightly humorous, insight into the main people behind YYG.
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Note, most of us have some other business interests, so we don’t all work full time at YoYo (except me at the moment!), also there are some deliberately misleading statements below….see if you can spot them 
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==YoYo Games==
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YoYo Games was founded in 2007 by a group of leading Games and Entertainment industry executives including James North-Hearn, CEO of Foundation9, Michel Cassius, ex European Marketing Director (Xbox) and Spencer Hyman, formerly COO of Last.FM. The company, headed by CEO, Sandy Duncan (ex-Vice President of Xbox Europe), was created to support the founders' belief that a new generation of games development talent and devices was emerging and there was an opportunity to incubate and showcase some of the very best of this talent on these new and existing platforms.
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===Sandy Duncan===
 
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Me (Sandy Duncan).  I’m 46.  Got an MA at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland…played with computers …got a job with computers at the phone company, decided it was more lucrative selling computers than designing and programming them, so joined Hewlett Packard in sales and marketing, got frustrated working for a big company,heard about a job at Microsoft ..took it…loved it…in 1986 it was an EXCITING place to be….it was a SMALL company then with less than 1,000 people worldwide…. I ran various European businesses from Reading (UK), Seattle, Paris and finally London, including my last 4 years doing one of the best jobs in the world setting up and running the European part of Xbox…got frustrated in a big company (then about 35,000 people !), left, did a job that taught me life isn’t JUST about money…so created YoYo Games . Live on a farm in England with 4 (very young) kids and a red Volvo.  Love to play console games, especially FPS (Halo of course) and I think “Wii” is the worst name ever for the best gaming experience I’ve ever had…especially playing Wii Sports (Tennis and boxing) with my 7 year old hyperactive son….
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In 2007 YoYo Games acquired the rights to GameMaker from Professor Mark Overmars. Mark, who launched GameMaker in 1999, joined the YoYo Games board at that time. He has since become an active member of the Executive management team.
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===James North-Hearn===
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GameMaker is available today for free from the YoYo Games website (www.yoyogames.com) and has been downloaded more than 5 million times since 2007. In addition GameMaker is the teaching product of choice for more than 5,000 schools and Universities worldwide. Later this year YoYo Games will introduce GameMaker/HTML5 which will unleash the games development talent of hundreds of thousands of gamers on the New Web.
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A “proper” games industry guy….wears a lot of black, drives a fast car (badly…), drinks even more than I do(badly)…. He might even be slightly older than me, but the important thing is like me, he’s never grown up !  James was a founder of Gremlin and VP of Publishing at Infogrammes/Atari before he got a “proper” job when he helped to found Sumo-Digital about 4 years ago. ”Sumo” are now one of the UK’s leading game developers and do a LOT of work for SEGA (check out Outrun2 or the PSP version of Virtua Tennis) as well as Sony (they actually wrote a Sudoku game for Sony which topped the charts in Japan !!).  Interestingly…Jacob Hapgood, who wrote The Game Maker’s Apprentice” with Mark works at Sumo……are you starting to spot the coincidences ??  James has 2 kids (one young, one difficult) and lives in Sheffield, Outer Mongolia and drives a tractor.
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===Michel Cassius===
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==YoYo Games has three divisions:==
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…another “games industry veteran”.  Wasted a few years of his life at Apple (he even uses one of those MacBook thingies).  Spent a few years at “EA” running their online business in Europe..they closed it down…so he left…joined me at Xbox as director of publishing where he spotted the potential of “Splinter Cell” and did the deal that probably saved Xbox in it’s early days..he also setup and ran Xbox Live in Europe…and stayed there till last year.  He’s been running a US based online games/gaming company in Europe for the last year. He’s French (so he chooses the wine), lives in a Castle in London, with his wife and 3 children and drives a very powerful scooter with a built in umbrella.
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'''Tools (GameMaker)'''
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===Spencer Hyman===
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Game Maker was initially developed by Prof Mark Overmars in 1999. GameMaker is the world’s most widely used Game Development product and has been downloaded more than 10 million times. The demand continues to increase and Game Maker downloads more than 5,000 times every day from the YoYo Games website.
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Definitely NOT a games industry veteran. Spencer spent a lot of his formative years working for Hasbro in Japan and the Far East where he did everything but get involved in their PC/Video games business.  After that he helped setup and develop Amazon’s UK subsidiary where I met him because he fell out with Microsoft….since then he’s been a venture capitalist and is most likely to be found working as COO of Last.fm. …trust me the website is much cooler than Spencer….if you haven’t been “scrobbling” yet…then check it out at www.last.fm.  YoYo is something that Spencer has helped to create in his spare time and I don’t expect that to change much…but he’s a really important influence over us nonetheless.  Spencer lives in London with his family where he is planning to build a Mosque in his back garden with the profits from YoYo Games
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===Mark Overmars===
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'''Community (www.yoyogames.com)'''
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After a long career with more than 500 appearances for Ajax, Arsenal and Barcelona…only kidding…no need to introduce [[User:Mark Overmars|Mark]] to the community !! Suffice to say that he IS the creator of ''Game Maker'' and remains the single most influential person in YoYo Games.  Mark lives in a boat beside a small canal in the Netherlands and allegedly takes the occasional phone call on behalf of a former Dutch international footballers (only one of these 2 facts is indeed true !)
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The YoYo Games' website allows users to upload, share, and play the games they’ve created using GameMaker. The community of more than 1 million young developers worldwide has created over 300,000 games with approximately 150 new games uploaded per day.
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[[Category:YoYo Games]]
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'''Publishing (YoYo Studios)'''
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YoYo Studios began publishing the best content created by the YoYo Games Community In October 2010. These games are distributed on Apple™'s iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Google Android™ Devices and on Sony™'s PlayStation Network™ With new games published every week YoYo Studios already includes award winning games such as "Karoshi" and "They Need to Be Fed" as well as the iPad chart topping hit "Simply Solitaire HD".
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==Board of Directors==
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'''Sandy Duncan'''
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Prior to YoYo Games, Sandy spearheaded the European games business as vice president for Xbox Europe for Microsoft. He has over 16 years experience in the industry and is a self proclaimed hardcore gamer. He founded YoYo Games in 2007 with Mark Overmars in the UK to support the future development of GameMaker and develop a community of developers and casual game players.
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'''Mark Overmars'''
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For over ten years, Mark was the creator and sole developer of GameMaker, his drive and vision have brought GameMaker to where it is today, and he is still one of the driving forces inside YoYo Games. Mark is a Professor at the Institute of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He heads the Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation, that performs research in areas such as 3D modeling, animation, virtual characters, adaptive game play and artistic aspects of games.
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'''James North-Hearn'''
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James was a founder of Gremlin and VP of Publishing at Infogrammes/Atari before he helped to found Sumo-Digital, a 150 strong development studio in the UK. Before Sumo, he was Director of Development with Gremlin Games before being appointed Head of Publishing (Europe) with Infogrames. James has established strong relationships with publishers across Europe and the US in the games industry and is currently the CEO of Foundation 9 Entertainment Inc since 2008.
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'''Michel Cassius'''
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Michel is an experienced MD/CEO of Games and Internet businesses, working both in start-ups and within major international companies. He has been voted 3 times in the top 50 'New Media Visionaries' by the specialist UK publication New Media Age. Co-founder and Director of YoYo Games, he previously spent few years at Apple before joining Electronic Arts running their online business in Europe. He then joined Sandy at Xbox as director of publishing. He is currently the CEO of Gekko and Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Funcom.
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'''Spencer Hyman'''
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Spencer spent a lot of his formative years working in Sales and Marketing for Hasbro in Japan and the Far East. After that he helped setup and develop Amazon’s UK subsidiary launching its Software, Video Games, Electronics and Toys in the UK and EU where he met Sandy and got involved with YoYo Games. From 2005 to 2009, Spencer was the COO of Last.fm and successfully helped the sale of $280 million and integration to CBS. As of January 2011 he is now a Venture Partner with Wellington partners sharing his vast experience in the Digital Media Sector on both sides of the Atlantic.

Current revision as of 15:13, 16 August 2011

Here is a copy of a post taken from the original YoYo Games Glog. It was first posted in February 2007 and was intended to give a, slightly humorous, insight into the main people behind YYG.

YoYo Games

YoYo Games was founded in 2007 by a group of leading Games and Entertainment industry executives including James North-Hearn, CEO of Foundation9, Michel Cassius, ex European Marketing Director (Xbox) and Spencer Hyman, formerly COO of Last.FM. The company, headed by CEO, Sandy Duncan (ex-Vice President of Xbox Europe), was created to support the founders' belief that a new generation of games development talent and devices was emerging and there was an opportunity to incubate and showcase some of the very best of this talent on these new and existing platforms.


In 2007 YoYo Games acquired the rights to GameMaker from Professor Mark Overmars. Mark, who launched GameMaker in 1999, joined the YoYo Games board at that time. He has since become an active member of the Executive management team.


GameMaker is available today for free from the YoYo Games website (www.yoyogames.com) and has been downloaded more than 5 million times since 2007. In addition GameMaker is the teaching product of choice for more than 5,000 schools and Universities worldwide. Later this year YoYo Games will introduce GameMaker/HTML5 which will unleash the games development talent of hundreds of thousands of gamers on the New Web.


YoYo Games has three divisions:

Tools (GameMaker)

Game Maker was initially developed by Prof Mark Overmars in 1999. GameMaker is the world’s most widely used Game Development product and has been downloaded more than 10 million times. The demand continues to increase and Game Maker downloads more than 5,000 times every day from the YoYo Games website.


Community (www.yoyogames.com)

The YoYo Games' website allows users to upload, share, and play the games they’ve created using GameMaker. The community of more than 1 million young developers worldwide has created over 300,000 games with approximately 150 new games uploaded per day.


Publishing (YoYo Studios)

YoYo Studios began publishing the best content created by the YoYo Games Community In October 2010. These games are distributed on Apple™'s iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Google Android™ Devices and on Sony™'s PlayStation Network™ With new games published every week YoYo Studios already includes award winning games such as "Karoshi" and "They Need to Be Fed" as well as the iPad chart topping hit "Simply Solitaire HD".


Board of Directors

Sandy Duncan

Prior to YoYo Games, Sandy spearheaded the European games business as vice president for Xbox Europe for Microsoft. He has over 16 years experience in the industry and is a self proclaimed hardcore gamer. He founded YoYo Games in 2007 with Mark Overmars in the UK to support the future development of GameMaker and develop a community of developers and casual game players.

Mark Overmars

For over ten years, Mark was the creator and sole developer of GameMaker, his drive and vision have brought GameMaker to where it is today, and he is still one of the driving forces inside YoYo Games. Mark is a Professor at the Institute of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He heads the Center for Advanced Gaming and Simulation, that performs research in areas such as 3D modeling, animation, virtual characters, adaptive game play and artistic aspects of games.

James North-Hearn

James was a founder of Gremlin and VP of Publishing at Infogrammes/Atari before he helped to found Sumo-Digital, a 150 strong development studio in the UK. Before Sumo, he was Director of Development with Gremlin Games before being appointed Head of Publishing (Europe) with Infogrames. James has established strong relationships with publishers across Europe and the US in the games industry and is currently the CEO of Foundation 9 Entertainment Inc since 2008.

Michel Cassius

Michel is an experienced MD/CEO of Games and Internet businesses, working both in start-ups and within major international companies. He has been voted 3 times in the top 50 'New Media Visionaries' by the specialist UK publication New Media Age. Co-founder and Director of YoYo Games, he previously spent few years at Apple before joining Electronic Arts running their online business in Europe. He then joined Sandy at Xbox as director of publishing. He is currently the CEO of Gekko and Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Funcom.

Spencer Hyman

Spencer spent a lot of his formative years working in Sales and Marketing for Hasbro in Japan and the Far East. After that he helped setup and develop Amazon’s UK subsidiary launching its Software, Video Games, Electronics and Toys in the UK and EU where he met Sandy and got involved with YoYo Games. From 2005 to 2009, Spencer was the COO of Last.fm and successfully helped the sale of $280 million and integration to CBS. As of January 2011 he is now a Venture Partner with Wellington partners sharing his vast experience in the Digital Media Sector on both sides of the Atlantic.

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