SGN Hires Randy Breen As New COO

By Chris Sherman On September 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Today social gaming company SGN announced that it had hired former Electronic Arts and LucasArts executive Randy Breen as its new Chief Operating Officer. Breen's hire comes as part of a wave of new executive hires at SGN, with the majority of the new hires transitioning out of major players in the traditional games industry.

Breen was one of the founding executives at Electronic Arts, joining the company when it supported fewer than 100 employees. He created the Road Rash series of games, which moved millions of units across a range of sequels and spin-offs. Later Breen did significant work at LucasArts overseeing games made using the high-profile Indiana Jones and Star Wars licenses. He stands to bring significant experience both with game design and building major brands to SGN.

Among SGN's other new executive hires are veteran programmer Randy Angle as Director of Game Designer, Electronic Arts veteran Margaret Foley-Mauvais as Art Director, digital media veteran Dan Brazelton as Executive Producer, former Hi5 marketing exec Adriana Gascoigne as Director of Global Communication. This surge of new hires will join other recent high-profile SGN hires like Eric Huynh and Eric Lindstrom.

Brain drain from traditional games publishers to much younger social gaming start-ups is nothing new. A survey of news from the past few months reveals a virtual parade of former EA execs and game creators joining companies like Zynga. Even Atari founder Nolan Bushnell is now involved primarily with launching new freemium games and projects that involve virtual currency. That said, SGN making so many high-profile hires so rapidly commands attention.

"We've experienced tremendous growth over the past year, and I'm thrilled we have attracted a leader like Randy Breen to SGN and assembled a world class team to capitalize on our position within the booming social gaming industry," said Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN, in a statement. "The depth of experience and diversity of each member of our leadership team is a major asset to the company and is pivotal in taking the business to the next level."

SGN has been one of the first social companies to find success on the iPhone platform, moving over 400,000 units of its F.A.S.T. air combat game and enough copies of its iBowl app that 24% of all iPhone and iPod Touch users own it by now. SGN also publishes a range of successful social games (including the very first mafia game) in a variety of genres available on Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks.