RealNetworks‘ game division has hired two new executives as part of a push into social games.
The Seattle-based group said today it appointed Wilf Russell as chief technology officer and Jeffrey Revoy as vice president of social games.
The moves are part of the company’s attempt to adapt its business, which has struggled to keep pace with the changes in the game industry. RealNetworks still plans to spin off RealGames into an independent company sometime this year, something it has planned for some time now.
RealGames is strong in both mobile games for feature phones and casual games for web sites. But consumers’ tastes have shifted toward iPhones and other smartphones, as well as social network games on Facebook. RealGames didn’t have much of a presence on either and has been trying to establish itself on those new platforms in the past year. It has to play catch-up to companies such as Ngmoco and Electronic Arts on the iPhone, and Zynga on Facebook. RealGames has 30 games on the iPhone, including 24 paid games. It also has four games on Facebook, with 6 million monthly visitors. But that’s pretty small compared to the leaders.
Revoy (right) has 20 years of web and tech experience, including six years at Yahoo where he was vice president of search, local and social media. He was responsible for Yahoo Answers, which oversaw 130 million monthly unique users. He was most recently the president of the Interactive Services group at telecom firm CenturyLink.
Russell joined RealGames last year as vice president of engineering. He has more than 25 years of experience and came from MySpace, where he was vice president of engineering. He is being promoted to CTO today and will oversee the integration of RealGames’ various game platforms and customer ecosystems.
John Barbour, president of RealGames, said that the digital online game business continues to grow at an explosive rate and that the market leaders will be those companies that deliver the best games across vast customer bases and multiple platforms.