Casual-game publisher Scopely is announcing today that Bernard Chen has been hired as the company’s general manager and vice president of product.
That’s going to be an interesting personnel experiment as Chen has managed some hardcore social games and other titles that have generated more than $400 million in revenues. Now he is moving over to Los Angeles-based Scopely, which is known for casual titles like Skee-Ball Arcade.
At Kixeye, Chen was general manager of War Commander and the lead product owner of Battle Pirates. He also previously served as the director of monetization at Ubisoft. He helped develop Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms, contributed to internal white papers on behavioral economics, and integrated analytics into the development process.
Chen said in a blog post, “It was an easy decision to want to work here, but with a family that is firmly planted in San Francisco, the logistics of a 400-mile commute and time spent away from my wife and kids was a major consideration. In the end, I chose to come to Scopely because of its rare combination of dynamic management team, passionate team members, momentum, funding, and business strategy. I’ve been in technology long enough to know that Scopely is a rare place – it’s an environment where the next big ideas can grow, full of people who want to make them happen.”
