John Smedley is an online gaming pioneer.
John Smedley is an online gaming pioneer.
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Successful game industry pros talk about their struggles with depression

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Amazon Game Studios head John Smedley opened the International Games Summit on Mental Health Awareness with a keynote talk about working with depression.

Smedley’s chat at TIGS opened the door for other speakers to talk about their struggles and how to get help. This is the second annual TIGS, and its hosts are founder Mark Chandler and Eve Crevoshay, the executive director at mental health in games nonprofit Take This.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.