The DeanBeat: Among the believers of the NFT gaming revolution

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
October 22, 2021
Updated June 19, 2025
13 min

I made it out to a party for the first time in a while in San Francisco. Friends of Gabby Dizon, founder of Yield Guild Games, gathered for a soiree at the Folsom Street Foundry, a place where the game and tech industries gathered often in pre-pandemic days.

Along with Dizon were James Zhang, CEO of Concept Art House, which just raised $25 million to fund its expansion into nonfungible token (NFT) art, and Miko Matsumura, cofounder of Gumi Cryptos, which invests in blockchain game companies. Plenty of their friends were there to welcome Dizon on his trip to the U.S. All three — Dizon, Matsumura, and Zhang — will speak about NFT gaming and “play-to-earn” at our GamesBeat Summit Next online event on November 9-10.

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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.