Jon Osvald and John Schappert of Shiver Entertainment. Nexon has invested in them.
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Why Schappert’s Shiver Entertainment hired two top game veterans

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

John Schappert, the former No. 2 executive at Zynga, said he has recruited two veterans from his former companies as co-founders at the free-to-play game studio that he is building.

Schappert told us in an interview that he wants to make the best quality free-to-play online and mobile games, and that is why he turned to the vets. The hires include Jason Andersen, who co-founded Electronic Arts’ Tiburon Entertainment studio with Schappert in 1994, and Jon Osvald, a data-driven game designer who was key to the rise of Zynga.

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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.