Quick take:
- Sell joins N3twork Studios from Tinder.
- He will take on the role of chief operating officer.
- In his new role, he will help the studio accelerate the development of its upcoming Web3 RPG.
Blockchain game developer and publisher, N3twork Studios, has hired former Tinder chief product officer, Josh Sell, as its new chief operating officer.
In his new role, Sell will help N3twork Studio’s team to accelerate the development of its upcoming Web3 RPGs, Legendary: Heroes Unchained and Triumph, both of which are slated for worldwide release this year. He will also support N3twork Studios President Matt Richetti in running the studio’s day-to-day operations
During his time at Tinder, Sell oversaw several feature releases, most notably the ‘Explore’ tab, which introduced a whole new way for singles around the world to find matches. Prior to Tinder, Sell was in the mobile and PC gaming industry.
From 2013 – 2016, he was the SVP of Studios at Glu Mobile, a publicly traded developer and publisher of free-to-play mobile games. There, he provided executive leadership for up to 15 dev and live service game teams across five studios located in Toronto, Bellevue, and San Francisco Bay Area, and was responsible for over $250 million in annual revenue and $800 million in lifetime revenue.
He has also served as Vice President and General Manager at King, where he ran the Farm Heroes franchise; and was GM of Mobile for NCSoft.
Before his time at Glu Mobile, he held executive producer roles at computer games company Kabam, and PC MMO games publisher, Aeria Games & Entertainment, where he worked for over four years and kickstarted his career in the games industry.
The new appointment marks Sell’s return to the industry since leaving Tinder. Commenting on his new role, Sell told NFTgators: “While I enjoyed my adventure in bringing deeper social connections to Tinder, gaming feels like being back home. The fast-paced combination of art and science can’t really be found anywhere else. In short, it’s exciting to be back doing something I’ve been passionate about since I was a kid. Working in Web3 is particularly exciting because it’s still largely unexplored territory. The technology opens up a whole new dimension to game design and player experience.”
Last May, N3twork Studio raised $46 million in Series A funding led by Griffin Gaming Partners. Bringing with him over 10 years of experience in the games industry to N3twork Studios, Sell told NFTgators that “there is an overlap between Web3 and Web2 with regards to audience because a lot of the gaming motivations are similar.”
“Things like progression, community, and competition are still important to deliver on. But we can leverage Web3 to amplify these motivators through agency, ownership, and secondary markets,” he added.
Founded in January 2022, N3twork’s Studio team comprises more than 80 industry veterans from companies including EA, Kabam, Zynga, Glu, GREE, Scopely, Machine Zone, Warner Brothers and Disney.
When it comes to blockchain game development, Sell said: “Onboarding strong partners for logistics around wallet management, optimized transactions, legal support, etc become important as well. It takes some additional effort to get these systems in place and stable, which takes finding the type of talent like we have here at N3twork Studios.”
****
Sign up to the world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance to buy and sell cryptocurrencies.
Stay up to date:
