Lightspeed x GamesBeat Launch Top Game Startup List

An extraordinary community—with upsides only

Winners of the inaugural Game Changers program will receive widespread media coverage through GamesBeat, access to an exclusive growing Game Changers community, and 1:1 mentoring and interactions with industry leaders across gaming, technology, and interactive media. Each category will also see one standout winner that will receive a special prize.

Award honorees can enjoy all these benefits free of charge, and will not give up equity in their company in the process. There is also no requirement for startup representatives to appear in person.

Apply or nominate today

Peer nominations and self-submissions for Game Changers 2024 are now open online.

Gaming industry professionals can nominate startups or apply on behalf of their own company. The deadline for all submissions is Sunday, October 1, 2023.

Winners will be announced in October and highlighted at the GamesBeat Summit Next conference on October 24 – 25 in San Francisco.

Supported by an unparalleled group of industry leaders

To source candidates for Game Changers, GamesBeat writers and Lightspeed investors comb through the online submissions, and provide a narrowed list of candidates to a panel of independent expert judges. Judges will then vote on the final candidates in one round of voting, with tiebreakers as needed. And who better to crown tomorrow’s leaders than today’s?

That’s why the judging panel includes leading gaming executives and operators with senior leadership experience across Activision Blizzard, Amazon, Animoca, ByteDance, DeepMind, Disney Accelerator, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Goldman Sachs, Google, Kabam, Krafton, McKinsey & Co., Meta, Microsoft, Niantic, Oculus, Riot Games, Roblox, Stanford University, Take-Two Interactive, Tencent, TikTok, Unity, Valve, Xbox, YouTube Gaming, Zynga, and others.

• Anna Sweet, Chief Executive Officer of Bad Robot Games
• Ben Feder, Managing Partner of Tirta Ventures
• Bonnie Rosen, General Manager of Disney Accelerator
• Danny Lange, Vice President of BI & AI at Google
• Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer of GamesBeat
• Holly Liu, Co-Founder of Kabam
• John Hanke, Chief Executive Officer of Niantic
• John W. Thompson, Fr. Chairman of Microsoft
• Ken Wee, Chief Strategy Officer of Activision Blizzard
• Kylan Gibbs, Chief Product Officer of Inworld AI
• Leo Olebe, Global Head of Gaming at YouTube
• Manuel Bronstein, Chief Product Officer of Roblox
• Maria Park, Vice President of Corporate Development at Krafton
• Michael Chow, Chief Executive Officer of The Believer Company
• Moritz Baier-Lentz, Partner & Head of Gaming at Lightspeed
• Ryan Wyatt, Fr. President of Polygon Labs
• V Pappas, Fr. Chief Operating Officer of TikTok

Guiding principles

Game Changers is a recognition of the explosion of game startups and game venture investment funds in recent years, even in the midst of difficult economic times. We want to draw attention to the companies that deserve recognition and better reach, and so we hope to tap the combined analytical and journalistic reach of Lightspeed and GamesBeat.

A total of 25 companies will be selected across five major categories:

• Game studios
• Gaming platforms (e.g., user-generated content or social)
• Interactive technology (incl. AI & 3D)
• Extended reality (i.e., AR/VR)
• Blockchain & web3

To be eligible, companies have to:

1. Be part of the gaming industry (see five categories above),
2. Be no more than five years old, and
3. Have no more than 50 full-time employees

Our goal is to create an annual list that is unique, original, and valuable for the industry. The process will be fair and transparent. The nomination form is globally available (self-nominations are possible as well). Peers can nominate each other, and our hand-selected judges will guide the selection process.

In addition to a startup’s vision, caliber, and execution, we will also focus on the team’s diversity, ensuring the inclusion of historically marginalized people (including women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community).