About Jamison Selby
Jamison Selby is an American gaming executive and the CEO of Rubystone Inc., a Los Angeles-based social gaming company. He has spent more than twenty years building games and the businesses around them.
Rubystone is a hybrid online gaming operator. The company runs its own consumer brand, PeakPlay.com, and launches branded sites for partners on SCION, its white-label platform. Beyond the technology itself, Rubystone can serve as the operator for partner brands, offering full-service support from launch through daily operations.
As CEO, Selby's focus is growth: expanding the company into new gaming verticals and markets and launching great brands into them, both under Rubystone's own banner and alongside partners who bring audiences of their own. Today the company's sites offer free-to-play games with sweepstakes promotions, which serve as the foundation for that expansion.
Career
Selby began his career on stage and screen. After earning an MFA from Rutgers University and a BFA from UC Santa Barbara, he spent a decade working as an actor, writer and director in theater, television and film. That training still shapes how he approaches products, as experiences built for an audience, and it is a big part of why he is at home in front of a room.
His path into games ran through television. Beginning in 1999 he worked in production for Viacom Productions, MTV's Big Urban Myth Show, The Weakest Link, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. In 2005 he left Entertainment Tonight and The Insider to join ODVD Games as Head Writer, leading game design and writing on titles including Trivial Pursuit Featuring The Simpsons. He returned to television in 2007 as Senior Producer on ABC's primetime quiz show Duel, where he ran the game department.
That same year, contract work on a Deal or No Deal project for TimePlay Entertainment led to a full-time role as Senior Producer, which he held from 2008 to 2011. At TimePlay he adapted Deal or No Deal into a live real-money gaming show for Norwegian and Oceania cruise lines, produced The Real Deal at The Venetian Las Vegas with 750 networked handhelds and prizes up to $1,000,000, and designed the company's original second-screen multiplayer cinema app.
From 2011 to 2013 he led sales and business development at SocialType and founded Monkey King Games, taking on game design and business development projects and teaching game design at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.
In 2013 Selby joined Game Play Network, operator of the real-money gaming brand b spot (now Horseplay). He started as VP Games, building the games team from the ground up, and in 2018 became SVP Games & Marketing, leading both functions. His work reached into nearly every part of the business, with a primary focus on the player-facing brands. During his tenure the company published 15 real-money gaming apps on the App Store, including the b spot app, launched the bspot.com website, powered numerous third-party apps, and scaled live operations to 22 U.S. states. He is a named inventor on 25 issued U.S. patents from his work there, and across his gaming career he has shipped more than 85 games.
Speaking and Service
Selby has delivered more than 65 keynotes, panels and media appearances since 2011, at events including ICE, SBC, NEXT.io, GDC, SXSW and Casual Connect. He was inducted into BAFTA in 2017 for his work in games, and serves as an advisor to Coverd, an a16z-backed fintech company, and as a member of the Malta-North America Business Council. He chaired IGDA Los Angeles from 2011 to 2015 and created the IGDA Real Money Gaming SIG. He previously served on the advisory board of UC Riverside's Design Thinking Executive Program.
He lives in the Los Angeles area.
