Inside Social Games

Outspark is certainly a company that has seen a lot of changes over the past year ranging from mobile payments, to survey monetization, to new game development partners, and it doesn’t look like they are ready to stop just yet. A week ago, the free-to-play, online game publisher hired Owen Mahoney, a former senior executive of nine years from Electronic Arts.

As founding CEO, Susan Choe moves on to become Outspark’s Chairman of the Board, Mahoney will be charged with further expanding Outspark into the regions of North America, Europe, and Asia. Mahoney is qualified for the job, with his former EA experience as Senior Vice President of Corporate and Business Development. It was there that he was charged with EA’s global development which included responsibilities such as acquisitions, equity investments, and strategic partnerships.

According to Choe, the new hire came out of Outspark’s dramatic global growth since its original inception back in 2007. The general hope is that the fresh blood will be able to expand the current global userbase of 5.4 million unique visitors a month.

Mahoney marks the latest on an ever growing list of top brass leaving the mainstream realm and jumping into the casual and social space, and also one of many to come directly from the EA giant itself. So far, this year, we have seen Brandon Barber (former Senior Director of Global Marketing), Colleen McCreary, and Mike Verdu join Zynga as Vice President of Marketing, Chief People Officer, and Vice President of Game Development respectively; Eric Lindstrom (former EA Senior Game Designer) join SGN as Chief Creative Officer; former COO John Pleasants as Playdom’s new CEO; and, of course, Don Traeger, a former EA Sports veteran, who started the iPhone development studio, Portable Zoo.

[image via Virtual Goods News]