| Jeffrey Anderson | |
| Birth Place: | Rockford, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Chief Executive Officer, NCSoft West |
| Years Active: | 2021–present |
| Spouse: | |
| Children: | 2 |
Jeffrey Anderson is currently serving as the founder and managing director of Kickstand, LCC. [1] Kickstand is a boutique corporate advisory firm that offers professional guidance and consulting support to digital gaming, media and technology companies. In this role, Anderson provides seed and venture capital as well as board management, product strategy, and marketing support.
Anderson received an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he was one in the top 3% of his graduating class.[2] He also has a JD from the University of Chicago where he served on the University of Chicago Law Review.[3] After graduating, he went to work as an attorney at the law firm of Holleb & Coff in Chicago, Illinois. Feeling that the legal profession was not for him, he joined with Thomas Ptak and others to start Mission Studios (which was later sold to Take-Two). After that, he moved to Los Angeles and joined Viacom's consumer products division where he worked on various initiatives from Star Trek licensing to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. In 1998, Electronic Arts recruited him to join its Austin, Texas studio to oversee the Ultima Online franchise along with Raph Koster and Richard Garriott.[4]
Then, in 2001, Turbine Inc recruited him to be its president and CEO. The company had a software development agreement with Microsoft at the time to develop Asheron's Call 2, but wanted to expand the business and become the largest independent MMORPG company in the world. Anderson successfully raised capital from Highland Capital Partners and Polaris Venture Partners, and secured the rights to develop two new MMORPG games known as Dungeons & Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online. He went on to raise $30 million in additional funds from Tudor Ventures and Columbia Capital for development and expansion capital.[5] Anderson left Turbine in 2008 and the company was subsequently sold to Warner Brothers.[6]
After a short break, Anderson went on to found Quick Hit and Quick Hit Football. This new online gaming studio developed the world's first free-to-play National Football League-licensed online football game.[7] The company raised capital from New Enterprise Associates and had some moderate success before it was ultimately sold to Majesco in 2011.[8] As a part of Majesco's senior executive leadership, Anderson was responsible for driving the company's social and mobile business, including the original Quick Hit Football game as well as Cooking Mama and other titles.
Once the earn-out from the sale of Majesco was over, Anderson left the company and joined the Game Show Network in 2013[9] as chief strategy officer under David Goldhill. Under his leadership, GSN acquired the makers of Bingo Bash[10] and others. At the time, Bingo Bash was one the world's most profitable and successful social bingo games according to the CY16 annual report published by Eilers and Krejcik.[11] In addition to serving as the CSO, Anderson also spent time operating GSN's many gaming divisions and apps as its executive vice president of social casino and bingo, including Bingo Bash, GSN Casino, Wheel of Fortune Slots, Fresh Deck Poker, and many more.
After nearly seven years with GSN, Anderson left the company to pursue a new opportunity with Hasbro as the head of its global gaming business. In that role, he served as the senior vice president and general manager of global gaming.[12] At Hasbro, Anderson was responsible for driving Hasbro's portfolio of iconic game brands (such as Monopoly, Risk, Cluedo, and Game of Life) where the total value of the portfolio exceeded 700 million U.S. dollars in global annual sales.[13] Specifically, Anderson oversaw the strong growth over Hasbro's iconic Monopoly brand which is the leader in the 7.2 billion U.S. dollars Tabletop game industry.[14] Moreover, in 2020, Wizards of the Coast announced that its Avalon Hill brands would be moved over to Hasbro and be overseen by the gaming group.[15] Subsequently, Hasbro announced that it was relaunching a new version of HeroQuest, the iconic role-playing game on its crowd-funding platform.[16]
Following Hasbro, Anderson joined NCSoft West as its chief executive officer, overseeing NCSoft's gaming business in the Americas, EMEA, and Oceana regions. He was appointed to this position on July 28, 2021, replacing Dr. Songyee Yoon.[17] As the head of NCSoft West, Anderson is in charge of the company's internal development at its first-party studio ArenaNet, publishing Aion (video game), Blade & Soul, Fuser (video game), Guild Wars, Lineage II and Lineage 2 Mobile ("L2M"), and corporate operations of more than 400 employees in Aliso Viejo, Austin, Bellevue, London, and San Mateo. Under his leadership, the studio launched the third expansion pack for Guild Wars 2, entitled "End of Dragons," on February 28, 2022[18] as well as releasing the title on Steam (service).[19]