Big Fish Gains Gaming Veteran, Chris Williams, To Lead Growing Free-To-Play Business on Mobile, PC and Mac

Seattle, WA (October 22, 2012)–Big Fish, the leading global marketplace for discovering and enjoying casual games, today announced that Chris Williams, a seasoned gaming executive, is joining the company as Big Fish's Vice President and General Manager of Free-to-Play.  Williams will oversee Big Fish's rapid expansion of free-to-play (F2P) games in both the mobile marketplace and the company's PC and Mac app store. F2P games are a natural extension to Big Fish's premium casual catalog that is available on PC/Mac, mobile and its cross-platform cloud service, Big Fish Unlimited, and they leverage the company's existing direct-to-consumer relationship that has been built over the last 10 years.

Williams was most recently at PlayFirst, Inc., where as Vice President of Products&Strategy he was responsible for growing PlayFirst’s mobile business through new platforms, F2P games, and strategic partnerships. Williams was also responsible for starting PlayFirst's efforts on iOS and successfully building mobile into the company's core business. Williams started his career at LucasArts Entertainment, where he was the Project Lead for a flagship Indiana Jones game and contributed to numerous acclaimed Star Wars titles.

"With the explosion of mobile and social games over the last 4 years, new gaming styles and player behaviors are starting to emerge. F2P games are at the forefront of that growth and Big Fish is extremely well positioned to take advantage of this with its huge total global audience of more than 70 Million casual gamers and its portfolio of more than 3000 games," said Chris Williams.  "I am excited to be working with such a content-rich company, and look forward to working with its network of more than 550 developers, as well as its in-house teams, to help create the most playable and fun F2P games in the market." 

Known for creating top-selling hidden object adventure games, Big Fish is today launching its first F2P mobile hidden object game, Found: A Hidden Object Adventure.  Playing off a popular TV series,  players find themselves stranded on a secret isle after an alarming plane crash. Is it paradise or something else? To answer that question, players must tackle hidden object scenes, start collections, and barter and trade to turn the isle into their own tropical empire. Along the way they need to gain experience stars and coins, which will come in handy to help them battle aliens, fight off pirates, explore ruins, and so much more.

Big Fish's dominance in hidden object adventure games allows it to successfully extend the hidden object game mechanic from a linear play experience to a continuous play experience. In the next year, Big Fish will launch several new top-tier F2P games on its PC and Mac app store and on mobile devices.

About Big Fish

Founded in 2002, Big Fish< http://www.bigfishgames.com> is the most trusted global leader in casual games, and is dedicated to bringing engaging entertainment to everyone, anywhere, on any device. Through its proprietary, data-driven platform, millions of consumers seeking engaging entertainment easily discover and play PC and mobile games created by Big Fish’s network of more than 500 development partners and its in-house Big Fish Games Studios. The company offers a growing catalog of more than 3000 unique PC and mobile games, along with a universal cloud gaming service, Big Fish Unlimited. Big Fish’s games are playable on a wide variety of devices across 10 languages and by players from 150 countries. The company is headquartered in Seattle, WA, with regional offices in Oakland, CA; Cork, Ireland; Vancouver, Canada; and Luxembourg.