Ramin Shokrizade Email & Phone Number

Claymont, Delaware, Us

I am responsible for all revenue generating elements on the revolutionary new R3V3NGE audience interactive FPS-PVE Web 2 to Web3 bridge game. Those elements include game economy, tokenomics, blockchain meta design, pricing and business model, and all progression/reward/trade/engagement systems. This first product from Everreach Labs is smartly positioned to onboard traditional online gamers into a world with optional blockchain elements where they can decide if they want to play at that level or not.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Meghan McWilliams, Cedric Gamelin and I have founded the Arrivant game development studio with the purpose of creating massively social games with player to player Play to Earn economies that meet the core consumer needs of gamers (Empowerment and Connection) using scientific principles. Our first product will be StarGarden: https://medium.com/@Arrivant_/stargarden-a-new-game-for-a-new-world-a0da9e2d4b27Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProjectEluuneMedium Link: https://medium.com/@Arrivant_Website: https://www.arrivant.com/AMA Summary: https://bit.ly/TLDREluune@Rylucid's Thread: https://twitter.com/rylucid/status/1447669494365794308

Us

While I've been writing about game economies since early 2000, it has only been since 2005 that I dedicated myself totally to the design of advanced virtual economic and monetization systems. I have written over 100 papers on the subject, some proprietary. I am interviewed regularly in the global press, and have advised the regulators of over 70 advanced nations. The first game economist available to the Western game development industry, and the first to be employed to companies such as Microsoft, Wargaming, Nickelodeon, Take 2 Interactive, and many others. Since my skill sets had never been deployed prior to my arrival, it took some time to explain to companies what I do and how I can assist them. That has not changed significantly with the companies I have not yet assisted. My techniques are still unique in the industry since I invented them and only publish the bottom 25% of what I know.Now that I have developed the functional framework for game neuroeconomics, going well beyond what is possible with game economics, the process of explaining how I can multiply complex product revenues starts over. I am happy to explain what I do under NDA with serious candidate studios and companies. I've worked very hard to help our industry on many levels and with even minor vetting (as in, at least a Google search...) you will see I am a true industry unicorn who has already value-added in the range of 8 digits USD per year on two of my previous shipped products.I am a global problem solver in the IM industry, typically solving problems before it is obvious they exist. If you have a systemic/design problem, and I can't solve it, you are in way over your head. If you are a problem creator, then I probably won't assist you unless you are trying to stop creating problems. If you are being investigated/fined by one or more countries, then you are a problem creator.

San Francisco, Us

I write on issues relating to my areas of expertise in virtual economies and currencies, monetization models, real money transfer dynamics and countermeasures, interactive media trend analysis, ethics, game physiology, and quantitative game design.

Mulmur, On, Ca

I have joined the 2Dogs team as their meta game designer. Our current project, Destiny's Sword, is a strategic mmo where we will be modeling post-combat medical and psychological conditions in both the game play and the economy in ways never before attempted by the industry. The entire team is committed to using pro-consumer methodology. I will be doing design work mostly remotely, and continue to provide some oversight to products designed by me that are still in development at Red Rhino.

Sydney, New South Wales, Au

I designed the progression, reward, social, engagement, economic, and business model systems for Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians. One of the things that makes our products unusual in the market is that we use blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies as standard features, with the intent of allowing consumers more ownership and control over their virtual assets. This also presents new challenges and opportunities in the area of metagame design.

Denver, Colorado, Us

I have redesigned the meta game and business model for our current project, which is a casual game coming to market very early in 2017. I've been given full design authority on a mobile F2P eSports game that I hope will be competitive against my last such design, WoT Blitz, with >55M downloads.As of November 2017 the project is 90+% design complete and I am assisting new projects while production continues on this project. As of early 2019, the current plan is to expand the budget of this title by a factor of 50 in the second half of 2019, transforming it into a AAA massively social game.

Creating the design for a gamified consumer marketplace for celebrity social goods presents new challenges compared to my previous design projects. The stakes are high as there is huge consumer demand for these goods that is not being met prior to the introduction of this marketplace.This project is on hold.

Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, Gb

I joined the ambitious SkySaga: Infinite Isles project with the goals of using my technologies and experience to optimize the product's socialization, economic, and monetization systems. Special attention was to be placed on creating an advanced player crafting economy that is fair, sustainable, and resistant to attack. I was to design these systems in a consumer and child friendly fashion that did not force consumers to choose between virtual and "real space" success. This project was halted in 2017.

Nicosia, Cy

I was thrilled when Wargaming founders agreed that the position of meta game designer was critical to the design of future complex F2P MMO products, and the optimization of existing products. To conceal the true nature of my work, I asked them to officially hire me as a "game economist", to which they agreed. Only a few people inside the company (and no one outside the company) knew my true role. I did not introduce the term "meta game design" until 2014 or 2015 in my published papers on Gamasutra. The term (and role) has gained acceptance at the end of 2018 even if the duties of a meta game designer are still poorly understood. My role was unique among our 3000+ employees, and acted mostly autonomously as my own department in the company.My duties included optimization of the business models and economies of existing products, those products under development, and all future products. I also act as a bridge between our new BI unit and our various design leads to optimize data collection, interpretation, and utilization. I was also responsible for the creation of social, progression, and reward systems designed to maximize retention and conversion. The creation of these integrated systems using game neuroeconomic methods I invented allowed for unusually favorable long tail performance metrics while minimizing toxicity. These technologies were applied during the design of World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships, resulting in superior performance metrics and extremely favorable consumer response. I lived on site in Belarus and Russia during the design phase for each game. The technologies were also applied to at least 3 other large scale MMO's that I was meta game designing for WG, that are presumed halted.As of early 2018 WoT Blitz has been downloaded over 55M times, possesses superior conversion and LTV metrics, and World of Warships is showing a similar trajectory.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I was the first game economist utilized by Microsoft, to guide them through the design of their first internally developed free to play game, Project Spark. I worked with the lead game designers to modify the core game design to optimize commercial success inside a Free to Play business environment. Converting what was essentially a development engine, into a game, presented unique challenges. A key component was to create reward mechanisms for player retention.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Advised Nickelodeon Games on qualitative optimizations for their social products..

Novato, California, Us

After my work on the CivWorld project, I was asked to detail the major obstacles, and provide the solutions to those obstacles, for the even more ambitious Civilization Online project. CO involves economic complexity that is unprecedented in the gaming industry, so I was thrilled to assist. I reviewed over 2000 pages of design documents, and produced over 70 pages of analysis, proprietary economic models, and proprietary monetization designs.I kept my contribution to this project secret for 3+ years under terms of the strict NDA..My models were shared with XLGames, prior to the release of ArchAge, as they were doing work on CO also. ArchAge contains many monetization elements never before used in Korea that look very similar to some of the models I produced for CO. I have no official association with the ArchAge project. There is no public sign of progress on CO that I am aware of, and 4 years have passed since I left the project.

I designed and deployed a custom advanced virtual economy and monetization model for a unique and revolutionary social dating game, Flirt Planet. I have completed the "A to Z" quantification of this product's core game during a one-month intensive stay in the studio.

Manchester, Gb

I used my proprietary methods to rebuild their product around a core economic model, with all game elements integrated from the start. This is the inverse of contemporary design methodology [in 2012, this is now standard practice in 2017], and allows for the resolution of various systemic design and business model weaknesses that currently compromise the success of conventional interactive media products. I did not see this product to completion due to being ejected from England when the studio failed to produce the proper work VISA.

Remotely (from Los Angeles) and directly (in Beijing) design and manage the implementation of the monetization model and virtual economy for the Army Rage project. The headquarters is in Bulgaria and the development studio is in Beijing (Tuyasoft). I travel to Beijing as required to direct a team of 30 working to prepare Army Rage for release in Europe, China, and North America (in that order).I joined the project near completion, working intensely with the studio to redesign monetization and game design elements to utilize techniques developed during my seven years of creating advanced economic models for games. The monetization design added to this product is unique in several ways, including the first time this type of product (MMOFPS) is not monetized as "Pay to Win", no direct conversion of premium currency to game currency, no direct purchase of weapons with premium currency, and will also include soft time caps, another industry first. Emphasis at all times is placed on increasing retention and conversion by creating a consumer-friendly environment that the end user will not reject.The new monetization model was deployed successfully and on time with the open beta test client on March 27th, 2012. Considering that I first met with the development studio in Beijing in mid-February, this means the total time to implement my customized monetization model was five weeks from green light, working mostly remotely.

Sparks, Maryland, Us

Initially tasked to deliver a comprehensive report of all existing exploits in the Civ World Facebook program, I went on to produce a number of comprehensive design and monetization reports. The latter were with the emphasis on optimizing the revenue generation of this product. This was my first time assisting a studio with a social network game, and I arrived a bit too late to recommend a strong monetization system without an overhaul of the core design. I met Sid Meier at the 2012 GDC and he thanked me for my efforts on this project, which was a tremendous honor for me since I have played every Civilization product across all platforms since 1991.

When actively playing I am the top-ranked Western cyberathlete in games with player-based economies. These games include Eve Online (Iceland), Horizons (USA), Pirates of the Burning Sea (USA), Shattered Galaxy (Korea), and Galaxy Online (China). I was also one of the first 100 players in the world to L60 in World of Warcraft and spent some time on the top 100 world ladder in Diablo 2. I usually compete under the name "Sarcerok". In the case of EVE, I mastered the game by organizing 5000 players into an elaborate supply chain with only me at the top, and by developing methods to defeat exploits used by griefers to block access to scarce materials.Completing a 10+ year streak of "do not attempt this at home" play intensity has given me tremendous insights into the behavior of gaming populations and game design, especially in regards to economic games.

When my editor, Scott Miller, told me that there were now over 500,000 unique people reading my stories and editorials every day, my life changed. I was in the right place at the right time with the right words. I think I really grew up in that moment and felt the weight of the community looking to me for leadership. I took the role of consumer (gamers) advocate and this has driven me in everything I have done since.I wrote previews, reviews, editorials, and conducted investigative journalism. Our site also hosted many first public USA IRC chats with mmog developers, especially from European companies like Funcom, CCP, and Reakktor. My most read series of articles was my exposure of a hacker group called BlackSnow that attacked Anarchy Online (Funcom) and Dark Ages of Camelot (Mythic Entertainment). This led to their neutralization and a series of lawsuits setting the legal precedent establishing the enforcability of the End User Licence Agreement in software applications.

Tri Synergy is a production, marketing, and distribution company serving independent developers. I assisted them over this three year period as needed to evaluate new products, potential clients, and act as a go between during negotiations with client development studios. As a journalist and gamer I knew what was hot, first, and could direct the team towards ideal clients. My ability to recognize this and to speak fluent gamer was instrumental in sealing several distribution and production deals. In the process I learned the basics of interactive media production, marketing, and distribution.

El Segundo, California, Us

My first QA project was Masters of Magic (Microprose, 1995), and I have assisted over 100 development groups in the last 17 years. I often work double full time when inspired, and I list only the work that I did here on the Shattered Galaxy project with Nexon as it was my longest stay at 18 months. I wore a number of hats while there. Note that the programmers were located in California and South Korea (the latter spoke little English) and I was in near constant contact with them for the duration of the development cycle. I worked 80 hours per week on this project (so 3 man years total). I worked remotely, making over 1000 QA, design, balance, and localization contributions during those 3 man years.Primary duties were to reconstruct all of the math systems, balance all combat/economic/advancement systems, QA anything math related, and perform English localization. I also generally was the first detector of hacks/exploits as I would sense any disturbance in the numbers, and would relay those to our "hack expert" to solve. I stayed for several months post release to assist with the patch and expansion process. This was the first MMORTS, one of the first English-localized Asian MMO's, and is still one of the most innovative MMOG's ever created. In the case of other companies I assist, typically I will evaluate the product for approximately 200 hours then write a full QA/design report and deliver it to the dev team. Verifiable (meaning the company is still around) examples of this would include EVEOnline and CivWorld. In the latter case I was able to accelerate development time by approximately a month (for the entire team) in about a month.

Riverside, California, Us

As a sports therapy instructor I designed and implemented a vocational education system to produce entry-level fitness and physical therapy workers in an area that had a shortage of such labor assets. I negotiated and maintained affiliation agreements with over 20 hospitals, gyms, clinics, schools, and country clubs where I placed and supervised students after a multi-month academic and clinical training program. I trained and certified over 500 fitness trainers, physical therapy aides, and cardiac rehab aides during this period. I also trained over 100 sports masseurs.

Rancho Mirage, Ca, Us

Provided assistance to patients, showing them how to replace their addiction of choice with physical activities. Training included work in the gym and pool. Preparation of regular progress reports and action plans.

Directed the cardiac rehab and maintenance of a dedicated physical therapy facility for the training of incomplete quadri and paraplegics. This facility was very advanced in that we actually retrained the nervous system of incompletely spinalized patients in order to allow them to reroute cerebellar commands and regain motor control. I conducted 12 lead ECG stress tests with full gas exchange and provided reports to insurance companies and research oversight committees.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Conducted guided research into the nature of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and in particular the changes that occur in cellular catecholamine receptors and the effect these changes have on addiction and coping behavior. Direct work with radioactive tritium was involved.

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

First dedicated trainer for the UCLA Women's Track Team, maintaining optimal training and competition readiness for all athletes at all times. I also was the trainer for 14 Olympic athletes from four countries training at Drake Stadium in preparation for the 1988 Olympic Games, including Florence Griffith-Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee who both set world records while under my care.

Economics

B.S., Kinesiology

Nursing, Engineering, And Pre-Med