We haven’t heard much from PlayFirst since we covered the San Francisco-based casual gaming startup’s last funding round back in December 2007, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t moving for the venture-backed company.
Earlier this year, the startup inked a major deal with Big Fish Games and today it has announced that social game industry executive Mitali Pattnaik has joined PlayFirst as General Manager, Social Games.
Pattnaik started her career at Microsoft at the beginning of the millennium, and joined Electronic Arts as Marketing Manager after a four-year stint at the software company. She didn’t stick around for long: she was hired by Yahoo in September 2005 to fill the role of Senior Marketing Manager, where she oversaw worldwide marketing for Yahoo! Search.
Most recently, she led the marketing and monetization efforts for social gaming at Electronic Arts, where she returned as Online Marketing Manager and later, Head of Marketing, in April 2008 before leaving the company for the second time around late last year. In her new role at PlayFirst, she will lead all company’s social gaming initiatives, including the development and publishing of games for Facebook and other social platforms.
PlayFirst’s chief executive, on a sidenote, is also a woman. The company is led by Mari Baker, former Executive in Residence at Kleiner Perkins and founding CEO of KPCB/Sequoia-backed Navigenics.
(Photo from Facebook)