Talk:John Riccitiello/Archives/2018

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John Riccitiello
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthewpruitt (talk • contribs) 19:06, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment I've condensed the material below, but it's a request for an update to the page by the above user. Section headers have been commented out. Primefac (talk) 18:20, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

John Riccitiello (born August 3, 1950) is an American business executive and investor. Riccitiello currently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Unity Technologies.

Riccitiello joined Unity in 2014 as Chief Executive Officer. During his tenure as Chief Executive he has cemented Unity’s position as the world’s most popular gaming engine used by more than 1 million developers globally. Unity also has an industry-leading analytics and monetization network, reaching more than 1 billion monthly active users across 3 billion devices around the world. Unity has seen tremendous growth, especially in the mobile game industry, but also extending into new businesses outside of games such as automotive, film, architecture, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Unity powers more than 2/3rds of AR/VR content, and cites Facebook, Google, Microsoft, VW/Audi, BMW and Gensler as customers.

Riccitiello also serves on the boards of Telltale Games, Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley and the Board of Councilors for the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was one of of the early investors in Oculus Rift, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014.

Riccitiello has lived all over the world in cities including New York City, Chicago, Nicosia (Cyprus), Dusseldorf, Paris and London.

Riccitiello was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He was raised in St. Louis, MO and San Jose, CA before moving to Berkeley. Riccitiello received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 1981.

After graduating from Cal Berkeley, Riccitiello worked as a manager in several consumer product companies, including Brand Manager at The Clorox Company, Group Marketing Director at PepsiCo, and Managing Director at Häagen-Dazs International. His first CEO position was as President and CEO of Wilson Sporting Goods in 1993. In 1996, he became President and CEO of Sara Lee Corporation's Sara Lee Bakery Worldwide.

In 1997, Riccitiello shifted his focus to the world of video games at Electronic Arts (EA). He served as President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of EA until 2004, where he helped catapult EA’s expansion of video games into the worldwide mass market. He had two EA tenures: 1997-2004 as COO, and later in 2007 as CEO. Riccitiello was credited with diversifying Electronic Arts' business model, directing the company's shift from consumer packaged goods into the digital delivery of content via console, PC, tablet, and mobile devices.

Riccitiello left his first tenure at EA in 2004 to co-found and serve as Co-Founder and Managing Director at Elevation Partners, a private equity capital fund, along with Silver Lake Partners co-founder Roger McNamee, U2 lead singer Bono, and a number of Silicon Valley investors. Focusing on the media and entertainment business. Elevation invested in a in media, internet, and entertainment companies such as Forbes, SDI Media Group, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc. Palm], Facebook and Yelp and BioWare.

Riccitiello became Chief Executive Officer of Unity Technologies on October 22, 2014, and served as a board member since November 2013. The transition was announced in a blog post from Unity founder and then-CEO, David Helgason. Regarding the transition, Helgason stated: “this is an amazing win for Unity and the community. He’s the right person to help guide the company to the mission that we set out for ourselves over a decade ago: democratize game development!”

Since taking over as CEO, the company has seen its monthly developer ecosystem grow from 600,000 to over 1M developers. He’s grown Unity’s employee base from 520 employees in 2014 to 1,500 in 2017, further cementing Unity’s position as the market leader in virtually every country in the world. Unity touches nearly 3 billion devices around the world, and Unity developers are responsible for 50% of new mobile games. Content made with Unity was installed more than 16B times in 2016 alone.

Riccitiello has overseen two fundraising rounds in his tenure as CEO: a $181M Series C round from investors led by DJF Growth (July 2016), and a $400M Series D round from private equity firm, Silver Lake (May 2017). A “big chunk” of the latter round went toward purchasing the shares of longtime employees and earlier investors.

In March 2017, Riccitiello made it his mission to sponsor game developers affected by President Donald Trump’s travel ban. The company created Unity Without Borders: a program that allowed developers affected by travel restrictions to attend the company’s European developer event, Unite Amsterdam. Unity provided visa process assistance and took care of travel accommodations to ensure that developers from around the world could learn and be inspired by the global development community. “Unity believes in democratizing game development, solving hard problems, and enabling success no matter where you’re from,” the company said. “It is those three core beliefs that drives us, and it is our hope that Unity Without Borders helps us expose as many developers, artists, programmers, and dreamers as possible to our amazing community.”

As the company transitions from game engine to content creation engine, Riccitiello is laser-focused on reaching new verticals, most passionately: virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). In 2016 Riccitiello forecasted VR’s “gap of disappointment,” claiming that “maybe 2016 isn’t really the year of VR.” He cited price, lack of content and mobility as three three factors that would deter VR from hitting mass market, and believes VR’s long-term trajectory “10 years from now, will be huge.”

Augmented reality is where Riccitiello is making his near-term bet. In his 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas keynote, Riccitiello cited that “we don’t have to wait for millions, or billions, of HMD’s to sell. Now we have Apple and Google, making the 3 Billion smartphones AR-ready. Not 5 years from now --- but today.”


 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done:, first of all, thank you for the request. The problem with the proposed text is that it is written like a public relations profile of the subject instead of an encyclopedia article.  Phrases like: "most popular gaming engine", "industry-leading analytics and monetization network", "tremendous growth", "catapult EA’s expansion", etc. are overblown peacock terms and business-speak not appropriate in a biographical article.  In addition, the proposed text has no references at all, relying instead on links to other Wikipedia articles. There are even supposed quotes from the subject with no indication where they came from.  The policy on biographies requires reliable sources that are verifiable for claims in such articles, whether the claims are positive, negative, or neutral.  Preferably, such sources should also be independent of the subject.  Text that has such concerns cannot be substituted for already-cited text.  Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:54, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I provided an updated version, but haven't seen any feedback. Can you provide an update? Thank you!

Thanks for that feedback! I've rewritten the entry, please let me know any additional feedback.

John Riccitiello (born August 3, 1950) is an American business executive and investor. Riccitiello currently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at Unity Technologies.

Riccitiello joined Unity in 2014 as Chief Executive Officer. During his tenure as Chief Executive he has helped establish Unity as a creation engine used by more than 1 million developers globally Unity also has an analytics and monetization network that reaches more than 1 billion monthly active users across 3 billion devices around the world. While Unity is recognized primarily in the mobile game industry, the company is also extending into new business verticals outside of games, such as automotive, film, architecture, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Unity powers more than 2/3rds of AR/VR content, and cites Facebook, Google, Microsoft, VW/Audi, BMW and Gensler as customers.

Riccitiello also serves on the boards of Telltale Games, Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley and the Board of Councilors for the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He was one of the early investors in Oculus Rift, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014.

Riccitiello has lived all over the world in cities including New York City, Chicago, Nicosia (Cyprus), Dusseldorf, Paris and London.

Riccitiello was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He was raised in St. Louis, MO and San Jose, CA before moving to Berkeley. Riccitiello received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 1981.

After graduating from Cal Berkeley, Riccitiello worked as a manager in several consumer product companies, including Brand Manager at The Clorox Company, Group Marketing Director at PepsiCo, and Managing Director at Häagen-Dazs International. His first CEO position was as President and CEO of Wilson Sporting Goods in 1993. In 1996, he became President and CEO of Sara Lee Corporation's Sara Lee Bakery Worldwide.

In 1997, Riccitiello shifted his focus to the world of video games at Electronic Arts (EA). He served as President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of EA until 2004, where he led EA’s expansion of video games into the worldwide mass market. He had two EA tenures: 1997-2004 as COO, and later in 2007 as CEO. Riccitiello left his first tenure at EA in 2004 to co-found and serve as Co-Founder and Managing Director at Elevation Partners, a private equity capital fund, along with Silver Lake Partners co-founder Roger McNamee, U2 lead singer Bono, and a number of Silicon Valley investors. Focusing on the media and entertainment business. Elevation invested in media, internet and entertainment companies such as Forbes, SDI Media Group, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm,_Inc. Palm], Facebook, Yelp and BioWare.

Riccitiello became Chief Executive Officer of Unity Technologies on October 22, 2014, and has served as a board member since November 2013. The transition was announced in a blog post from Unity founder and then-CEO, David Helgason. Regarding the transition, Helgason stated “This is an amazing win for Unity and the community. He’s the right person to help guide the company to the mission that we set out for ourselves over a decade ago: democratize game development!”

Since taking over as CEO, the company has seen its monthly developer ecosystem grow from 600,000 to more than 1M developers while growing Unity’s employee base from 520 employees in 2014 to 1,500 in 2017. Unity touches nearly 3 billion devices around the world, and Unity developers are responsible for 50% of new mobile games. Content made with Unity was installed more than 16B times in 2016 alone.

Riccitiello has overseen two fundraising rounds in his tenure as CEO: a $181M Series C round from investors led by DFJ Growth (July 2016), and a $400M Series D round from private equity firm, Silver Lake (May 2017). A large portion of the latter round went toward purchasing the shares of longtime employees and earlier investors, as stated in TechCrunch.

In March 2017, Riccitiello made it his mission to sponsor game developers affected by President Donald Trump’s travel ban. The company created Unity Without Borders, a program that allowed developers affected by travel restrictions to attend the company’s European developer event, Unite Amsterdam. Unity provided visa process assistance and took care of travel accommodations to ensure that developers from around the world could learn and be inspired by the global development community. “Unity believes in democratizing game development, solving hard problems, and enabling success no matter where you’re from,” the company said. “It is those three core beliefs that drives us, and it is our hope that Unity Without Borders helps us expose as many developers, artists, programmers, and dreamers as possible to our amazing community.”

As the company transitions from game engine to content creation engine, Riccitiello is focusing on reaching new verticals, specifically  virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). In 2016 Riccitiello forecasted that VR’s “gap of disappointment,” claiming “maybe 2016 isn’t really the year of VR.” He cited price, lack of content and mobility as three three factors that would deter VR from hitting mass market, and believes VR’s long-term trajectory will see significant upward movement in the next 10 years.

Augmented reality is where Riccitiello is making his near-term bet. In his 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas keynote, Riccitiello shared that we don’t have to wait for millions or billions of HMD’s to sell. According to Riccitiello, with the global smartphone installed base now at 3 billion, the time is not 5 years from now -- but today.

Updated draft
Hi editors. I saved a draft article above, one year ago, but since then I've learned a bit more about Wikipedia's rules and formatting. I'd like to continue proposing updates to this article, and I've made sure my conflict of interest is known by adding the "paid contributor" template. To be clear, I am here as the representative of Unity Technologies on Wikipedia. You'll see a similar declaration at Talk:Unity Technologies, where there is ongoing discussion as well.

I've saved an updated draft for editors to review at User:Matthewpruitt/John Riccitiello. I don't expect editors to review the entire draft at once, so I'll break the draft into much smaller requests here. My goals are to update the article and fill in some obvious content gaps, using acceptable sources. I'll stick to requesting feedback instead of updating the article myself. Thanks in advance to any editors who can help update the article. Matthewpruitt (talk) 18:25, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Change "Education" to "Early life and education"
First, I'd like to suggest an improvement to the "Education" section. Currently, the article says, "Riccitiello received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 1981, graduating with honors." I propose expanding this heading to "Early life and education", and adding mention of his birth place (Erie, Pennsylvania). I suggest the following text:
 * "Riccitiello was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 1981. "

The net change is removal of "graduating with honors" and adding where he was born. This seems like a very straightforward improvement to the article. Is an editor able to update the article? Matthewpruitt (talk) 18:25, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
 * , I have overtaken the content in question with several changes in regards to guidelines and style (for better readability in prose and code). Regards. Lordtobi  ( &#9993; ) 17:50, 4 December 2018 (UTC)