10 Hugely Influential People In Gaming You Need To Know About

6. Riccardo Zacconi - CEO, King Digital Entertainment

You may not have heard the name Riccardo Zacconi, but you will surely have heard of the blatantly vampiric products his company is responsible for. As the head of casual gaming monstrosity King Digital Entertainment, Zacconi has overseen the creation of some of the most parasitic free-to-play games ever made. And has made a bloody huge pile of cash in the process. King is the new Zynga, and then some. The company name has proven strangely accurate, because right now these people are the irrefutable kings of money-hungry freemium rubbish. An endless stream of derivative match-three games wrapped in a sickly sweet layer of cuteness, between Candy Crush, Farm Heroes Saga and the rest, this is a company which raked in near enough to $2 billion in 2013, and around $600 million for the first quarter of 2014. And unlike triple-A blockbuster console releases with gargantuan budgets, a lot of King's revenue is straight profit. This translates into industry influence because as more developers cotton on to Zacconi and his henchmen's carnivorous approach to game design more of these horrid little games will appear, out to cash in on gamers with addictive personalities. As long as King is making the big bucks, expect the various app stores to be stuffed with free-to-play nonsense. And when it comes to the kingdom of paywalls, progress gates and predatory game design, Zaconni wears the crown.