INNOVATE® Gaming & Esports

Just Esports is an organization that is dedicated to working on justice initiatives in the esports and gaming space. Much of their work focuses on educational programs aimed at empowering others to promote justice in their respective groups and providing individuals with the best tools to build out esports communities...

Founded in 2002 by award-winning game designer and author Jesse Schell, Schell Games is the largest full-service educational and entertainment game development company in the United States. We make experiences across various platforms, specializing in four vertical areas: Health and Wellness, Education, Home Entertainment, and Theme Parks and Museums. In...

WHAT INSPIRED THE CREATION OF DRONE CADETS? In 2016 Sgt. Tony Reid, was a corrections officer at Rikers Island, a jail in New York City, working with incarcerated adolescents 16 to 18 years old. For 8 long years, he witnessed first-hand the plight of young men of color who became...

Flamehawk Studios is a “games for good” startup that focuses on three main themes: e-learning, diversity and inclusion, and charity. Flamehawk’s first effort is The Mechanical World of Dr. Gearbox. Teachers may consider it a remote learning tool but students consider it a fun game that is clearly inspired by...

In February 2019, a mere conversation that I had with a JCSU athletics administrator about the paucity of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that possessed structured on-campus esports programming became the impetus behind my development of a proposal later that day for an esports and gaming academic program. The...

When consumers and students think of the video game industry and esports, they think of the excitement and entertainment of it all – but rarely about the data that guides the strategy of a business and of the game development plan. A market research firm provides the data that helps...

Innovators rarely consider themselves to be pioneers within their own industry. And Andrew Augustin is a prime example of this axiom. Augustin is a graphic designer who, in 2011, founded Notion Games, an Austin-based video gaming company that creates games for people of all ages. But that brief description fails...

Indie game developers are the heart and soul of the gaming industry, and without them, we wouldn’t have as much innovation as we currently have, and have been enjoying since Pong. With that said, indie game developers are always struggling to create their games because of various reasons, and this...

METRO IS A MULTICULTURAL ESPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION AGENCY, CREATING AND PRODUCING DIGITAL, SOCIAL, MOBILE AND LIVE EVENTS DESIGNED TO ATTRACT, ENGAGE AND UPLIFT A BROAD AND DIVERSE AUDIENCE OF GAMING AND TECHNOLOGY ENTHUSIASTS. A college football player, I don’t come from the world of esports as I only understood...

WHO WE ARE The Varsity Esports Foundation is a global non-profit organization established to offer financial assistance to schools and to provide a pipeline for students to reach their potential through esports. We strive to increase literacy around the esports industry’s positive impact on healthy lifestyles, mental health, community, and...

READY PLAYER ONE“What if I actually owned my digital games and in-game items?” That’s been the question on most gamers’ minds.   With limited solutions and some gamers resorting to the shady secondhand grey market to make use of their content outside of the game, David Hanson and Nicolas Gilot,...

The products and services we offer are all aligned with our strategic mission: creating products and content for the good of gamers. Dana Paul, the co-founder and CEO of Ritual Motion, realized there was a gap in the gaming and esports industry around health, wellness, diversity, and true human connectivity...

Emotional Ideas, inc. aka EI, is a sports and entertainment technology company revolutionizing known attractions, games, and products for the next generation of entertainment thrill-seekers. We are currently taking the popular sport of go-kart racing and combining it with the strategy and skill of Esports gaming to pioneer a new...

But Newzoo wasn’t its founder’s (Peter Warman and Thijs Hagoort) first venture into the world of business. Far from it. After becoming friends playing basketball in high school, the industrious duo sold custom-designed t-shirts. Those early days taught them a valuable lesson: custom production based on manuals does not scale...

A 501(c)3 nonprofit charity dedicated to communities, leaders, and organizations by offering innovative consultant services. In 2018, UKnightedXP, Inc. (UKXP) was like all ventures in the beginning – an idea and a dream. Devastated by hurricane Michael, the Panhandle of Florida was reeling from one of the most devastating category...

Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP’s (SGR) entertainment practice includes legal practitioners specializing in intellectual property protection, technology, corporate transactional, tax, and real estate matters. The Firm’s founders began practicing law more than 125 years ago to commit to excellence and attract a wide array of talent dedicated to serving our...

Imagine a social platform built especially for gamers that enabled users to earn cryptocurrency from their content and from playing their favourite games. Now imagine being able to use that cryptocurrency to buy games and in-game upgrades, purchase NFTs of content from top Content creators or to compete against other...

Altura’s mission is to provide gamers with the ability to control and own their in-game items and the ability for game developers to integrate blockchain technology in their video games seamlessly. Altura’s NFT Project The current state of NFTs is comparable to that of the web in the 90s; static...

The Indie Cluster is a platform providing opportunities, resources, and services centered around supporting indie game developers. We focus on quality assurance testing, discoverability, hands-on production, and curating a traveling booth for our games. As our digital future demands more interactive experiences, sustainability is crucial for these small businesses. We’ve...

Most Vicious Players is now the parent company of the Amateur Esports Union (AEU). But before the AEU was created, MVPs has been most well known for its individual players having live-streamed over 1000 wins in a row on YouTube, in which this live stream record has not been broken...

Heidi is an entrepreneur and computer scientist who anticipates the needs of businesses and society as they’re transformed by digital technology. She earned her Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. She is constantly seeking the edge of change and where she finds it, she...

The team at weThink spent years working directly with schools, coaches and players to develop programs that focused on social and emotional skill growth backed by research with the Assessment and Achievement institute at Kansas University. Team-based games and esports are the perfect environment for social skills to flourish, and...

GAMING APPEALS TO OUR INNATE SENSE OF HUMANITY. IT INSPIRES CREATIVITY, PLAY, CONNECTIVITY, AND COMMUNITY These also happen to be the fundamentals of today’s video games. This wasn’t designed by accident, either. Playing video games empowers people no matter their backgrounds, religion, politics, race, gender or location. Sugar Gamers exemplify...

The global gaming market is forecast to worth $257 billion by 2025 and of the 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, 46% of them are women. The majority of these women experience hate and toxicity while gaming, simply for being women. In fact, in an effort to avoid harassment, 75% of women...