Scott Milford

The Chief Product Officer of Pixel United is responsible for the strategic direction of the product portfolio, managing the new game investment budget, and for establishing and propagating best practices across all global studios.

• Oversee strategic direction of $70m new game investment portfolio for Pixel United's $1.8bn global business.
• Operational management of over 450 global employees including all social casino slot production and strategy, incubate and manage expansion game studios in Finland, Canada and USA
• 2021 - Established market and competitive insights functions to inform product strategy, market forecasting and player led product insights
• 2021 - Built multipronged (organic, publishing, studio incubation and M&A) product portfolio strategy expanding the business into key growth segments
• 2021/22 - Embedded and managed new game investment management process focused on data driven early market validation and milestone driven targets and controls
• 2022 - Worked to redeploy almost 400 employees and their families from war zones in Ukraine to safe zones on the western border and in Poland. Successfully ensured the safety of over1000 people and maintained business continuity for over $400m of at risk revenue.
• 2023 - Drove transition from business unit led to centrally guided user acquisition budgeting and target setting leading to an immediate $25m reduction in OPEX with corresponding $5m increase in top line revenue
• 2023 - initiated business transition to portfolio lifecycle management model to optimize and balance capital expenditure across all live service products

Mobile Games in general fared well during the covid period but the companies and leaders that outperformed acted quickly to create value for their players and provide safety and flexibility for employees in the new paradigm

• Managed P&L of $400m Social Casino business while overseeing and setting strategic and operational objectives for over 350 employees on three continents
• Reinforced additional low cost development center in Ukraine to expand infrastructure and operational capability
• Spearheaded aggressive live-operations strategy taking advantage of covid at home audience resulting in 40% (S160m) revenue growth for fiscal 2020 far exceeding market and competitor peers.
• Initiated strategic technology transition from single site data server infrastructure to fully scaleable and disaster proof cloud service.
• in 2019 streamlined cost base by closing San Francisco office and consolidating marketing operations into London office, reducing employee turnover and driving more cohesive product and marketing integration.

in 2017 Mobile Gaming was a booming market. On the back of the strong success achieved in social casino the logical strategy for Aristocrat was to expand, diversify and attempt to capture more of the growth potential that existed in other segments.

• Worked closely with M&A team to identify and diligence acquisition targets across all segments of mobile gaming.
• Product strategy lead on $1.5b of strategic M&A outcomes expanding Aristocrat's presence into mid core (Plarium) and Casual (Big Fish Games)
• Responsible for assessing strategic product viability of emerging market (India mobile gaming) and new product verticals (Ad-monetization, Ad Networks)
• Oversaw integration activities and day to day operations of Big Fish Games throughout 2018
• Devised and implemented proprietary market segmentation model that successfully uncovered product opportunities and informed targeted and efficient game production
• Continued to expand Aristocrat's Gaming presence in EMEA and NJ until exiting the market in 2018.

The international Gaming Standards Association works to forward the collective interests of gaming manufacturers, operators and regulators as they strive to innovate and advance online and retail gaming technology and services that maximize interoperability and customer value.

Board members regularly review and guide strategic and operational activities of IGSA to help define standards that shape the direction of the gaming industry.

After acquiring Product Madness in 2012 Aristocrat Digital generated a year over year hockey stick growth trajectory by focusing on: consistent high level execution, market informed innovation, and player centric value creation.

• Responsible for strategic direction, portfolio management and creation of all of Aristocrat's digital gaming content within global online RMG and Global Social Casino.
• Established and oversaw all global digital slot product development, building teams in Las Vegas, Austin and India and efficiently growing operations from zero to two hundred employees.
• Working closely with a small senior exec team launched the first Aristocrat product in mid 2013, and progressively expanded the app portfolio and scaled revenue from $6m to over $300m. Winner of several social casino of the year awards.
• Devised and executed the segmented content and live-ops strategy that enabled Product Madness to create three of the most successful social casino products in the world and secure leadership positions in the USA and Australia.
• Continued to build the Online RMG business through negotiation and execution of licensing deals to broaden the reach of Aristocrat's content distribution throughout Europe
• Responsible for securing and maintaining Aristocrat’s iGaming position in New Jersey and other online RMG markets in North America including all commercial responsibilities and full operational execution of the deployment of Aristocrat's RGS platform and game content portfolio.

• In 2010 online social and mobile games were a nascent but rapidly growing market and iGaming was being seriously considered in the USA. Confident that there were significant opportunities for Aristocrat in digital, I wanted to be a part of the team that would craft the strategy to position Aristocrat as a market leader and extract multi-channel value from our portfolio of excellent land based slot content
• Responsible for creating and executing a "bootstrap" strategy for iGaming distribution in Europe, securing New Jersey licensure and RGS market approval, and establishing relationships with key operators and global licensees to bring Aristocrat's distribution to scale
• Established a low cost game production outpost in Buenos Aires which resulted in the creation of many successful land based titles.
• Devised, and successfully pitched the comprehensive strategy for Aristocrat to enter social casino. This culminated with the acquisition of Product Madness in 2012, ultimately growing the business from $6m to its current position as #1 Mobile Social Casino publisher in the world with $1bn in annual revenue.

In 2009 the opportunity arose to further diversify and take on a more general management role leading a variety of business units in Aristocrat's Las Vegas offices

• Oversight and responsibility for production and strategic outcomes within the game, platform engineering and project management groups allowed me focus on building high performance teams and drive more cohesive outcomes across the business.
• Modernized Game Development and Program Management processes around agile methodologies and entrenched a more milestone driven success culture
• Increased product diversity and supply/cost flexibility with a network of third party game developers within the USA and Latin America.
• Reduced overall game development costs by Initiating the transition to "hub and spoke" development practices leveraging resourcing in India.

in 2007 Aristocrat was a dominant leader in the Australian slot market with over 60% share. At this time they had a solid growing presence in Asia and the business was starting to get more traction expanding the presence of Australian style penny slots in the USA.

• Entered Aristocrat in 2007 to manage the business critical Jackpots and Advanced Games Development Studio and within less than a year was promoted to Director Of Global Game Studios
• In that role, oversaw content development operations and helped shape the planning and delivery process for Aristocrat's entire $750m global game portfolio.
• Worked extensively to embed processes to more effectively manage Aristocrat's portfolio distribution across an expanding range of GEOs and regulatory jurisdictions.
• High level of strategic collaboration with our global and regional marketing groups and streamlining coordination of an organization of over 150 content creators in 9 studios across Australia and the USA.

Konami is a video game powerhouse with a Tier 2 position in the Australian and US slot markets. Over the years the company has produced many of the industry's more innovative game and technology products.

• Responsible for the management and design oversight of all of Konami Australia's new game development
• Fully restructured the game development process. Turned over almost 100% of the underperforming local creative and game design staff and transitioned game design away from Japan and toward the newly capable local design team. Established the Australian business as the hub through which all video slot content was created and localized for global channels
• Established a market led strategy for game design that reduced innovation risk and increased the chances of successful product deployments resulting in some of Konami's most successful slots.

Aruze is a leader in Pachinko and Pachislot games in Japan with a modest presence in slots in the USA and Australia.

• Provided and maintained a cohesive vision through hands on game concept creation, mathematical game design, and artistic direction.
• Produced games for all Australian markets and a variety of custom products for international clients such as Hasbro and Sun International Casinos.
• Key leader in the 2 year transition to next gen hardware, software and game development platform