Playdom Hires New CEO, John Pleasants

Playdom has added a new executive to its core team. The social game development company announced this week that John Pleasants is Playdom’s new CEO. Coming from Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA), Pleasants has a wealth of experience in the gaming industry, and has been brought on board in part to help Playdom achieve the high growth scaling the company is currently seeking.

At EA, Pleasants acted as the President of Global Publishing and Chief Operating Officer, giving him a very high level perspective on the gaming industry as a whole. Some benefits of EA are its established presence in its respective industry, as well as its involvement with multiple aspects of gaming overall. Having witnessed the recent changes to the gaming industry over the past several years, EA has managed to shift along with the times, even trying its hand at online social gaming.

While EA hasn’t always had the best success in the online social gaming realm, the experience for Pleasants as well as the whole of the gaming industry offers a lot to learn from. Playdom, formerly known as You Plus, launched as a social gaming organization and has been heavily involved within social network application platforms as part of its business model.

Having since expanded from MySpace to Facebook, Playdom is clearly seeking a great deal of growth and visibility. Integrating with social networks on this level presents access to an established user base and the cross-network approach that Playdom has moved towards is a necessity for many applications, and can be particularly beneficial for social gaming.

For a more in depth look at Playdom, the company’s business model and monetary approach to integrated social gaming, see here for Nick’s interview from earlier this year.