VAL AN

Chairman of the Board

Val has spent much of his career managing businesses and investments across multiple industries. His principal philosophy is to invest in people and impactful relationships.

Val also serves as the Chairman of New Republic Pictures, a movie production and financing company founded together with veteran producer Brian Oliver, dedicated to producing major theatrical motion pictures for wide studio release with budgets up to and above $100M.

Drawing from his extensive experience in the corporate world and entertainment sector, Val is responsible for business development and strategy for Deviation Games.

DAVE ANTHONY

Chief Executive Officer

A writer, director and producer, Anthony is best known for his pioneering work on the blockbuster "Call of Duty" video game franchise.

Born in Liverpool, England, Anthony received a first-class Bachelor of Science honors degree from Lancaster University in Computer Science, majoring in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing.

He moved to Los Angeles in 2004 to produce Call of Duty games for Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox. He was the director and writer of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 & 2, which were respectively the #2 and #3 best-selling games of the last decade (Source: Forbes.com). Black Ops is one of the best-selling game franchises in video game history, selling over 100 million copies. Collectively, the Call of Duty franchise he helped shape grossed many billions of dollars.

Outside of the video game industry, Dave is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, a distinguished Washington D.C. think tank.

KRISTE STULL

Chief Human Resources Officer

A talent acquisition and human resources professional with over 20 years of experience specializing in talent management, talent strategy, candidate and employee experience, employer branding, and HRIS systems implementation.

Kriste has staffed and supported over 20 AAA game titles in her career, being instrumental in building flagship teams at Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

With experience spanning a variety of sectors, Kriste has led and managed teams and hired top talent consisting of technical, creative, executive, and university professionals.

She graduated from Stephens College (1833-the second oldest women's college in the United States) in Columbia, Missouri with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration.

JONATHAN HAWKINS

Creative Director

A video game industry veteran with close to 20 years of experience, Hawkins spent over a decade at Sony Santa Monica working on the award-winning "God of War" franchise. He then went on to start his own studio, White Elk, where their first title "Eclipse: Edge of Light", broke new ground in virtual reality and won Mobile VR Game of the Year in 2017.

In addition to his work in the video game industry, Hawkins is also the founder of the GameDevDrinkUp, a networking event that hosts monthly meetups for game developers worldwide.

Louis Castle

Senior Vice President of Development

A video game industry veteran with two Lifetime Achievement awards, Louis co-founded Westwood Studios best known for creating the legendary Command and Conquer franchise.

Educated in Fine Arts and Computer Science, he served in the roles of art director, technical director, COO, CFO and General Manager, guiding Westwood through multiple acquisitions before joining Electronic Arts in 1998. In his creative roles Louis has contributed to over 100 games over the past 30 years, including directing critical and commercial hits such as Blade Runner and Steven Spielberg’s Boom Blox for which he won a BAFTA award.

In addition to teaching game design at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Louis has been inducted into the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada hall of fame, has been honored by the Chamber of Commerce as a “Top 40 under 40” twice and received a Governor’s award as outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year.

Louis is currently serving on the Game Developer Conference’s Advisory Board, the industry’s premier annual development conference and has served in this capacity for over 20 years.