Leah Ruben

About Leah Ruben

Currently, I am at the reins of KingsIsle Entertainment\'s MMO department. I oversee our live products, the amazingly successful Wizard101 and Pirate101, which have over 50 million players. As Game Director, my job begins with establishing high-level game direction and goals, working with my team leads to come up with a great milestone plan, and ends with the successful update to the live service.Previously, I handled lead design and production for EverQuest Online Adventures at Sony Online Entertainment, working my way up from QA and Customer Service on the same title to get there.Specialties: MMOs all the way - production and design, maintaining and growing a live service, interacting with community, writing, power point, console and PC.

Experience

1. Chief Operating Officer

   Kingsisle Entertainment

   Jun 2023 — Present · Round Rock, TX, US

   I’m excited to accept the promotion to KingsIsle’s Chief Operating Officer. Yesterday, it was also my 16th anniversary with the company, I joined in 2007 as an Associate Producer. I remember moving halfway across the country to work on an unknown game called Wizard101 and was hooked instantly with how approachable yet deeply FUN it was, even back then. It’s been my privilege to grow with KI through the production and direction ranks, and watch those around me grow as well. That’s the neat thing when your coworkers stick around for 10+ years, not only do you get to watch them grow professionally, but also see them get married, have children, and those Wizard launch year babies are now in high school. It’s also been incredible to see our community grow up themselves, graduate college, and come work with us. The last few years have been especially incredible. After gamigo acquired us, our first goal was stability, and while we never quit this one, we can now say with confidence that we’re pretty good at it. These have been some of KingsIsle’s best yet, and that’s crazy cool to say when your stable of games is two MMOs that launched over a decade ago. We’ve done this by pushing the design and narrative boundaries of “kids’ games”, and we’re continuing to do it by exploring new platforms like launching Pirate101 on Steam last month. In the coming years, we will explore more opportunities to innovate. There are some intriguing things in the R&D lab and even more in the think tank. Exciting times are ahead. Stay tuned. On a personal note, I recognize that women as studio heads and in C-level positions are still all too rare. I’m thankful for the support of both gamigo and KingsIsle where my gender isn’t even a factor. In return for the voice that I have been given, as a company, we value collaboration and ideation at every level and strive to have as many different voices in the room as we can. May we all make magic together for many decades more!

Education

• University of Nevada, Reno

  BA, Psycology

  1997 — 2001

Skills

• Online Gaming
• Game Development
• Virtual Goods
• Multiplayer
• Game Mechanics
• Hansoft
• Game Design
• Video Game Production
• Social Games
• Console
• Gameplay
• Perforce
• User Experience
• Mmorpg
• World Building
• Level Design
• Game Balance
• Video Games
• Casual Games
• Computer Games
• Mmo
• Ps3
• Quality Assurance
• Mobile Games