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Paul Bettner        

Founder & CEO of Playful Corp; Game Developer & Creator of Words with Friends

Paul Bettner is a video game developer know for creating Words with Friends. He is the Founder and CEO of Playful Corp.

Playful Corp. is an independent game studio on a mission to bring joy to the world, one game at a time. Since its founding in 2012, Bettner has played a key role in developing the games Super Lucky's Tale, Star Child, and Creativerse.

Before Playful Corp. Bettner was the Founder, CEO, and Creative Director at Newtoy, Inc. It was here he created the wildly popular smartphone game, Words With Friends. Newtoy, Inc. was sold to Zynga, a social game developer known for Farmville, in 2010 for $53.5 million. Bettner then served as Zynga's Vice President and General Manager for two years.

Prior to his independent success, Bettner worked as a Game Developer and Creative developer at Microsoft's Ensemble Studios from 1997 to 2008. In these roles, he helped ship over 22 million units spread across four major titles and a half dozen expansion/bundle packs in the Age of Empires and Halo Wars series. He also worked on a number of large-scale prototype projects.

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