Andrew Paradise, CEO & Founder of Skillz, an online mobile multiplayer video game competition platform, poses for a photo at the companys Las Vegas office Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 | 2 a.m.
A leading mobile gaming company has relocated to Las Vegas from California.
Skillz, a gaming platform that allows developers to monetize their content through competition among over 1.1 million monthly users, announced Monday its move to a more than 36,000-square-foot office in the southwest Las Vegas Valley.
“Real money gaming and Vegas have this really long tradition — history — in the United States,” Andrew Paradise, founder and CEO of Skillz, told the Las Vegas Sun. “We’re a U.S.-based company. Most of our player base is actually in the U.S. So, we’re over 90% U.S. players. And we just see this huge opportunity to help Vegas move into this next era of real money games.”
The company, previously based in San Francisco, has an existing, small office of just under 100 people in Las Vegas, which Paradise said contributed to the decision to relocate its headquarters here.
“It just became the obvious place, both because of the history of real money gaming here and then, also, how many employees are already here and its proximity to our other offices, which are in California,” he said.
Skillz’s new headquarters should have space for over 200 employees, he said.
The office — featuringwooden tables, plush couches, hanging light fixtures and granite floors — used to belong to renowned photographer, Peter Lik. Skillz chose the space not only because of its recent renovations, but also the mark of a creative like Lik.
“And our business is really about enabling creatives in the video game industry to better monetize their art,” he said. “So it’s quite fitting to buy a space like this.”
Skillz offers game developers the opportunity to benefit from competition-based monetization, as opposed to the more traditional free-to-play gaming, in which artists make their money through advertisements or in-app purchasing, Paradise said.
Similar to Airbnb — which makes it possible for people to unlock economic opportunity through their homes — Skillz allows game developers to profit from competition, said Orit Peleg, vice president of brand and insights at Skillz.
“It feels really great knowing that, not only are we helping little studios that would never have had a chance to make money from their art and actually be able to connect with millions of players,” she said, “but on the other side, allowing millions of players to actually connect with each other and to even earn a living.”
Looking ahead, Paradise says he sees video game competition — that of mobile apps, TV, computers and console games — all being enabled on a single platform and then bringing that experience to the physical world, which he compared to casino gaming.
“We definitely riff a lot off the vector of the social aspects of competition and how competition can bring out the best and the worst in someone,” he said. “And that, when you think about a world of technology, we have this opportunity to perfect competition in a way that you can’t offline, and to really focus on how you bring out the best in people.”
Moving into Skillz’s new headquarters, Paradise says he is excited to collaborate with other entrepreneurs and existing businesses in and around Las Vegas. The city is increasingly an “adult Disneyland,” he said, and it’ll be interesting to see what role video games and video games competition play in its landscape.
“Certainly, for people like me, video games are a much more meaningful art medium than what exists today in the casino,” he said. “It’s something that I actually really like engaging with. It’s something that I would engage with even without real world prizes and real money gaming.”
There’s been such an investment by Las Vegas and Nevada overall into gaming integrity and fairness, Paradise said, and Skillz hopes to learn from their example.
Skillz is unique in the video gaming world because of its dedication to fairness, and it ultimately hopes to build data science and technology to combat cheating, fraud and more. Paradise noted the importance of institutions that ensure fairness, proper certification and more of games in Nevada.
“I think that doesn’t exist today in video games,” he said. “And so what’s really exciting to some extent is the idea that the future will be much better in a video game competition, and that we can be a pioneering company in driving fairness.”
The company will renovate much of its new headquarters, with the office space expected to reach completion by the end of the third quarter, Paradise said.
Skillz wants to bring its passion for gaming and the thrill of competition into the space, Peleg said. The company’s mission is to bring out the best in everyone, she said, and has a variety of games for people to choose what makes them feel most like themselves.
“It really is an inclusive space,” she said. “So the office has to reflect that.”
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