VGChartz Management Team

Brett Walton is a mechanical engineer, website designer, property developer, investor, entrepreneur and videogame industry analyst who created VGChartz in the summer of 2005 as a way of collating all publically available videogame sales data into one place.

After reading engineering at Cambridge University, Brett landed a job at McLaren Racing in 2006 becoming part of the design team behind the World Championship winning MP4-23A car of 2008. During his time at Cambridge and McLaren, Brett created and developed VGChartz - growing the site from a few hundred hits per week back in 2005 to nearly 2 million hits per week in 2009. Two main factors are to thank for this growth - the move from simply collating public data in the early days to carrying out original and groundbreaking sales research today, and the addition of website features such as the forum, game database, news and social networking. In February 2009 Brett left his job at McLaren to become full-time CEO of VGChartz Ltd.

In May 2009, Brett launched VGChartz 2.0 - finally realising his initial vision from 2005 and positioning VGChartz as one of the major videogame websites on the internet.

Brett can be contacted directly at bwalton@vgchartz.com

Jacob Mazel has been working for VGChartz since November 2007 after first learning of the site in November 2006. Brett asked Jacob to join the team following weeks of communication over how to improve the site.

Since 2007, Jacob has been analyzing the trends percolating through the videogame industry on a weekly basis. He has written over 400 articles on the videogame industry. Included within the repertoire of articles are countless previews of the near future, summaries of emerging trend changes, and occasional looks into the past.

In addition to writing articles, Jacob also helps Brett collect and refine the data used for VGChartz.

Jacob can be contacted directly at jmazel@vgchartz.com

Pat is a software engineer with over 10 years of development experience. He is well versed in a variety of programming languages and development environments with a focus on the healthcare industry.

While he was already visiting VGChartz on a regular basis, he officially joined VGChartz in January of 2007 around the time when the forums first opened. In April of that same year he signed on as a news contributor and forum moderator but quickly became absorbed by the game database which launched two months later. After spending much of his time helping formulate feature improvements to the game database as well as the website in general, he was asked to increase his role in the website by signing on as a developer. In July of 2008 he gladly accepted his new role and has been developing for the site since.

Pat is an 'old school' gamer, born and raised on the Atari 2600. He witnessed first hand 'The Great Crash' of the videogame industry in '83 and its rebirth with the NES in 1985 (he is still the owner of his original NES bundle with R.O.B. and zapper, all boxed and tucked away). Having been a part of the rebirth, he has always held a strong affection for Nintendo products and owns each console/handheld released by them. Although the majority of his gaming has been on Nintendo consoles, he had also spent alot of time gaming on the Commodore 64 as well as nearly every Sega console released.

Pat can be contacted directly at pfass@vgchartz.com

Having a natural love for statistics and video games, it was only a matter of time before Brian got involved with VGChartz. In May 2008, Brian joined the VGChartz staff to help manage all press relationships covering a variety of roles from securing pre-release review copies of games, issuing press releases, setting up interviews with developers, organising site competitions and managing the VGChartz social bookmarking activity on sites such as Digg, N4g and Twitter.

Brian is currently in school at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL working towards his degree in Actuarial Science. His hobbies include bowling, friends, movies, anime, and the occaisonal party (and video games, of course).

Brian favorite genre's include adventure, platformer, puzzle, and RPG. He owns all 3 current generation consoles (And a DS).

Brian can be contacted directly at bzucker@vgchartz.com

Nick is a college student at IUPUI in Indianapolis - he was a Computer Graphics Tech student for a year and a half but is now a Nursing Student. Nick has been a video game enthusiast since he was a small child. He loves and plays games of all genres across all systems.

As a social person, Nick found a new home on VGChartz back in early 2007, and grew to love the community. He worked hard to serve it as he rose to be a moderator, contributor, and reviewer. Nick now serves a variety of roles on the website, serving as manager of the community and moderating staff and a reviewer and senior editor for the contributors.

Nick can be contacted directly at npantazis@vgchartz.com

Seth Pinter has been a member of VGChartz since Jun of 07 and joined the team of Game Database Admins in Summer 08. He started actively contributing to the website when the current version of the prediction league went live in February where he netted his first winnings of vg$67. To feed his prediction addiction he started working on the game database where he quickly fell in love with updating the games. Taking over the weekly prediction league in summer 08, he has now helped it flourish and over vg$1M has been bet. Seth manages the Game Database and contributes to the design of new database features.

Seth has always been a long time fan of Nintendo systems with Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem and many other great franchises, but also enjoys a wide array of games on various systems. He enjoys other hobbies such as motorcycles, playing piano, disc golf, bowling and skiing, and has an enjoyable job as a full time software developer.

Seth can be contacted directly at spinter@vgchartz.com

Gabriel Franco, who is fluent in both English and Spanish is an Industrial Engineer who joined in as a member of VGChartz on Nov 20th 2007. His constant commitment for keeping up to date on all news guided him to this site in search for the latest about videogame sales, and he stayed on thanks to the positive environment and fresh information he found.

By March 2008 he had become part of the VGChartz team and 8 months later, in September 2008 he was named Senior Editor for general news. His experience as a player traces back to his childhood years, when he discovered the Atari 2600 and was later impressed by the arrival of the NES. He was attracted by several of the age’s games and he tried to master each and every one.

That’s when Gabriel entered the thrilling world of videogames that he has made into his favorite pastime and which he combines with his duties as a manager in a textile company in the northern part of his country.

RPGs are his favorite genre. Action games are not far behind. Combat titles are also a passion for him. He still claims to have been one of the best Street Fighter players in his city during the heyday of that game.

His ongoing interest on videogames and his innate ability to play in several formats has led him to become a great connoisseur in the field, a trait he exploits in favor of the readers of Diario Tiempo, a local newspaper, where he is in charge of the ‘VideoTime’ segment which he created in October 3rd 2002 and which has become very popular, along with the tournaments he organizes through it every year.

Gabriel has possessed all game consoles from that age and he keeps them as relics in his studio. His main hobbies outside videogames are: reading, playing soocer, cooking, watching Anime movies and series, and listening to music.

Gabriel can be contacted directly at gfranco@vgchartz.com