Today we’re excited to announce an awesome line-up of judges who have agreed to help us out on our contest. Thanks guys!

• Chris Harris

Chris Harris and his brother Stephen are the creators of neat games like Bloons and Hotcorn at Ninjakiwi.com. While he is not a programmer, Chris proudly does the budget graphics for Ninjakiwi and shares game design responsibilities. He is also responsible for business development and takes a lead role in the forward planning of the business. Ninjakiwi has been in existence in its current form since January 2007, and will develop into something even more special in the next 12 months.

• Eugene Mesgar

Eugene Mesgar is Vice President of Corporate Development at Foundation 9 where he is responsible for M&A and strategic business initiatives. Prior to joining Foundation 9, Eugene was an investment professional at Francisco Partners focusing on the interactive entertainment, enterprise software and semiconductor industries. Earlier in his career, Eugene was with Microsoft Corporation in the NetGen Group, defining the strategy, design and implementation of Microsoft’s next generation communication and entertainment products. Eugene got his start in the games and technology business as one of the principal programmers of Medievia, one of the early large text based MMORPGs. Eugene holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Columbia University, magna cum laude.

• Jia Shen

Jia is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of RockYou, and has focused extensively on graphic design and usability throughout his professional web development career spanning over 10 years. Prior to RockYou, Jia has held management roles leading the user interface and technical solutions teams at Open Harbor, and managing the majority of engineering at Iconix. Jia started working on scalable consumer applications at shopping tools internet provider Bluedog, a Stanford based startup, and was part of the original team at Bell Laboratories which developed the VoiceXML format into the W3C standard. In addition, Jia’s experience has spanned enterprise sales and professional services functions, as he closed transactions and integrated with large multi-national corporation customers like Mitsubishi, Tyco, Flextronics, and DHL. Jia has a double major in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

• Paul Preece and David Scott

David Scott is a UK based games developer who has been developing games in flash for over 5 years. His most recent success came in the form of Flash Element TD which has had almost 60 million plays in the 10 months it has been on line (stats thanks to MochiBot). His friend Paul Preece, who is new to the casual gaming industry has had similar success with his first game ‘Desktop Tower Defense‘ which is going from strength to strength. With their background in web programming the two developers have recently joined forces to produce what they have called ‘The Casual Collective‘, a site which aims to combine the casual gaming and social networking spheres with its innovative multi player flash games and community tools. Both Paul and David are looking forward to judging the MochiAds game contest and can’t wait to play something original and fun!

• Ugur Ister

Ugur Ister, also known by the Nick tomsamsom, is Co-Founder and Lead of game development alliance Stimunation, one of the first flash indie game development groups. Ugur spends his time writing code for games, managing projects and teams, as well handling the overall business responsibilities for Stimunation. You can also find him online as the games forum moderator at Flashkit. Stimunation is currently making games independently as well as custom games for clients. Recently, they completed the game Kickflip which can be played at Wrigley’s Candystand site.