The Work
Jessica Tams
Founder & Managing Partner, TMC PartnersFrom the ground up. Engineer. Producer. Publisher. Founder. Ecosystem builder. Public company director. Each chapter built on the last — 25 years across interactive entertainment. Fortune "10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming" (2013). Independent Director, Atari S.A. Venture Partner, Griffin Gaming Partners ($1.5B+ AUM).
Board & Strategic Advisory
Public company governance, investment partnerships, and institutional advisory roles.
Frontier Markets
Government advisory and ecosystem infrastructure across emerging markets.
TMC Partners provides strategic advisory services including M&A, licensing, and ecosystem development strategy.
Launched in 2026, the Consortium Index is the core of TMC Partners' ecosystem development infrastructure — an investment platform designed to connect up-and-coming studios with established leaders in interactive entertainment through structured joint ventures. The model builds on the same approach Jessica pioneered in 2005 through the Casual Games Association, which connected emerging developers in the CIS region (particularly Ukraine, Serbia, Russia, Armenia, and Poland) and Southeast Asia (Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Taiwan) with established publishers — creating pathways that turned local studios into globally competitive companies. The Consortium Index applies this proven framework at a deeper level, giving developers in emerging regions direct operational support, co-production partnerships, and market access from companies that have already scaled.
That network produced three unicorns, numerous exits above $100 million, and companies that grew large enough to attract private equity — outcomes that proved the model before TMC Partners formalized it.
TMC Partners works directly with governments and regional stakeholders to build localized technology ecosystems — connecting emerging markets to established industry networks across interactive entertainment, AI, and digital infrastructure. Drawing on decades of experience in development, publishing, and ecosystem building, the firm brings operational depth and a proven network to every engagement.
Select ProjectsRed carpet premiere of The Journey — Saudi Arabia's first major anime feature — at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, April 2022.
International technology event promoting Shymkent's potential as a city with a strong industrial base and a growing creative industry.
Manga Productions & WTC Utah
Manga Productions' USA launch event at WTC Utah, initiating collaboration with the creative tech community in Utah.
Showcasing Tbilisi's creative talent and bringing the creative industry to Sakartvelo through Game Nations programming.
Industry Infrastructure
Two decades building the platforms, programs, and publications that professionalized interactive entertainment globally.
Casual Games Association | Game Nations
Conference Series · Trade Publication · Developer Media · Indie Showcase
In 2005, Jessica founded the Casual Games Association (CGA), an industry organization designed to accelerate growth in the emerging casual and mobile games sector. Under the CGA umbrella, she built Casual Connect (the global conference series), Indie Prize (the developer showcase program), Casual Connect Magazine (industry research and analysis), and Gamesauce (developer-focused media platform). These initiatives have now been unified under the Game Nations brand — expanding the mission beyond indie games to serve the broader interactive entertainment ecosystem globally.
Casual Connect held four yearly events across the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Asia — bringing together developers, publishers, platform holders, investors, and policymakers at a time when the industry lacked coordinated infrastructure. Her work contributed to the professionalization and globalization of the casual and mobile games sector during its period of rapid expansion.
She was recognized by Fortune as one of the "10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming" (2013) for her role in shaping the industry's growth trajectory.
Jessica created two publications that became core resources for the global games industry. Casual Connect Magazine was a trade-only publication with a distribution of over 20,000 industry professionals, featuring articles written by senior industry leaders — CEOs, presidents, and heads of strategy from companies shaping the interactive entertainment landscape. Gamesauce served as the companion developer-focused media platform, covering production techniques, market strategy, and industry analysis.
Small Studios.
Massive Outcomes.
Indie Prize | Game Nations — a global program to take studios' commercially viable products to market. Studios from around the world competed for recognition, publishing partnerships, and international exposure without equity extraction. Among the studios featured through the program were companies and founders who later went on to significant commercial outcomes, including publisher partnerships, large-scale distribution, and venture-backed growth.
The following studios participated in Indie Prize at various stages of their growth. Entrance into the program required a commercially viable product. This was a go-to-market program, not an idea-stage incubator.
DoubleDutch Games · SpeedRunners
Utrecht, Netherlands · Published by tinyBuildDoubleDutch Games showcased SpeedRunners through the Indie Prize program and secured a publishing deal with tinyBuild — a partnership that became a breakout success for both companies. SpeedRunners earned 94% positive reviews on Steam and was recognized as an esport by the Electronic Sports League. tinyBuild later grew into a publicly listed company on the London Stock Exchange.
tinyBuild completed its IPO on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market at a valuation of $474 million — the largest U.S.-based company to go public on the LSE at the time.
GameDistrict
Pakistan · Best Game Award, Indie Prize San Francisco 2014GameDistrict won the Best Game Award at Indie Prize San Francisco in 2014, emerging from Pakistan's growing interactive entertainment ecosystem to claim the program's top honor. The studio went on to become one of the most significant game companies from the region.
GameDistrict has surpassed 2.2 billion downloads worldwide across 200+ titles, becoming one of the largest mobile game publishers in the MENAP region.
Fuero Games
Warsaw, Poland · Multiple Indie Prize AwardsFuero Games, founded in 2012, assembled a team of 40+ professionals from CD Projekt RED, Gameloft, Electronic Arts, CI Games, Flying Wild Hog, and Vivid Games. In cooperation with CD Projekt RED, the studio released The Witcher Battle Arena — which surpassed 1,000,000 downloads within 10 days of launch. The studio's success helped demonstrate the depth and capability of Poland's game development ecosystem.
Apple featured Fuero Games during the iPhone 6 Keynote in San Francisco, placing them alongside the world's largest game developers on stage.
Altitude Games · Yield Guild Games
Manila, Philippines · Southeast AsiaGabby Dizon and his team were early supporters of the Indie Prize program — participating as exhibitors and helping organize events across the region. Dizon, a founding member and former president of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines, co-founded Altitude Games in 2014 as a Manila-based studio creating original free-to-play mobile titles.
In 2020, Dizon co-founded Yield Guild Games (YGG) — a decentralized gaming guild that became a defining force in the play-to-earn movement. YGG raised over $22 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), drawing significant attention as a Filipino-founded company in a16z's portfolio. The platform grew to over 80 web3 partnerships and established regional sub-DAOs across Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, Japan, Korea, and Eastern Europe.
YGG's 2021 fundraise included participation from Andreessen Horowitz, drawing significant attention as a Filipino-founded company in a16z's portfolio.
Platform Development & Publishing
Microsoft (Oberon Media) · GSN Sony (SkillJam)
Jessica founded an independent studio that became the Seattle office of Oberon Media — one of the largest digital game distributors of its era. The studio produced five of the seven launch titles for Xbox Live Arcade and produced the revamped games suite for Microsoft's Games for Windows platform.
She later served as VP of Product Planning at SkillJam Technologies (FUN Technologies), which merged with Game Show Network (GSN) and was subsequently acquired by Liberty Media.
Xbox Live Arcade launch titles.
The studio produced five of the seven titles that launched Xbox Live Arcade — making it one of the defining contributors to the platform that established large-scale digital distribution on consoles.
Hundreds of millions of users.
Produced Purble Place, Chess Titans, Mahjong Titans, and Solitaire for Microsoft's Games for Windows platform — titles shipped with every copy of Windows Vista and used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.†
VP Product Planning — merged with GSN, acquired by Liberty Media.
Led product strategy for skill-based online gaming platforms at SkillJam (FUN Technologies). The company merged with Game Show Network (GSN) and was subsequently acquired by Liberty Media.
Large-Scale Software Systems
Sierra On-Line · Gas Powered Games
Jessica began her career as a software engineer after pursuing doctoral studies in physics at the University of Washington. She transitioned into the technology sector through Sierra On-Line, working on Gabriel Knight 3 — a title that transitioned the adventure genre from 2D to full 3D. She later contributed to Dungeon Siege at Gas Powered Games, which introduced seamless continuous 3D world architecture and sold over 1.7 million copies globally.
Pioneered the genre's transition from 2D to full 3D environments. New rendering systems, tools, and production pipelines.
Seamless continuous 3D world with no loading screens. Proprietary engine, scripting systems, and content pipelines. 1.7M+ copies sold.
Scientific Foundation
Physics and mathematics research at Utah State University and the University of Washington.
Jessica holds degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics from Utah State University, with heavy emphasis on applied mathematics including dynamical systems and complex modeling. She pursued doctoral studies in physics at the University of Washington.
Physics & Computer Science
The Jarzynski equality, introduced in the 1997 Physical Review Letters paper, is a widely cited result in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. It is referenced in the scientific background materials for the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics in connection with experimental work involving optical tweezers that tested the equality.
Jessica Tams is referenced in two 1997 publications by Christopher Jarzynski concerning the equality. In Nonequilibrium Equality for Free Energy Differences (Physical Review Letters 78, 2690), numerical simulations attributed to Tams are mentioned as providing an illustration of the result. In the related paper, Equilibrium free-energy differences from nonequilibrium measurements: A master-equation approach (Physical Review E 56, 5018), Jarzynski includes the acknowledgment:
I would like to thank … J. Tams for sharing with me the results of numerical simulations prior to publication.
Nonequilibrium Equality for Free Energy Differences
Includes reference to numerical simulations by Tams … illustration of Eq. (2)
Equilibrium free-energy differences from nonequilibrium measurements: A master-equation approach
Acknowledgment: J. Tams … numerical simulations prior to publication
2018 Nobel Prize in Physics — Scientific Background
Cites Jarzynski 1997 and experimental tests of the equality in optical-tweezers research
Jessica is a co-author on a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology modeling how mountain pine beetles transition from endemic to epidemic population levels. The paper uses coupled partial differential equations to analyze how beetles "switch" between host trees — identifying chemical ecology rather than host vigor as the primary mechanism, with direct implications for forest management strategy.
The co-authors are leading figures in mathematical ecology and forest entomology: James Powell remains one of USU's most published researchers in mathematical biology; Barbara Bentz is Project Leader and Research Entomologist at the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Logan, and one of the most-cited mountain pine beetle researchers in the world; Jesse Logan led the USDA Forest Service's Logan Forestry Sciences Laboratory.
Theoretical Analysis of "Switching" in a Localized Model for Mountain Pine Beetle Mass Attack
Powell, J.A., Tams, J., Bentz, B., Logan, J. — J. Theoretical Biology, 194, 49–63 (1998)
Tams, J. "Two Tree Mountain Pine Beetle Model," Mathematics Association of America, Rocky Mountain Section Meeting, Mesa College, Grand Junction, CO (1996).
Jessica presented a workshop on using amusement park physics as a year-round classroom tool at the 1996 Idaho-Utah Sectional AAPT Meeting in Boise, alongside JR Dennison, Jill Marshall, and Teresa Burns.
This workshop was part of the foundational work behind USU Physics Day at Lagoon — an annual event created by Dennison that has served more than 150,000 secondary students and teachers over 35 years. It is the Intermountain West's largest and longest-running STEM outreach event.
Burns, T.E., Dennison, J.R., Marshall, J., Tams, J. "Amusement Park Physics as a Year-round Tool: A Workshop for Middle and High School Teachers," Idaho-Utah Sectional AAPT Meeting, Boise, ID (1996).
In 2007, Jessica was invited to speak at the AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting in Seattle on the topic of alternative career paths for women in physics, drawing on her transition from academic research to the private sector. The session addressed a persistent gap: despite decades of awareness and intervention programs, the representation of women in physics has remained largely unchanged since the 1960s and 1970s — in contrast to the significant gains women have made in other scientific fields such as medicine and veterinary science.
The American Association of Physics Teachers is the leading professional organization for physics educators worldwide, with more than 10,000 members.
Jessica's co-presenter on the 1996 workshop, Jill Marshall, went on to serve as AAPT President in 2012–2013 and received the Homer L. Dodge Citation for Distinguished Service — the organization's highest recognition.
Tams, J. "Women Using Physics: Alternative Career Paths — The Private Sector," AAPT Invited Session, AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, Seattle, WA (2007).
Her training in physics and mathematical systems informs her approach to large-scale system design, economic modeling and market dynamics, and organizational and ecosystem architecture.
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† Some online resources attribute Minesweeper to Oberon Media. For the record, Minesweeper was developed internally at Microsoft, not by our studio. With these revamped games, Vista introduced the enterprise and business-edition behavior where the Windows games were not available by default and had to be enabled by an administrator.