President | Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA)

ABOUT THE PRESIDENT

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) president and founder, Hal Halpin, has been a pioneer in the interactive entertainment industry for over fifteen years as an executive, advocate and entrepreneur. The founder of numerous influential publications, services and organizations, he is often called upon by members of the media and government officials to represent the interactive entertainment sector as an ambassador.

As president of the ECA, Hal runs the day-to-day business of the association, acts as the public face for consumer advocacy and represents gamers’ interests to the business, media, and general public. He speaks extensively at trade and consumer events, pens guest editorials for some of the leading endemic media outlets and testifies before legislators regarding consumer rights.

Mr. Halpin also serves as Executive Director and President of the ECA Institute, a non-profit charitable venture related to, but separate from, ECA. Where the Association is a 501(c)(4) membership organization which represents gamers, the Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit which focuses on advancing policy, research and educational needs related to gaming.

Hal has a knack for creating organizations that help unite and advance the games business. He is well-known as the founder of the game industry's retail trade association, Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association (IEMA). That association represented the needs of major video game and computer software retailers. The IEMA's member companies which, among notable others, included: Wal-Mart, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, and Blockbuster, accounted for approximately 75% of the sector's business. Hal also started the IEMA Executive Summit, which became a must-attend purchasing event with the top 700 game executives gathering to solve timely and germane issues while placing purchase orders responsible for over 80% of the trade’s sell-through, annually. Over that time he also successfully re-launched the industry's first charitable organization, Games for Good. IEMA served the $10 billion video and computer game business for nine years until successfully merged with parallel trade association, Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) to form the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) in the spring of 2006.

Mr. Halpin founded Cyberactive Publishing, a business-to-business media company specializing in the games sector, and launched one of the industry's first trade magazines, Video Game Advisor, in 1995. The publication morphed into GameWeek and then, later, Interactive Entertainment, (or IE Magazine) and became the leading business publication for the games industry for seven years (two of which also saw the magazine publish the Official Show Daily for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). The term 'interactive entertainment', now commonly used to describe the games business, was actually popularized by Hal to describe the convergence of the (then disparate) console, online, and computer gaming sectors.

Through running Cyberactive, Hal also launched numerous related properties, including the leading gaming recruitment site GameJobs.com, the influential industry news outlet, GameDaily, and the business directory, VideoGameYellowPages.com. The company also updated and republished the games industry ‘Bible,’ Game Over, the definitive history of the video games business. Cyberactive ceased operations in January 2002, following a long but ultimately successful three-year battle with new rival trade publications and mounting debt following the 9/11 attacks and resulting advertising slow-down.

Prior to Cyberactive, in 1994, Hal launched Video Games On-Line (VGOL), a short-lived business which created the game industry's first online gaming portal and digital distribution vehicle – an idea that would prove to be far ahead of its time.

Mr. Halpin has served on numerous corporate a non-profit boards and related committees. An avid gamer, husband and father of three, Hal brings to bear a unique blend of skill-sets, experience and qualifications in representing the ECA, game consumers and interactive entertainment.

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