ABOUT GDC  

Dr. Michael Capps has been a game designer, executive producer, lead programmer, and studio executive. He's best known for his decade as the president of Epic Games, makers of the mega-hit Gears of War and Infinity Blade franchises and the award-winning Unreal Engine. Michael currently serves on the boards of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) and the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Michael also serves as a member of Governor Beverly Perdue's North Carolina Innovation Council as well as Change the Equation, a non-profit, non-partisan CEO-led initiative to drive innovation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Michael was named 2009 Technology Executive of the Year by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) and is listed in Game Developer magazine's Game Developer 50, which recognizes significant contributors to the game industry. Prior to entering the games industry, Michael served on the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School.

Chris Charla is portfolio director for Connected Experiences at Microsoft Studios. In that role he helps shape Microsoft's first-party digital games portfolio, working with external and internal teams to maximize awesomeness for players and developers alike. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was VP of business development at Foundation 9 Entertainment, having earned a battlefield promotion to suit, after many years in the trenches as a designer and producer working on creating original IP and doing fun things with licensed IP. Back in the day, he was editor in chief of Next Generation magazine and launch editor of IGN.com.

Dan Fiden is a general partner at Signia Venture Partners, a venture fund founded by Playdom and Funzio founding investor Rick Thompson. Dan served as interim CEO of Wild Needle (sold to Zynga) and Playchemy (sold to Iddiction) and is a board director at Kihon Games, Idle Games, and Super Evil Megacorp. Previously Dan was general manager of the San Francisco studio of Playfish, a social game developer that was acquired by Electronic Arts. Prior to joining Playfish, Dan was Director of Game Development at Electronic Arts' Pogo division. He also served as Creative Director at Emmy-nominated trans-media startup Spiderdance and at WMS Gaming, a leading developer and manufacturer of casino gaming devices. He began his career in the game business at Jellyvision, serving as Creative Director on the You Don't Know Jack series of games.

Chris focuses on solving hard problems at the intersection of gameplay, aesthetics, and technology. He is an outspoken advocate for pushing the current boundaries of design and interactivity, in the hope that games will eventually achieve their full potential as a medium. To this end, he helped organize the Indie Game Jam and the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and his recent work has centered on using proceduralism and artificial intelligence to enhance player creativity and agency. Chris has been on the advisory board for the Game Developers Conference for many years, and is a regular speaker at the GDC, Siggraph, and other conferences. A frequent contributor to Game Developer magazine, Chris was the technical columnist for the magazine for two years, the editor at large for three, and is currently on the editorial board of the computer graphics research publication, The Journal of Graphics Tools. He has worked at both ends of the development spectrum, as a one-man indie game developer with his company definition six, inc. and on a hundred-person team at Maxis/Electronic Arts. His professional goal is to help games become the preeminent art and entertainment form of the 21st century. His current project is SpyParty, an indie game about subtle human behavior and deception.

Julien started developing on the Atari Jaguar in 1993 at Shen Technologies in Paris. He then joined Ubisoft Entertainment in 1994, working on Rayman (Jaguar and PlayStation), Pod (PC and M2), and as lead programmer on Tonic Trouble for the Nintendo 64. After having focused on Rayman 2, and on the R&D for the PlayStation 2, Julien became the worldwide technical director of Ubisoft Entertainment in 1999. In this role he played a major part in studio creation and organization, technology, production pipeline design, multi-platform strategy, and AAA features integration for franchises such as Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. He also took responsibility for middleware and development strategy, communication and cooperation strategy, and hardware manufacturer and middleware relations. Julien is fond of hardware architectures, gaming technologies, and algorithms - he loves designing engine features and production pipelines.

At the end of 2005, after having worked extensively on Next Generation strategy around Ghost Recon and Assassin's Creed, Julien pursued his career at Eidos. He started to serve as worldwide CTO, working on the technologies behind franchises such as Hitman, Tomb Raider, and Deus Ex, as well as initiating Eidos Montreal and Eidos Shanghai. Since 2010, Julien has become worldwide technology director for Square Enix Group, and now collaborates with the teams working on franchises such as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest.

Dave is the studio director of Sony's London Studio, famous for award-winning titles such as SingStar, EyeToy, EyePet, and more recently, Wonderbook: Book of Spells. After graduating with his PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Dave started out as an artificial intelligence programmer at Psygnosis' Leeds Studio. He later moved to Sony Computer Entertainment Entertainment's London Studio, where he has had a variety of roles, including audio programmer, audio manager, creative services manager, and game director, before taking up the mantle of studio director in 2012. Under Dave's direction, London Studio will be expanding the Wonderbook portfolio with new and exciting releases coming in 2013, helping PlayStation3 to reach a fresh new family audience in the seventh year of its lifecycle.

Dave is a keen musician who has written and produced many records over the past 20 years, and has played numerous gigs all over the world as a musician or DJ.

Brian Schmidt is founder and president of Brian Schmidt Studios, one of the industry's leading game audio and technology companies. A recipient of the 2008 Game Audio Network Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, Brian is a 25-year veteran of the game audio industry and is recognized as one of the foremost experts in game audio. Brian's credits include more than 130 games for companies including Zynga, EA, Sega, Capcom, Sony, Midway, and Namco. He also has over 20 patents to his name. Brian is frequently called upon to provide inspiring keynote addresses for conferences such as the GDC or Project BBQ, or to give detailed technical and creative presentations to help educate the game audio community at large. Brian uses his blend of hands-on composition and sound design experience, combined with deep technical knowledge, to push new boundaries and further the state of the interactive audio industry.

Prior to ending his 10-year tenure at Microsoft in March 2008, Brian was the primary architect for game audio at Xbox, where he was the driving force behind initiatives such as bringing interactive Dolby Digital to video gaming. He was responsible for the overall design of the Xbox 360 audio system, and responsible for the design of such award-winning technologies as XMA Compression and the Xbox Audio Creation Tool (XACT). Brian is also the founder and executive director for GameSoundCon, the leading conference on sound and music for video games. On the creative side, Brian has composed music and created sound design for over 130 arcade and console games, including many years of John Madden Football, the Desert Strike series, Jurassic Park, the Star Wars Trilogy, and the award-winning Crue Ball. He's composed for notable personalities such as Aaron Spelling, Michael Jordan, and Joel Silver. His theme for the classic video game, Narc, was covered by The Pixies in their Planet of Sound release. Brian currently resides in Bellevue, Washington.

With over 16 years of experience in the entertainment industry, Ru started his career with industry-renowned developer Blizzard Entertainment. Initially working on Starcraft, he then led the Cinematic art direction for Warcraft III, Starcraft: Ghost, and World of Warcraft, and helped the Blizzard Film Department win numerous awards and accolades over the years. In 2003, Ru co-founded Ready at Dawn Studios. 2006 saw the release of Daxter to commercial and critical acclaim, winning multiple Game of the Year awards. In 2008, the studio released its second game, God of War: Chains of Olympus, under Ru's direction. Hailed by the public and critics as the best PSP game ever made, it has won both a 2008 Academy Achievement Award and a 2008 Game Developer's Choice Award. The studio's following title, God of War: Ghost of Sparta achieved a similar feat in 2010, winning another Academy Achievement Award as well as a VGA award.

As chief executive and creative officer of Ready at Dawn Studios, Ru leads the company's business and creative development. As such, he oversees and serves as the writer on the studio's latest title, an original intellectual property developed for next-generation hardware.

Ru has been named one of the top 100 developers in the world in both 2008 and 2009, and for the last few years has served as a judge for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Achievement Awards and as a member of the advisory board for the Game Developers Conference. An alumnus of Art Center College of Design, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial & Transportation Design. His work has appeared in several publications.

A native of Sri Lanka, having grown up in Switzerland, Ru has lived and worked in Southern California since 1996.

Kenny joined Media Molecule in 2007 to set up their audio department and make LittleBigPlanet sound awesome. He is currently the head of audio and responsible for the audio experience in all of their games.

Prior to Media Molecule, Kenny worked as a sound designer in the busy centralized audio department of Sony's London Studio, where he helped ship over ten games in a wide variety of genres on numerous platforms, and worked on countless other third party and unreleased titles. Any rumors surrounding Sony's purchase of Media Molecule being driven by their desire to get Kenny back are totally unfounded and probably untrue.

An award-winning audio designer, composer, and writer, Kenny is a passionate and committed member of the game audio community. In addition to helping put together the audio track at the GDC, he is a G.A.N.G. IESD co-chair, speaks regularly at conferences and higher education institutions, assists in judging awards categories, contributes to books and articles, and runs the blog gamesound.org, primarily as a resource for those who wish to learn more about interactive audio. He holds an MA in Sound Design (with distinction) from Bournemouth University and a BMus with Honors in Music Technology from the University of Edinburgh.

You can find Kenny on Twitter @kcmyoung