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GDC 2011 Advisory Board
These seasoned industry professionals volunteer their time every year to help construct the 400+ GDC conference sessions. They work to ensure that the quality of the content provided to attendees is high-level, relevant, and timely. Their dedication is critical to the success of the conference. Read below to find out about the extraordinary members of the GDC Advisory Board.
GDC 2011 Advisory Board
Ian Baverstock
Tenshi Ventures
Ian is an engineering graduate who founded his first software business in 1989 and has been leading businesses in the games and technology sectors ever since. This has included a 4 year spell as CEO of Kuju Entertainment, an IPO, several trade sales of businesses and various fund raising activities. Ian was also Chairman of TIGA, the UK game developer's trade association, for 4 years. Ian is now a Partner at Tenshi Ventures, an investment and consultancy group specialising in early stage companies in the games and technology sectors.
Chris is an engineering lead at Bungie where he is responsible for technical vision and game engine research. This involves equal parts of architecture design, hardware wrangling, and wild-eyed ranting about the future convergence of CPUs, GPUs, 4G, HMDs, and the cloud. Currently he is working on Step 7 of Bungie's Master Plan.
In his eight years at Bungie, Chris has witnessed its evolution from independent developer to a first-party studio within Microsoft Game Studios and now back to an independent developer. During this time he has helped lead Bungie's engineering team by developing artificial intelligence, graphics and networking technologies for the Oni and Halo series. He holds a master's of science in computer graphics from the University of Otago in New Zealand.
Dr. Michael Capps is the president of Epic Games, makers of the mega-hit Unreal and Gears of War game franchises and the award-winning Unreal Engine 3 game technology. He serves on the boards of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and is also an advisory board member of the Game Developers Conference (GDC).
Louis is a CEO of InstantAction. He was formerly a co-founder of Westwood Studios and vice president of Creative Development at Electronic Arts Los Angeles. As part of the management team, Louis helps direct EALA's programming, artwork, audio, and research & development departments, as well as contributes to studio business strategy. Louis was the general manager of Westwood Studios from 2000-2003 and served in creative, business and finance roles while growing Westwood from two employees in 1985 to over 250 in 2002. In his creative roles, Louis has contributed as executive producer, creative director, technical director, programmer and artist to over 100 games created by Westwood and EA over the past 23 years including best selling original franchises such asCommand & Conquer, Lands of Lore And Eye of The Beholder as well as block buster licensed original products including The Lord of The Rings- The Battle for Middle Earth II, The Lion King, Blade Runner and Monopoly.
Mark has been working in game design and technology for 25 years. He designed and programmed 1984s Marble Madness for Atari coin-op, and at Sega he oversaw the creation of Sonic The Hedgehog 2. While president of Universal Studios game division, he worked in a variety of production and design roles on the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon series on the original PlayStation.
In 1998, Mark established Cerny Games as a consultancy, and has since participated in the creation of Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank series on PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3 launch title Resistance: Fall of Man. He has also been instrumental in the creation and guidance of the ICE team, a technology group based at Naughty Dog that specializes in graphics systems and tools for the PlayStation 3. In 2004 the IGDA honored Mark with its Lifetime Achievement Award, calling him a master collaborator and a jack of all trades.
Dan Fiden is general manager of the San Francisco studio of Playfish, creator of award winning, category defining social games designed for friends to play together. Dan oversees the design, development and creative direction of all games created out of Playfish’s fourth and newest studio. Prior to Playfish, Dan was game development director at Electronic Arts’ Pogo. Additionally, he held the role of producer/game designer at Pogo China. Dan received a bachelor of arts in Cinema and English from Denison University.
Laura Fryer
Seattle Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
In the role of general manager of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's Seattle Studios, Laura oversees the planning and direction of the operations of internally owned development studios Monolith Productions and Snowblind Studios. Laura is responsible for the management of all Seattle division shared services, including QA, Research, Marketing, Human Resources, IT and Finance, as well as oversight of the studio heads for each individual developer, including Monolith Productions.
Prior to WBIE, Laura held the position of executive producer for Microsoft Games Studios, and was responsible for shipping great games for the Xbox and Windows platforms. The most recent title under her supervision was Gears of War 2.
An industry veteran, Laura was one of the first members of Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) in 1995. As a producer, she shipped several games, including the classic Crimson Skies, and Fighter Ace, Microsoft's first massively multiplayer game. She also conceived and produced Microsoft's first release of Zone.com.
Prior to her return to MGS in 2004, Laura was the director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, and a founding member of the Xbox project, which she joined in May 2000. During her tenure, she cultivated worldwide Xbox Developer Support, created the Xbox Advisory Board, and ran Xbox game developer events around the globe.
Laura had been named one of The Hollywood Reporter's "Top 12 Most Influential Women in Gaming," one of Next Generation's "Game Industry's 100 Most Influential Women," and Gamasutra's "Top 20 Women in Games."
An avid gamer, Laura enjoys taking video game vacations to play video games in marathon all-day sessions. Her other hobbies include reading, gardening, juggling, and playing with her dogs Jazz and Penelope.
Jeff recently capped off 15 years in the video game industry by serving as the technical art director on Volition's Red Faction: Guerrilla. He works as a senior technical artist at Volition, helping to define and create better pipelines for the artists and improving game visuals. Jeff has worked with tools providers like Autodesk and ATI, along with numerous community sites such as www.scriptspot.com, www.area.autodesk.com, and www.tech-artist.org, to promote technical art and contribute tools and tutorials to help others in the industry. In 2007 Autodesk awarded Jeff an Autodesk Max Master award in recognition of his contributions to the Max user community.
Chris Hecker
definition six, inc.
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 helps 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 and 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.
Clint Hocking has been working at Ubisoft Montreal since July of 2001, when he began his career in the game industry as a level designer, game designer and scriptwriter on the original Splinter Cell. Along with writer JT Petty, Clint was honored for his writing work on the title with the first-ever Game Developers Choice Award for Excellence in Scriptwriting. Clint continued as lead level designer, scriptwriter, and creative director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – the highest rated Splinter Cell to date with an aggregate review score of 94%. Clint then worked as creative director on the innovative and acclaimed Far Cry 2. Before games, Clint worked in the web industry and experimented with independent filmmaking while earning an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. He lives happily in Montreal with his wife and their dog.
Soren was the lead designer and AI programmer for Sid Meier's CIVILIZATION IV. He also programmed the AI and was co-designer of CIVILIZATION III. In 2000, he completed a B.A. in history and an M.S. in computer science at Stanford University. After working at Firaxis Games for seven years, Soren joined EA Maxis in 2007 to work on SPORE as a lead designer/programmer. He is currently building web-based games with EA2D, such as the moddable strategystation.com and other unannounced projects. Soren is also a design columnist for Game Developer Magazine and has spoken on game development at Stanford, AIIDE, SBGames, and numerous GDC's. His thoughts on game design can be found at www.designer-notes.com.
Julien started developing on the Atari Jaguar in 1993 at Shen Technologies in Paris. He then joined Ubisoft Entertainment in 1994 working on Rayman 1 (Jaguar and PlayStation), Pod (PC and M2), and he became 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 role in Studios creation and organization, technology and production pipeline design, multi-platform strategy, as well as AAA features integration. He also took responsibility for middleware and development strategy, communication and cooperation strategy, and hardware manufacturers 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, Julien saw the opportunity to pursue his career at Eidos, where he started to serve as Worldwide CTO working on the Technology Strategy for the Group, as well as initiating Eidos Montreal and Eidos Shanghai. Julien is now Worldwide Technology Director for Square Enix Group, and he's starting to learn Japanese.
Rob Pardo
Blizzard Entertainment
As Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.'s senior vice president of game design, Rob is dedicated to ensuring that each Blizzard Entertainment title offers the high-quality entertainment experience that the company has built its reputation on. Leading a group of talented and highly experienced development teams, Rob supervises the design and implementation of gameplay and story features for every Blizzard game. Rob has been contributing to the success of Blizzard's games since 1997, when he joined the company as a designer and strike-team member on the original Starcraft. After being named lead designer on the Starcraft expansion set, Starcraft: Brood War, Rob went on to serve in that role for the development of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos; its expansion set, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne; and also Blizzard's largest undertaking to date, World of Warcraft. The latest Blizzard title to reach players under his leadership was the World of Warcraft expansion set, The Burning Crusade. In his current position, Rob continues to oversee all aspects of game design for World of Warcraft and its upcoming second expansion, Wrath of The Lich King, as well as Blizzard's other games in development, including the highly anticipated Starcraft II. Rob earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in criminology, law, and society from the University of California, Irvine in 1996.
David Perry was the Founder & President Shiny Entertainment, Inc. for over 12 years (bought by Atari), he's one of the best known Video Game Industry veterans.
Over 29 years, Perry has developed or programmed over 100 games across 29 video game platforms. All told, Perry's games (including #1 Hits like The Terminator, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney's Aladdin & Warner's Matrix projects) have totaled over a billion dollars in retail sales.
Perry sits on the Advisory Board of the Game Developers Conference, Indiecade, VGEXPO, and has spoken at TED, E3, Hollywood and Games Summit, CGDC, MIT, USC, UCI, UCLA, QUB, Montreal Game Summit, Digital Hollywood, What Teens Want etc.)
In his last position Perry was the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Acclaim.com, directing multiple MMORPG games, Social Network Games & Casual Titles. All games used the 'free-to-play' model, supported by in-game advertising, subscriptions or micro-transactions.
Now Perry is the CEO and co-founder of Gaikai.com, a company that's developed a cutting-edge video game streaming technology that allows any Windows game or application to run in any browser with just one click.
Perry also recently launched a book for students called David Perry on Game Design – GameDesignBook.org (the largest non-profit book on Game Design ever written.)
Bob Rafei
Big Red Button Entertainment
Bob is the co-founder and chief visual officer of Big Red Button Entertainment, Inc. and a 15-year veteran of the games industry. He was formerly the 13-year art director, character animator and concept artist of Naughty Dog, Inc. (subsidiary of SCEA). He joined NDI in early '95 as its first employee while in the visual development stage of Crash Bandicoot. He played a key role in establishing the look of this series; touching on all aspects of production, from background modeling, lighting texturing, character rigging and animation.
He then led visual development for the award winning Jak & Daxter series for the PS2, as well as contribute to character animations. Most recently, he co-art directed the award-winning Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for PS3, focusing on visual development, cinematic mo-cap, animation, and lighting.
Bob serves as an advisory board member for Game Developers Conference (GDC), and the Game Developers Choice Awards. He has lectured at GDC, USC School of Cinema, and SIGGRAPH on various visual arts and production subjects. He also serves as panel leader on Animation and Art Direction craft categories for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) achievement awards. He has contributed writings to Animation Magazine and Animation World Network. Some of his non-gaming credits include album cover art for A&M Records, notably Blues Traveler's: Travelers & Thieves, and inclusion in Society of Illustrators annual #35. He is a '91 BFA graduate in illustration from Parson's School of Design, NYC.
Dave Ranyard
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Dave has been in the games industry for the last 10 years. He started out as an AI programmer at Psygnosis, later moving to SCEE's London Development Studio where he is currently the creative services manager, responsible for the following departments: audio, music, graphic design, and video. He has worked on titles including Wip3out, The Getaway & The Getaway: Black Monday, The Eyetoy: Play and Singstar brands. Prior to the games industry he lectured in artificial intelligence at the University of Leeds where he also gained a Ph.D. in the subject. In recent years, Dave has taken a keen interest in GDC and is currently on the audio advisory board. Dave is a keen musician and he has written and produced many records over the past 10 years and in 1998 took a career break to tour the U.S. and Europe with his band Supercharger.
Siobhan Reddy NEW
Media Molecule
Siobhan Reddy is Studio Director at Media Molecule, the game developers responsible for the hugely successful and innovative LittleBigPlanet. A fascination with technology, pop-culture and entertainment started with her first job at Spike Wireless in native Australia. Aged 18 she relocated to the UK and entered the games industry as production assistant with Perfect Entertainment on DiscWorld Noir. Siobhan joined Criterion games in 1999, where as Producer of Airblade, Burnout 3 and Burnout 4 she consistently shipped titles on time and to the highest of quality.
In April 2006, seeking a new challenge and the opportunity to be part of a close-knit team, Siobhan joined newly founded Media Molecule, working alongside directors Mark Healey, Alex Evans, Dave Smith, Kareem Ettouney and Chris Lee.
At GDC 2009, Siobhan's work on LittleBigPlanet was recognised with the Production award at the first ever Microsoft Women in Gaming Awards.
Siobhan continues to produce ground breaking, innovative work whilst managing a studio of the industry's most highly creative, passionate and talented people.
Adam Saltsman NEW
Semi Secret Software
Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman is an independent game designer, artist, programmer, and entrepreneur whose past projects include TrashPaint, Fathom, Cave Story Wii, Paper Moon, and Owl Country. Adam is a co-founder of Semi Secret Software (Gravity Hook HD, Canabalt, wurdle), the director of Last Chance Media (Dr. Dobb's Challenge 2), and is currently working on iPhone and Flash games until he runs out of money.
Steve Theodore NEW
Undead Labs
Steve fell in love with computer animation in the Dark Ages, in more ways than one. He dropped out of a Ph.D. program in Ancient History to start rendering 3d scenes on the Brown University mainframe. Steve went pro in the early '90's, doing animations for a variety of commercial and television projects. His first game job was building mechs and environments for FASA's MechCommander in 1995.
In the subsequent 15 years Steve has worked on some of the most well known titles in the industry. He worked as an artist and animator on Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortress 2 and Counter-strike. In recent years he's specialized in art tools and pipelines, first as the artist-in-residence for the Granny animation system, then as the technical art manager at Zipper Interactive (SOCOM 3 and M.A.G.) and technical art director at Bungie (Halo 3). He's currently the technical art director for Undead Labs. Steve writes the Pixel Pusher art column for Game Developer Magazine and appears frequently at GDC and other games industry events.
Alan is vice president, artist & repertoire, and a founder of ngmoco:). As the company's liaison to the creative community, his responsibilities include evaluating and signing game concepts and ensuring ngmoco's collaboration with the world's best and most innovative game makers.
In 2004, Alan joined Neil Young at Electronic Arts. He was the director of creative affairs for EA Blueprint, a creative management group focused on developing and producing new properties across various media in a coordinated and connected fashion. Prior to Blueprint, he was director of artist & repertoire at EA Los Angeles and Maxis.
He worked for the Game Developers Conference from 1995 to 2004. He was executive producer and director the last five years of his tenure.
Alan is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
He's obsessed with and always looking for the next great idea.
Audio Advisory Board
Scott Selfon is a lead program manager in Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group (ATG), where he manages developer education, support, and advocacy efforts across Microsoft gaming platforms and technologies. He is also ATG’s senior audio specialist, assisting composers, sound designers, audio programmers, and game designers with technical and creative challenges in developing sound for games. In this position he played an active role in the development of the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) for Xbox 360, Windows, and XNA Game Studio, as well as the XMA and xWMA audio compression formats, the XAudio2 audio rendering library, and audio input features of Kinect.
Scott is a member of the Seattle Composers Alliance and is on the advisory board of the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG), where he participated as a co-chair to help found the Interactive Entertainment Sound Developers (IESD). In addition to being on the faculty of the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, he is an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, where he developed and taught a senior-level undergraduate course curriculum on game audio through the Interactive Media department. He has coordinated and lectured at the Game Developer Conference’s Audio Boot Camp tutorial sessions for nearly a decade, and has spoken at conferences worldwide on audio, interactive entertainment, and sound implementation techniques and technologies for interactive media.
The principal violist of the Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra in Seattle, Scott has also composed music for a wide range of media, including film, television, video games, and live performance. He has arranged for the Baudboys (an award-winning a cappella group composed of Microsoft employees), and founded and directed an a cappella group at the University of Washington for seven seasons. He co-authored the 2003 book "DirectX Audio Exposed: Interactive Audio Development" (Wordware Publishing), and has received numerous industry awards for audio technology and publications.
Scott is an alumnus of the University of Southern California, where he obtained dual degrees in music composition (film scoring emphasis) and computer engineering/computer science.
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Brian Schmidt
Brian Schmidt Studios
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 20+ 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 120 games and he has over 20 patents to his name. Brian is frequently called upon to provide inspiring keynote addresses for conferences such as GDC or Project BBQ or 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). On the creative side, Brian has composed music and created sound design over 120 arcade and console games, including many years of John Madden Football, Desert Strike series, Jurassic Park, 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.
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Tommy Tallarico
Tommy Tallarico Studios
Tommy is a veritable video game industry icon. As one of the most successful video game composers in history, he has helped revolutionize the gaming world, creating unique audio landscapes that enhance the video gaming experience. An accomplished musician, Tommy has been writing music for video games for more than 18 years. He has won over 35 industry awards and has worked on more than 300 game titles. His score for Advent Rising has been noted as "one of the greatest musical scores of all time" by web sites such as Yahoo, Gamespot and others. Tommy was the first musician to release a video game soundtrack worldwide and has released seven video game soundtrack albums since. In 2002, Tommy co-created the critically acclaimed Video Games Live which features music from the greatest video games performed by top orchestras and choirs around the world combined with synchronized video footage, lasers, lights, special effects, interactivity and live action to create an explosive and unique one-of-a-kind entertainment experience. Tommy is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), which is a non-profit organization educating and heightening the awareness of audio for the interactive world. With over 1,200 members representing over 30 countries since its inception in 2002, G.A.N.G. has quickly become known as one of the strongest and best examples of helping the game industry community. Tommy is an advisory board member for the Game Developers Conference, a governor for the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS/GRAMMY's), a spokesperson for the Entertainment Consumers Association, a proud member of the International Game Developers Association and a nominating peer panel leader for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. His popular web site www.tallarico.com has received over 75 million hits by more than 3 million unique users.
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Chance Thomas is the first videogame composer to score an Academy Award™ winning film and log more than one million downloads of his game music. He composed one of the first live orchestral scores in gaming. He produced one of the first commercially successful game soundtracks in America. Chance’s credits include some of the world’s most valuable IP, adding music to titles like Avatar, Lord of the Rings, Marvel, King Kong, and many others. His projects are major award winners, including Oscar™, Emmy™, GANG™, IGN and Gamers Choice.
In the late 1990’s, Chance led the movement which first brought game music into the Grammy Awards™. He helped found the Game Audio Network Guild, and is a former Chair of the Music and Sound Peer Committees for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Chance is currently Principal Composer at HUGEsound (www.HUGEsound.com). He serves on the Board of Directors for the Game Audio Network Guild, and on the Audio Advisory Board for the San Francisco Game Developers Conference.
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Kenny is from Edinburgh, Scotland, and lives near London working as an audio designer at Media Molecule, where he is solely responsible for the audio experience in the PlayStation 3 title Littlebigplanet. Before joining Media Molecule, Kenny worked as a sound designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's London Studio where he worked on over a dozen titles including 24: The Game, Eyetoy: Kinetic, Fired Up, Gangs of London, The Getaway: Black Monday and Heavenly Sword. Prior to this he studied music technology as an undergraduate and went on to gain an M.A., with distinction, in sound design. Kenny is an active member of the game audio community and has spoken at the Develop Conference, GDC Europe, the University of Edinburgh, Leeds College of Music and Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies. In October 2005, Kenny set up www.gamesound.org as a resource for those wishing to learn more about sound for games.
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Visual Arts Advisory Board
Steve Reid
Red Storm Entertainment
Steve is the executive vice president/managing director for Red Storm Entertainment, a division of Ubisoft Entertainment. He is one of the original founders of Red Storm (1996), the studio known for creating the Tom Clancy line of games and helping to establish the genre of squad-based tactical shooters. After a successful run as an independent developer/publisher, Red Storm was acquired by Ubisoft (2000). The studio's most recent work is the multiplayer gameplay for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for Xbox 360. Before games, Steve received a master's of fine arts degree from East Carolina University. He has taught a variety of college art disciplines and now collaborates with local and national colleges as an advisor on digital art curriculum. Steve has participated as a moderator, a panelist and as a guest speaker at the Game Developers Conference, E3 and other industry events.
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Ru Weerasuriya
Ready At Dawn Studios
Ru is the art and creative director and co-founder of Ready at Dawn Studios. 2006 saw the release of their first game, Daxter, to critical and commercial acclaim, earning them a nomination for the BAFTA awards. Formerly a senior artist with Blizzard Entertainment, Ru initially worked on Starcraft: Brood War and then contributed to the blockbuster Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion,
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, his distinctive visual style influencing the direction of both game and cinematic art. Ru also led the cinematic art direction and production design for Starcraft: Ghost and World of Warcraft. As concept, storyboard and matte artist, he has helped the Blizzard Film Department win numerous awards and accolades over the years. His work has been published in several books and magazines, including The Art of Warcraft, The Art of World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons books and Monster Manuals.
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GDC Advisory Board Emeritus
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Doug Church
Electronic Arts Los Angeles
Doug has been in the game industry since 1990, working on a variety of PC titles (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, a bit of Flight Unlimited thrown in) at what became LookingGlass Studios. He left in late 1999 and consulted on a variety of titles, a tiny bit on Ion's Deus Ex and Harmonix's Frequency, some MMP's in Hong Kong. Programmer by training, he focuses on game design and technology, and ways to elegantly blend the two. Doug also worked for Eidos where he was doing a variety of design direction, technology investigation, and management. In May 2005, he joined Electronic Arts Los Angeles as an executive producer. He has been coming to GDC for over 11 years now, and still finds it a pleasing blend of frustration and exhilaration.
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Mark DeLoura
Independent Consultant
Mark is currently working on a variety of projects and contracts, mostly technical and sometimes "serious." He has previously worked as technical director for Ubisoft North America, developer relations manager for Sony Computer Entertainment America, editor-in-chief of Game Developer Magazine, and lead software engineer at Nintendo of America. He is also the founding editor of the Game Programming Gems series of books, which are big hardback volumes full of programming wisdom from professional game developers. In the past, Mark has also been an arcade game programmer and virtual reality researcher.
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Julian is co-founder and president of Factor 5, a game and technology developer located in Marin County, California, with additional R&D offices in Cologne, Germany.
Factor 5 was founded in Germany in 1989 and moved to California in 1996. Factor 5 was a technology partner in the development of Nintendo's Gamecube and Wii consoles, provider of the MusyX sound tools, partner in the Sony PlayStation 3 Edge toolset group, and has pioneered many technological advancements in the areas of audio and visuals in video games in collaboration with Dolby Labs, THX, and AMD/ATI.
Julian's work includes the classic Turrican line of games, the multi-million selling Star Wars: Rogue Squadron franchise, Indiana Jones, International Superstar Soccer Deluxe, and Contra: The Alien Wars. He served on the board of the IGDA as both board member and treasurer and has been a board member of the Game Developers Conference since 1999. Julian is Factor 5's president and creative director and has recently finished work on the PlayStation 3-exclusive Lair.
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Rob Huebner
Nihilistic Software
Robert is president and co-founder of Nihilistic Software, a small development team located in Marin County, California. Robert's previous work includes Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 from LucasArts, Descent from Parallax Software, and Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. Nihilistic has been in business over six years and has worked with publishers such as Activision and Blizzard Entertainment on PC and console projects.
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Noel was swept off his feet by the iPhone. He's now following his lifelong dream of being an indie developer, focused exclusively on iPhone game development and consulting. He writes about game development regularly, from a monthly column in Game Developer Magazine, to the Game Programming Gems series, or his book C++ for Game Programmers. Noel is also a member of the Game Developers Conference Advisory Board. Some of his past games include The Bourne Conspiracy, Darkwatch, and the Mechassault series. He earned an M.S. in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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An artist with extraordinary music sense who plays with technology to create entertainment media, Masaya started his career back in 1983 when he formed the band PSY'S (pronounced "Size"). Famed for pushing the frontiers of computer music for the time, PSY'S disbanded in 1996 after nine hit albums. That same year, Masaya took Japan by storm with the release of "PaRappa The Rapper" for PlayStation, winning notable awards and changing the landscape of gaming forever. Masaya's 1999 PlayStation release "vib-ribbon" was another gaming revolution, trailblazing the concept of procedurally generated course designs by beat-scanning Audio CD's. In 2003, Masaya produced and composed unique sound capabilities for the new Aibo "ERS-7" robot dog, further establishing his reputation as a leader in sound design and theory across multiple industries.
2005 saw the release of "Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop" (Nintendo DS) which sold more than a million copies in Japan alone. The game's runaway success laid the foundations for a new franchise with 3 sequels released to date.
Continuing his desire to broaden the appeal of games Masaya also masterminded the release of "musika" for the iPod in 2007, and in 2009 the Wii game "Major Minor's Majestic March" became Masaya's first commercial collaboration with acclaimed artist Rodney Alan Greenblat since 2001's "PaRappa the Rapper 2".
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Ichiro Otobe
Square Enix Co., Ltd.
Ichiro was chief strategist of Square Enix, a leading interactive entertainment company, known for its video game franchise Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.
Ichiro joined Square Enix in 2003, and served as president of Square Enix Inc., a U.S. arm of Square Enix, until 2005. Prior to Square Enix, Ichiro was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company. His clients include a mobile phone operator, media companies as well as financial institutions. He played key roles in introducing innovative mobile and network services in Japan.
Ichiro holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a master's of engineering in electronics engineering from the University of Tokyo.
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Mostly known for his work on the multi-million selling Wing Commander and Quake franchises, Paul hasn't been content with only making games. He gives an occasional talk at shows like the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco, serves on the advisory board for that same show, writes books on character modeling and animation, authors instructional DVDs and has now helped start an art outsource company based in Delhi, India. Over the last 15 years he's enjoyed a very diverse career that has allowed him to be artist, designer, art director, creative director and now chief creative officer of his own company: Exigent. His experience makes him unique even in the unique industry that is game development. He has worked at traditional development studios (Origin, Iguana, EA, id), web content studios (WildTangent), console manufacturers (Xbox), publishers (Atari) and now art outsourcing (Exigent). Paul is into writing, learning new stuff, playing poker, drinking cold beer and of course, super-high-polygon women. Email: Paul Steed
