Game Developers Conference is gearing up for exciting things in 2022, and we've got three new members to welcome to the Advisory Board.
Organizers are thrilled to announce three new additions to the Advisory Board: WB Games Montreal game designer Osama Dorias, INTERIOR/NIGHT CEO and creative director Caroline Marchal, and Sucker Punch studio head emeritus Chris Zimmerman. They join recent board members Liz England, Rebekah Saltsman, and Veronica Peshterianu—along with dozens of designers, researchers, media professionals, and more in ensuring the continued success of Game Developers Conference.
The GDC Advisory Board is comprised of outstanding game industry professionals and experts who will help build the GDC conference program for 2022 and beyond. Here are the latest members:
Osama Dorias, Senior Game Designer, WB Games Montreal
Osama is a senior game designer at Warner Brothers. He's also a game design teacher at Dawson College and a co-host of The Habibis podcast.
Osama loves to empower people in expressing themselves through game making. He especially loves to give a voice to marginalized people and causes. He has hosted game jams, workshops and other community activities to this end, which has culminated in co-founding the Montreal Independent Games Awards.
Caroline Marchal, CEO & Creative Director, INTERIOR/NIGHT
The first game Caroline played was about a young adventurer firing mini-guns and exploring ancient ruins, Lara Croft, and she thought: “Okay, games are actually not just about jumping from platform to platform and collecting coins. This can be for me.” Since then, she has never stopped being fascinated by how story and gameplay can work together to create compelling, emotional experiences.
Caroline has worked in the games industry for 20 years, starting as a game designer on Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit. After leading the game design team on the award-winning Heavy Rain and Beyond—Two Souls, she moved to the UK with her family and worked at Sony London Studio, notably on Blood and Truth. In 2016, she decided it was the right time to take the leap and founded INTERIOR/NIGHT to craft meaningful and bold interactive stories for a mature audience (including non-gamers!). As Dusk Falls will be the studio's debut game.
Caroline also teamed with John Yorke to create Story for Videogames, an online in-depth course that has been running since 2018, to help writing talent grasp the magic and intricacies of interactive storytelling.
Chris Zimmerman, Studio Head Emeritus, Sucker Punch
After nearly a decade frittering away his time writing productivity software at an unnamed Seattle software behemoth, Chris started Sucker Punch with a few friends in 1997. Twenty-three years later, he’s still at it, although at this point he’s surviving on guile and past glories.
In earlier days he helped design and build some of the fun bits of Sucker Punch’s games—physics-based gameplay (on an N64, no less) for Rocket: Robot on Wheels, fluid control and animation of everyone’s favorite raccoon thief Sly Cooper, a panoply of super powers for the inFamous games, and after (five years of struggle) the samurai swordplay of Ghost of Tsushima. Plus, lots of boring below-the-waterline tech.
In his spare time, he’s working on a book about programming; don’t hold your breath waiting for it to come out, as progress has been painfully slow.
Together, these new members will assist the GDC Advisory Board in ensuring that the quality of content at GDC 2022 is relevant, interesting, timely, and suited to serve game industry professionals in all corners of the market and all stages of their career.
GDC 2022 is seeking submissions for GDC Summits, Game Career Seminar, and Masterclass. Core Concepts submissions are closed, but if you're interested sending in a late proposal for consideration you can head here for GDC contact information.
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