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John Vechey
PopCap
John Vechey is a co-founder of PopCap Games, which started in 2000.
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Hal Barwood
Finite Arts
Hal was a project leader at LucasArts for more than 10 years, designing, writing and directing a number of story-game titles, including Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, a PC adventure game, Big Sky Trooper, a Super Nintendo RPG, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, a real-time 3D action-adventure, and RTX Red Rock, a character-action title for PS2. Before Hal began building games, he spent twenty years in Hollywood as a writer (Sugarland Express), writer-producer (Dragonslayer), and writer-director (Warning Sign). |
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Bob Rafei
Big Red Button
A fifteen-year veteran of the gaming industry, Bob was the art director, character animator and concept artist at Naughty Dog before co-founding Big Red Button in 2008. He joined NDI in early '95 as its first employee while in the visual development stage of Crash Bandicoot, which paved the way for CB2: Cortex Strikes Back, CB: 'Warped' and Crash Team Racing for PlayStation, collectively selling 30 million+ units worldwide. He played a key role in establishing the look of this series and touched on all aspects of production from character rigging to animation. During development of Jak & Daxter: The Precursor, Jak II, Jak 3 & Jak X for the PS2, he lead visual development that set the look of this award winning franchise as well as contribute to character animations. Most recently, he co-art directed Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for PS3. He has lectured at GDC ('01-'04) on various VA subjects, and has served as panel leader on craft categories of animation and art direction for Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' (AIAS) achievement awards. He has also contributed writings to Animation Magazine and Animation World Network (AWN.com). His non-games credits include the album cover art for Blues Traveler's: Travelers & Thieves.
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Doug Lombardi
Valve
After years in the music industry, Lombardi decided to get a real job. Then he came to his senses and made the decision to get into the gaming industry. That started in 1994, as a freelance journalist contributing to magazines such as New Media and CD-ROM Today. He later became a launch editor on boot magazine (today known as Maximum PC) and CNET’s Gamecenter.com. In 1998 he accepted a marketing position at Sierra Online as the brand manager for two new games coming from two unknown studios; Valve’s Half-Life and Relic’s Homeworld. At the end of 1999, Lombardi accepted a full time position at Valve. As VP of Marketing at Valve, he helps manage and coordinate third-party relations, marketing, and press activities for all of Valve’s game titles and the Steam online platform.
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Mark Cerny
Cerny Games Inc.
Mark Cerny has been working in game design and technology for 25 years. He designed and programmed 1984’s 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 the 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.” |
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Susan O'Connor
Susan O'Connor Writing Studio
Susan O'Connor has been writing for games since 1998. Her client list includes Activision, Epic Games, Microsoft, Midway, 2K Boston and Ubisoft. Her portfolio features over a dozen titles in a variety of genres, including first-person shooters, action-adventure titles, and open-world games. In 2005, she founded the Game Writers Conference, now part of the Austin GDC. |
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Raph Koster
Metaplace
Raph is the President of Metaplace, a developer of virtual worlds, and the author of the widely acclaimed book A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Paraglyph 2004). He previously worked as Chief Creative Officer at Sony Online Entertainment, creative director for Star Wars Galaxies, and lead designer of Ultima Online and UO: The Second Age. He also maintains a popular website at http://www.raphkoster.com which houses notable writings such as The Online World Timeline and The Laws of Online World Design. |
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Julien Merceron
Eidos
Julien started developing on the Atari Jaguar in 1993 at Shen in Paris, programming on Super Burnout, a motorbike racing game, and Nexus, a shoot-em-up. He joined Ubisoft Entertainment in 1994 and worked on programming for Rayman 1 (Jaguar and PlayStation), for POD (PC and M2), and became lead programmer on Tonic Trouble for the Nintendo 64. After having focused on Rayman 2 (Nintendo 64 & Dreamcast) 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. At the end of 2005, after having worked extensively on Next Generation strategy, Julien saw the opportunity to pursue his career at Eidos. He will be serving there as worldwide CTO. Julien is fond of hardware architectures, gaming technologies and algorithms; he loves designing engine features and production pipelines. |
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Ben Cousins
EA DICE Ben is an Executive Producer based at EA’s DICE studio in Stockholm, where he leads a team focusing on web-based Play 4 Free titles, the first of which is will be Battlefield Heroes.
Prior to joining EA, Ben was a Creative Director at Sony’s London Studios, where he was one of the early architects of PlayStation Home. Mirroring the industry’s growth into direct-to-consumer distribution models, over the last five years Cousins has worked exclusively on digitally delivered games.
He started in the industry in 1999 working in QA at Acclaim in London.
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Clinton Keith
ClintonKeith.com
Clinton introduced Scrum and agile to the game development industry in 2003 as the CTO of High Moon Studios. Since then he has become dedicated to helping game developers adopt Scrum as a Certified Scrum Trainer and agile coach.
Over the course of 23 years, Clinton has gone from programming avionics for advanced fighter jets to working on video games that put one of today's hottest studios on the map. Previously Clinton worked as director of product development/lead programmer at Angel Studios, now renamed Rock Star San Diego. There, he helped the company double its staff while directing the development of their hit racing game franchises, starting with their first blockbuster Midtown Madness. By creating new engineering tools and production processes that improved execution rates, Clinton helped Angel become the only studio to deliver two complete titles for PS2's launch, top-ten sellers Midnight Club and Smuggler's Run, followed by successful sequels to both series as well as additional hit titles. |
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Ryan Lesser
Harmonix
Ryan Lesser has been creating video games since 1996. Shortly after creating the art for Shodan in System Shock 2 he was brought on as Art Director at Harmonix, enlisted to help create the company's first game development team. In the years following, Ryan helped to create the 3d musical interface that would be used in many of Harmonix's music based games such as Rock Band, Amplitude and Frequency. In 2006 Ryan was one of the recipients of the Game Developer's Choice Awards Innovation Award for his participation as Art Director and co-creator of the Guitar Hero series. |
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Daniel James
Three Rings
Daniel James is currently the CEO of Three Rings, which was founded in 2002. Puzzle Pirates was the company's breakthrough game, followed by Bang Howdy and Whirled. He is a member of IGDA and a frequent speaker at GDC. |
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Clint Hocking
Ubisoft
For over six years, Clint has been at Ubisoft, where he has worked as a level designer, game designer, scriptwriter and creative director on the original Splinter Cell, and on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Currently he is the creative director of 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. |
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Tommy Tallarico
Video Games Live
Tommy Tallarico 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, Tallarico 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 websites such as Yahoo, Gamespot and others. Tallarico was the first musician to release a video game soundtrack worldwide and has released seven video game soundtrack albums since. In 2002, Tallarico 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. |
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Meggan Scavio
GDC
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Simon Carless
Gamasutra/Game Developer
Simon Carless is a Group Publisher at Game Developers Conference parent Think Services, encompassing products such as the Maggie award-winning Game Developer magazine and the double Webby award-winning Gamasutra website, the top information sources for professional video game developers – plus its Gamasutra Network of subject matter specific sites.
He also functions as the Chairman of the ‘Sundance Festival for games’, the Independent Games Festival, which holds its awards at Game Developers Conference yearly. As well as being a member of the GDC advisory board, he chairs the committee for the Game Developers Choice Awards, helping to program the Independent Games Summit and several other Summits at the show.
He was previously a game designer, lead game designer and team leader at companies including Kuju Entertainment and Atari/Infogrames, and has also worked as an editor of technology site Slashdot and as author of the O’Reilly book ‘Gaming Hacks’. |
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Brian Reynolds
Big Huge Games
A thirteen-year industry veteran, Brian Reynolds has led the design of strategy games such as Civilization II, Alpha Centauri, and Rise of Nations. A co-founder of Big Huge Games in 2000 and Firaxis Games in 1996, Brian is an experienced game designer, programmer, and entrepreneur. As President of Big Huge Games, he concentrates on the creative side of the company, devoting most of his time to hands-on development of new game concepts and prototypes. As an IGDA board member, Brian hopes to increase the organization's growing role as an advocate for developers' interests in areas such as intellectual property rights, credit and recognition, and compensation. His previous industry service has included peer review and judging for both the AIAS and IGF awards programs. |
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Ray Muzyka
BioWare
Dr. Ray Muzyka is General Manager at BioWare, with studios in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and Austin, Texas. Ray is also a Vice President for BioWare's parent company, Electronic Arts. He co-founded BioWare in 1995 with Dr. Greg Zeschuk. BioWare's games include Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect. Upcoming BioWare titles include the highly anticipated fantasy epic Dragon Age and Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, a new handheld title for the Nintendo DS based on the Sonic license, as well as a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) title currently in development at BioWare Austin. BioWare also sells content directly to its fans all over the world through the BioWare Community Store at store.bioware.com. More information on BioWare and its products is available at www.bioware.com.
In addition to his development role, Ray co-manages the financial, human resources, operations, marketing and legal aspects of BioWare, and has completed his executive MBA program at the Ivey School of Business, UWO. Ray is a board member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, and serves as a Director and Co-Chairman of CodeBaby Corp. (www.codebaby.com), a software company developing a next generation interface for digital media and the Internet.
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