UBM Tech Game Network, the organizers of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference Europe (GDC Europe), have revealed an initial lineup of speakers from leading development studios that will present lectures during the conference. Co-located and taking place alongside Europe’s leading gamescom trade fair, GDC Europe will again provide the essential pan-European perspective on game development and business trends throughout the continent by gathering the world’s leading game industry professionals to discuss timely and relevant topics across platforms and disciplines. Now in its fifth year, GDC Europe will run Monday through Wednesday, August 19-21 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany.
Newly confirmed speakers include Epic Games’ James Brown with a talk urging developers to approach storytelling from a perspective that empowers their players, Sebastien Lagarde of Remember Me developer Dontnod on the game’s art and how working under constraints can inspire more creativity, luminary Don Daglow on how best to take advantage of the treasures and avoid the traps of the transition to next-gen, and Oliver Franzke from Double Fine Productions discussing best practices for dealing with platform diversity, using the development of Broken Age for mobile platforms and PC as an example.
In addition, the GDC Europe Advisory Board has added two new members, each from European development studios. The board welcomes Crytek’s General Manager for Games, Nick Button-Brown, whose projects include Warface, Ryse and Homefront via the company’s multiple studios, and CD Projekt Red’s Bartlomiej Gawel, lead concept artist working on the acclaimed Witcher series for the leading Polish developer.
The Advisory Board, filled with practitioners and influencers from Europe’s top game firms, also welcomes back returning members representing countries across the continent including Sweden (The Drowning lead Ben Cousins), Denmark (Mojang’s Daniel Kaplan), Finland (Remedy’s Matias Myllyrinne), Britain (Rocksteady’s David Hego), Germany (Ubisoft Blue Byte’s Christopher Schmitz, Bigpoint’s Sven Liebich and EA Phenomic’s Dirk Ringe). Using GDC’s custom-created submission system, each talk was rated multiple times by the advisory board and ranked. The full list of active board members can be found on the official GDC Europe website http://www.gdceurope.com/.
Meggan Scavio, general manager of all Game Developers Conference events said:
“There was a tremendous boost in both the quality and number of submissions this year for GDC Europe. I can speak for the advisory board when saying that we think attendees will be extremely pleased with the speaker roster and find great value in the content that we’re programming. We’re excited to confirm additional speakers in the coming weeks to offer a well rounded experience where developers can learn from and inspire each other.”
The first confirmed sessions at GDC 2013 include:
– The Art and Rendering of Remember Me
Sebastien Lagarde, Senior 3D/engine programmer, Dontnod entertainment– C++ in the Browser: A Tale from the Trenches
Nico Bouguerra, Corporate Communications Manager, Bigpoint GmbH– Broken Age’s Approach to Scalability
Oliver Franzke, Senior Programmer, Double Fine Productions– Designing Assassins Creed III
Steven Masters, Lead Game Designer, Ubisoft Montreal– The Making of Halo 4’s Episodic Co-op Adventure: Spartan Ops
Chris Haluke, Lead Designer, 343 Industries (Microsoft Game Studios)– Once Upon a Time: Giving Players the Freedom to Create Their Own Story
James Brown, Lead Level Designer, Epic Games– The Revolution will be Streamed: How Video is Transforming Video Games
Matthew DiPietro, VP Marketing, Twitch– This Time It’s Different: Treasures and Traps in the Next Gen Transition
Don Daglow, President & Creative Director, Daglow Entertainment LLC– Top Eleven: Achieving Global Success via Emerging Markets
Nikola Cavic, Head of Business Development, Nordeus
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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