Advisory Board
Meet the 2012 GDC Online Advisory Board! These distinguished industry professionals volunteer their time to help develop the numerous sessions at GDC Online. 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.
GDC Online Advisory Board
GDC Online Summit Advisory Boards
| Game Narrative Summit | Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit | |
| Game Dev Start-Up Summit | GDC Gamification Summit | |
GDC Online Advisory Board
Cindy Armstrong
Chief Operating Officer, BlackBox
Cindy Armstrong brings a wealth of over 20 years of experience in operations, business development, and finance to the team at BlackBox. As COO for BlackBox, Cindy Armstrong is responsible for all strategic planning, overseas development and operations. She also serves as a consultant to several online game companies including Gamania and Portalarium Her background includes serving as the CEO of Electric Bat Interactive, CEO of Webzen America, Vice President of Business Development at Sony Online Entertainment, and Director of Sales Analysis and Planning at Nintendo of America. Previous responsibilities included strategic planning, international publishing operations, developing licensing opportunities, scouting new products, and exploring innovative business models.
Thomas Bidaux
CEO, ICO Partners
Thomas Bidaux started his career at France Telecom, within the GOA team. In 1999 he grew the team from a one man operation in charge of the first French MMORPG, LA4EME PROPHETIE, to the European organization in charge of successful DARK AGE OF CAMELOT. In 2004, he left France Telecom, to set up the European subsidiary of the online game giant NCsoft. Acting as the development director for the company, he managed the teams who brought many online games to the European market, including GUILD WARS and CITY OF HEROES.
He is now the CEO of ICO Partners, the consulting agency he founded in April 2008. With his team of experts, he guides independent developers seeking to enter the online games market, provides local expertise to foreign online games publishers entering the European market and has recently providing bespoke pan-European media management services through the ICO Media brand.
J. Allen Brack
Production Director, Blizzard Entertainment
J. Allen Brack joined the game industry in 1994, and currently serves as the Production Director for WORLD OF WARCRAFT. In this role, J is responsible for coordinating the efforts of the game's development team as it creates new content to keep the experience fresh and exciting. This involves overseeing all aspects of the project and managing the production of patches and expansions from initial conception through release.
Brack started at Blizzard Entertainment in January 2006 as a senior producer in charge of content, playing a major role in the creation of new zones, dungeons, and quests for WORLD OF WARCRAFT's first expansion pack, THE BURNING CRUSADE. In his role as Production Director Brack shipped two award winning and #1 selling expansion packs, WRATH OF THE LICH KING and CATACLYSM.
Prior to joining Blizzard, he worked at Origin Systems, Inc. on the WING COMMANDER franchise and then at Sony Online Entertainment LLC on STAR WARS GALAXIES.
Bill Dalton
Technical Director, Zenimax Online Studios
Bill has worked in the video game industry since joining Kesmai's Air Warrior team as a server programmer in 1996. Subsequently Bill went on to serve as the Live Lead for Ultima Online at Origin, Server Lead for The Sims Online at Maxis, and Technical Director for Star Wars Galaxies at Sony Online Entertainment. More recently Bill helped found BioWare's Austin studio and oversaw all technical development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Bill is currently working on an unannounced project at Zenimax Online Studios.
Chris Enock
Senior Marketing Director, Riot Games
Chris Enock brings more than a decade of professional experience (and a lifetime of gaming experience) to Riot Games in his role as Senior Marketing Director. Responsible for all US and European marketing activities for League of Legends, Chris steers teams including Brand Management, Advertising, Sales, Public Relations, and Corporate Communications.
Chris cut his teeth as a programmer at Monster Games, Inc., developing over his four years there a deep software engineering and core development perspective that continues to inform his approach to the strategic and tactical marketing initiatives he oversees at Riot. After obtaining his MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business, Chris began his career in brand management at Activision, shipping titles including Shrek the Third, Kung Fu Panda and Guitar Hero Metallica before joining Santa Monica-based Riot Games in 2009, then an upstart company just launching its debut title League of Legends.
Eugene Evans
Vice President, Studio General Manager, BioWare Mythic - an EA Studio
Eugene Evans is VP and Studio GM of BioWare Mythic, part of the BioWare Label within Electronic Arts. BioWare Mythic created or manages three legendary live MMO's, WARHAMMER ONLINE, ULTIMA ONLINE and DARK AGE OF CAMELOT. It recently announced WARHAMMER ONLINE: WRATH OF HEROES the studios first free to play game. Prior to EA's acquisition of Mythic in 2006 Eugene was VP, Marketing and Business Development and responsible for the launch of WARHAMMER ONLINE and DARK AGE OF CAMELOT. He managed relationships with Mythic's worldwide partners, including Vivendi, France Telecom and Capcom. As a 30 year veteran of the game industry, Eugene has worked at small start-up developers, large publishers and media companies around the world. Before joining Mythic he founded Infinite Ventures an independent production and licensing company that created one of the first interactive DVD games, and licensed and produced cross platform versions of the award winning adventure game SHADOWGATE. Infinite Ventures was also a business development consultant to several leading developers including Zipper Interactive (acquired by Sony in 2006).
Mike Goslin
Senior Vice President and GM, Rebel Entertainment
Mike heads up Rebel Entertainment, Inc., an IAC company dedicated to creating fun and innovative online games. Prior to joining IAC, Mike was an entrepreneur in the social gaming space and oversaw the development of a portfolio of virtual worlds at Disney including TOONTOWN ONLINE, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ONLINE, PIXIE HOLLOW and THE WORLD OF CARS ONLINE. Mike also developed several virtual reality theme park attractions at Walt Disney Imagineering including Aladdin's Magic Carpet Adventure and the award-winning Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold.
Min Kim
Vice President of Live Games, Nexon America
Min joined NEXON Korea Corp. in 2003 when he learned players were spending ten dollars to buy balloons in a free-to-play online game. His initial intention was to quickly bottle all the magic to share with developers in the west. In his excitement, he forgot to take a bottle.
As Vice President of Live Games, Min is responsible for all the product initiatives at Nexon America, Inc. Prior to co-founding Nexon America, Min launched the Global Edition of Nexon's flagship title, MapleStory. He has made significant contributions to the adoption of digital content cards at retail, and recently launched Karma Koin. He also serves on the board for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and on the America's Advisory Board for the Merchant Risk Council.
Min believes his interest in microtransactions and multiplayer gaming comes from trading baseball cards, playing Magic the Gathering, painting Games Workshop miniatures, and buying music on iTunes. He is a nerd.
Raph Koster
Vice President of Creative Design, Playdom
Raph is a VP of creative design at Playdom, which acquired his startup Metaplace in 2010. In past lives, Raph was the lead designer on the seminal online world ULTIMA ONLINE, which first brought online worlds to the mass market, and chief creative officer for Sony Online Entertainment, makers of EVERQUEST, where he previously led the design of STAR WARS GALAXIES. Raph's essays and writings have appeared in game design textbooks, books on legal theory, and major newspapers, and his book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" is considered a classic and is widely used in universities. He is a regular speaker at game, technology, and policy conferences all over the world, and still
finds time to write on his popular website, http://www.raphkoster.com.
Valerie Massey
Director of Community Development, CLARA
Video game industry veteran Valerie Massey is passionate about everything related to video games, especially the people who make and play them. Her love affair with MMOs began with Ultima Online, which eventually paved the way to a career in community and public relations. She has been responsible for the ground floor community development of a number of AAA titles including the critically acclaimed EVE Online. At CCP, she assembled and led an award winning team of community specialists. In her current role as Director of Community Development at CLARA, she seeks to empower and inspire both new and seasoned community care professionals. A native Texan, Ms. Massey resides in Austin where she devotes her free time to raising awareness and donations for Get Well Gamers, a charity that provides video games to childrens' hospitals.
Chris Mayer
Founder, Night Owl Games
Chris Mayer is the founder of the independent Austin based game studio Night Owl Games and is responsible for the development and launch of DUNGEON OVERLORD. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Chris spent a decade developing and publishing MMOs. This includes lead engineering roles on ULTIMA ONLINE at EA: Austin and STAR WARS GALAXIES at Sony Online Entertainment. He served as CTO and VP of Product Development at NCsoft Corporation North America helping to fund and publish numerous MMO titles as well as setting up an infrastructure designed to assist development teams with common MMO technical requirements.
Prior to entering the game industry in 1998, Chris graduated from Rice University and then worked as a software engineer at National Instruments. Chris currently lives in Austin, TX with his wife, children, and overly energetic dog. When he is not playing with his kids, he is online, playing PC games, or taking a beating, playing amateur hockey at the local rink.
Joe McDonagh
Peggle Studio Franchise Director, PopCap Games
Joe McDonagh is the Peggle Studio Franchise Director at PopCap Games, creators of BEJEWELED BLITZ and ZUMA BLITZ. Prior to PopCap he was the Creative Director for LucasArts where he was responsible for the creative aspects of all STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES games. From 2004 to 2009 Joe worked for Irrational Games / 2K Boston, eventually as Director of Creative Development. He is the co-recipient of GDC's 2007 award for Best Writing in a Video Game for BIOSHOCK. BIOSHOCK has won more than 50 game of the year awards and is metacritic's 15th highest reviewed game of all time. Earlier in his career Joe worked at BigWorld, the MMO middleware company. He also worked at BT's online games service, Wireplay. He was the co-founder and co-owner of the British game development studio Elixir Studios, creators of EVIL GENIUS and REPUBLIC: THE REVOLUTION. He holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters Degree in Modern History from Oxford University.
Laralyn McWilliams
Vice President, iWin
Prior to joining iWin, Laralyn was creative director for the ground-breaking MMO Free Realms at Sony Online Entertainment, which acquired a million players in its first 18 days and more than 20 million players to date. She was also lead designer for the most nominated game of E3 2003: Full Spectrum Warrior. She shared the top spot in Massive Online Gaming's 2010 list of the Top 20 Most Influential People in MMO, and was also on Beckett's list of the top women in MMOs for 2010 along with being named one of Gamasutra's 20 most influential women in games in 2008. She's been in a design leadership role on a wide range of games for both core and casual audiences, including shooters, platformers, RPGs, strategy games and simulations. Laralyn holds a B.A. in Psychology from Vassar College, and a J.D. from St. Louis University School of Law.
Richard Vogel
VP of Production and Executive Producer of Star Wars the Old Republic, Bioware Austin
Rich Vogel has been doing game development for 20 years. His first five years was doing console development for CD-I, Sega, and PS-1. He started his online career as Senior Producer of Meridian 59 where he helped launch and run the live service. He left 3DO to join Origin in 1997 as Senior Producer of Ultima Online where he helped launch and run the live service for two years. In 2000, Rich joined Sony Online Entertainment as Executive Producer and founded the Austin Studio. He shipped Star Wars Galaxies in 2003 and the first expansion Jump to Lightspeed in 2004.
He joined BioWare in 2005 and helped form the Austin studio for Bioware. He is currently V.P of Production and Executive Producer of Star Wars the Old Republic. Rich speaks frequently on issues of online world design, online development process, and online community management.
Gordon Walton
Vice President & Executive Producer, Playdom Austin
Gordon Walton has been authoring games and managing game development since 1977. He is currently VP and Exec Producer at Playdom Austin. Prior positions include VP and co-Studio General Manager at BioWare Austin working on Star Wars: The Old Republic, VP, Executive Producer and Studio Manager at Sony Online Entertainment in Austin, working on an unannounced product and Star Wars Galaxies, Gordon was VP and Executive Producer of The Sims Online at Electronic Arts/Maxis, and in the same role for Origin Systems managing Ultima Online; He also served as Senior VP and General Manager of Kesmai Studios, where he oversaw the development of several MMOGs including Air Warrior and Multiplayer Battletech. Gordon has owned and managed two development companies and was development manager for both Three-Sixty Pacific and Konami of America, Inc. He has personally developed more than 30 games and overseen the development of more than 200 games.
Gordon has been a speaker at every Game Developers Conference since its inception in 1988. Gordon has also been a featured speaker at industry events such as E3, Austin Game Developers Conference, East Coast Computer Game Developers Conference, Kagan Conference, Japan Personal Computer Software Association Conference and Jupiter's Conference.
Gordon is a founding member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS). He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University with a minor in Electrical Engineering.
Robert Zubek
Principal Software Engineer, Zynga
Dr. Robert Zubek is a principal software engineer at Zynga in San Francisco, developing games for social networks, where he built games such as CityVille and Roller Coaster Kingdom. Prior to Zynga, he was at Three Rings Design, and Electronic Arts / Maxis; even earlier, he did research in artificial intelligence and robotics. He holds a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University, where he also earned his other CS degrees.
Game Narrative Summit Advisors
Tom Abernathy
Narrative Designer, Microsoft Studios
Tom Abernathy is a narrative designer at Microsoft Studios, where his most recent release is KINECT RUSH: A DISNEY/PIXAR ADVENTURE. Other game credits include HALO: REACH, THE SABOTEUR, CRIMSON ALLIANCE and numerous award nominations for his work on DESTROY ALL HUMANS! and DESTROY ALL HUMANS! 2. In 2009 he was honored as one of "The Gamasutra 20: Top Game Writers" by Gamasutra.com. A graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, he has worked for nearly thirty years as a professional writer, filmmaker, theater director, actor, composer and musician, including fourteen years in games as a writer/designer and VO/cinematic director. Originally from Atlanta, he now lives in Seattle, where he is undergoing treatment for seasonal affective disorder. You can read his intemperate and ill-advised rants on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tomabernathy.
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Lev Chapelsky
Co-Founder and General Manager, Blindlight
Lev Chapelsky is a founding partner and general manager for Blindlight, a Hollywood-based production services company that works exclusively for the videogame industry, providing game producers with consultative advice on working with outsource talent and production resources, as well as a full-service producer of outsourced project work. Blindlight's core service disciplines include story development, script writing, celebrity acquisition, and voiceover production.
Since its founding in 2000, Blindlight has earned over 200 game credits and its client list has grown to include 19 of the top 20 game publishers. Blindlight continues to work as part of the extended development teams on original game properties including the HALO, SPLINTER CELL, ELDER SCROLLS, FALLOUT, DOOM, KILLZONE and GUILD WARS franchises, as well as on dozens of film and TV licensed properties. Lev holds a B.F.A. degree from Notre Dame, an M.B.A. from UCLA, and a degree in International Business Management from The Stockholm School of Economics.
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Richard Dansky
Central Clancy Writer, Ubisoft/Red Storm
As Central Clancy Writer, Richard has been with Red Storm/Ubisoft for over a decade. He has worked on games in series such as SPLINTER CELL, GHOST RECON, RAINBOW SIX, FAR CRY, and MIGHT AND MAGIC, among others. An executive of the IGDA Writers' Special Interest Group, Richard is the author of the critically acclaimed novel FIREFLY RAIN. He has also contributed to numerous books on games and game design, including the award-winning HOBBY GAMES: THE 100 BEST. Previously, Richard wrote four novels and worked on more than a hundred role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studios. His published work also includes short fiction as well as literary criticism, book and music reviews, humor, and a brief stint as the world's greatest authority on Denebian Slime Devils. He currently lives in North Carolina with his wife Melinda Thielbar and their inevitable cats. You can find him online at http://www.richarddansky.com.
Susan O'Connor
Principal, Susan O'Connor Writing Studio
Susan O'Connor is an award-winning writer who creates worlds, plots, characters and scripts for video games. She has contributed to first-person shooters, action-adventure titles, RTS, RPGs and open-world games in a variety of genres, including sci-fi, fantasy, horror, action, thriller, mystery and crime. Titles in her portfolio have sold over ten million copies and generated over half a billion dollars in sales. She founded the Game Writers Conference, now part of GDC Online. In 2008, she was co-recipient of GDC's "Best Writing" award, for BioShock. In 2009, Gamasutra named her as one of the top writers working in the videogame industry today.
Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit Advisors
Graeme Devine
Owner, GRL Games
Graeme is a 30 year industry veteran who has worked on everything from a TRS-80 to a Xbox 360. In the early nineties he pioneered CD-ROM gaming with the breakthrough title The 7th Guest, he went on to become the lead designer on Quake III Arena and Halo Wars. Graeme started GRL Games in December 2010 to focus on bringing entertaining titles to the iPhone, iPad and Mac Desktop.
Chris Pruett
Owner, Robot Invader
By day, Chris runs Robot Invader, makers of mechanical devices of destruction as well as video games. He spent three years at Google working as a developer advocate for the Android platform, and is the author of REPLICA ISLAND, an Android side-scroller with over 1.5M users. Chris spent several years in the game industry as an engineer and shipped ten titles for various console platforms. Under the cover of night he maintains a research blog devoted to the dissection and analysis of horror games. Chris lives with his wife, daughter and son in Menlo Park, California.
Caryl Shaw
Executive Producer, Callaway Digital Arts
Caryl Shaw recently joined Callaway Digital Arts in San Francisco, CA as an Executive Producer, managing the production staff as well as related production efforts from design/concept to release and through "live" updates of lifestyle and kids apps. Prior to joining CDA, Caryl was responsible for the ongoing development of ngmoco:) freemium games like We Rule, Godfinger and We City. And before ngmoco:), Caryl was a Senior Producer at EA/Maxis and worked on The Sims, SimCity and Spore franchises as the Lead Online Producer. Having worked on websites, online applications, and video games for over 15 years, Caryl has a unique perspective of the industry, where it's been, and where it's going. She's spoken at many conferences about a range of topics including: How to enable and encourage your customers' creativity, Lessons learned making a Social Game for Facebook and Putting User-Generated Content to work in video games.
GDC Game Dev Start-Up Summit Advisor
Jim Charne
Attorney at Law, Law Offices James I Charne
Jim Charne is a California, New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin Lawyer. His goal is always to provide experienced, personalized, and attentive legal counsel to clients located all around the world, in all aspects of interactive software entertainment, games, music, and other intellectual property-related businesses. He was the first President of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS), have been recognized as a "Most Valuable Player" by the IGDA, chair games industry programs and program segments in New York and San Francisco for the Practicing Law Institute (PLI), been honored three times for work on behalf of games industry composers by the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) and have been program leader and organizer of the business and management tutorial at GDC each year since 1998. Specialties include; Creative and technical services agreements and other transactional matters involving software entertainment in all formats; game development deals; Intellectual Property issues; copyrights and trademarks; trademark office matters; licensing; Internet commerce; On-line games; social networks; adver-gaming; music and music publishing; movies and television; book publishing; corporate/LLC formation and maintenance.
Gamification Summit Advisor
Ian Bogost
Professor and Director, Graduate Program in Digital Media, Georgia Institute of Technology
Ian Bogost is Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. Bogost is author or co-author of many books, including Unit Operations, Persuasive Games, Racing the Beam, Newsgames, How To Do Things with Videogames and Alien Phenomenology. Bogost's videogames cover topics as varied as airport security, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, suburban errands, and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally. His most recent game, A Slow Year, a collection of game poems for Atari, was a finalist at the 2010 Independent Game Festival and won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at the 2010 Indiecade Festival.
Sebastian Deterding
Researcher, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Hamburg University; owner, coding conduct
Sebastian Deterding is a designer and researcher at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research at Hamburg University working on persuasive, playful and gameful design. His design agency coding conduct serves clients world-wide including the BBC, Greenpeace, Omnicom, or Bertelsmann. He is frequently invited to speak on gameful design at venues like Games+Learning+Society, Web Directions, reboot, Lift, or Google, and his thoughts have been covered by The Guardian, The New Scientist, the Los Angeles Times and EDGE Magazine among others. He co-convened the Gamification Workshop at CHI 2011 and currently hosts the Gamification Research Network. He lives online at http://codingconduct.cc.
