Game Developers Conference 2008 - (Page 24) Advisory Board 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. 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 theh 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. Dave ranyard SOny COMpuTEr EnTErTAInMEnT EurOpE David perry 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 and 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. GAMECOnSulTAnTS.COM David was the president and founder of Shiny Entertainment, Inc. running it for 12 years. A 24-year game industry veteran, David launched his professional career at just 15 years of age by writing videogame programming books in his native Northern Ireland. Since then, David has developed or programmed over 100 games across 29 videogame platforms. All told, David’s games (including #1 Hits like the terminator, teenaGe mutant ninJa turtLes, Disney’s aLaddin and “Movie Game of the Year” – enter the matrix) have totaled an estimated billion dollars in retail sales. Today David is directing three MMO titles, all published by Acclaim, and running two companies: www.gameconsultants.com and www. gameinvestors.com paul Steed ExIGEnT Ichiro Otobe SquArE EnIx CO., lTD. Ichiro is chief strategist of Square Enix, a leading interactive entertainment company, known for its videogame 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 M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a master’s of engineering in electronics engineering from the University of Tokyo. Bob rafei nAuGHTy DOG 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; A fifteen-year veteran of the gaming industry, Bob is the art director, character animator and concept artist at Naughty Dog, Inc. 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 stiKes 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. 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. Tommy Tallarico TOMMy TAllArICO STuDIOS Tommy is a veritable videogame industry icon. As one of the most successful videogame composers in history, he has helped revolutionize the gaming world, creating unique audio landscapes that enhance the videogaming experience. An accomplished musician, Tommy has been writing music for videogames 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. Tommy was the first musician to release a videogame soundtrack worldwide and has released seven videogame soundtrack albums since. Visit www.gdconf.com for daily coverage of GDC 2008 http://www.gdconf.com/?cid=GDC08_showguide http://www.gameconsultants.com http://www.gameinvestors.com http://www.gameconsultants.com http://www.gameinvestors.com http://AWN.com http://www.gdconf.com/?cid=GDC08_showguide
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