ABOUT GDC EUROPE  

Nick currently works as General Manager at Crytek GmbH, the creator of the FarCry and Crysis franchises as well as CryENGINE. He manages Crytek’s games business covering traditional boxed-product projects such as Crysis 3, Ryse, and Homefront 2, as well as the free to play title Warface (now launched in Russia) and mobile projects such as Fibble.

Nick works with leading partners from around the world, such as Tencent, Nexon, Mail.ru, Electronic Arts, and Microsoft, as well as companies such as Nvidia and AMD, and deals with Crytek development teams comprising more than 650 people in 7 locations around the world.

Now with Crytek for 4 years, Nick previously spent 9 years at EA in roles including Director of Business Development at Electronic Arts Partners, where he worked on franchises including Battlefield, Black & White, Crysis, Timesplitters, Freedom Fighters and FIFA Manager. His first industry job was at Eidos, when Eidos was the biggest publisher in Europe, so he can remember when Lara was not scared.

Bartłomiej has been an illustrator for the past fifteen years and graduated from the sculpture department at the academy of fine arts in Wrocław. He has been active in the games industry and devoted to AAA video game projects since 2005.

Bartłomiej started as an art director and illustrator in the marketing agency Tequilla, part of the TBWA group. After two years he joined People Can Fly and worked as a concept artist on a AAA FPS. In 2007 he joined CD Projekt RED, the developer of the AAA RPG series The Witcher. Since then he has worked as lead concept artist on The Witcher, The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition and their latest project, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

David Hego has been working in the video games industry for 20 years. Having studied computer arts at SupInfoCom in France, David moved into the industry at a time when 3D pre-rendered games on CD-ROM were exploding. Throughout his career David worked as a cinematic, environment and VFX artist on games including Dragon Lore, Red Dog, Swat GST and Urban Chaos: Riot Response. Being part of Rocksteady Studios since its creation, David moved to the position of art director, working on the BAFTA award winning games Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City.

Sven joined Bigpoint as head of art in 2009 and is since responsible for the visual design of all existing and future Bigpoint games. Together with his team consisting of over 100 artists, he helped envision and build games into the world's most successful browser games, from concept to final product.

Prior to joining Bigpoint, Sven was senior producer at Electronic Arts for the browser-based game "Lord of Ultima" and as art director in charge of the graphic design of the "The Settler" and 3D-titles such as "Spellforce" and "Battleforge."

Sven studied communications design at the University for Applied Sciences in Darmstadt and is lecturer at the Games Academy Berlin, the Film Academy Ludwigsburg and SAE Munich. Sven Liebich is involved in the advisory board of the Games Academy Berlin and is a member of the academy board of the German Developer Award.

Harald Riegler is CEO of Sproing, Austria's leading game development studio, where he is responsible for sales, finance and management within the studio. In 2001, he co-founded Sproing together with his partner Gerhard Seiler, and the company started to work as an independent console and PC development studio, eventually growing into one of the leading console game developers in central Europe.

Over the last couple of years, Harald and the Sproing team have grown their reputation as a high-quality studio, creating several highly successful games including the 2008 Console Game of the Year in Germany, Panzer Tactics DS. Harald started his career in the games industry as a programmer, musician and sound designer in the early '90s, working on numerous titles before focusing on studio management.

Harald is a board member of G.A.M.E., the German and Austrian game developer trade body, and an active contributor to the game development community. He is a regular speaker at industry events and co-represents GAME in the European Game Developer Federation (the EGDF), which he helped found. Harald also represents his fellow developers through his advisory board positions with GDC Europe, Game Connection and Nordic Game.

Michiel van der Leeuw (formerly Michiel Ouwehand) is the technical director at Sony's Guerrilla studio in Amsterdam and Cambridge. He joined the industry in 1998 as one of the two programmers on Epic's Jazz Jackrabbit 2, a PC platformer from the shareware age. He was the first employee of startup company Orange Games where he wrote the core technology for the company. Through merging and re-branding Orange grew out to become Guerrilla, which was later acquired by Sony.

Over the years, Michiel has worked in various areas of programming from lead game coder to Tools, Audio and Graphics. The technology he started at Orange is still at the basis of the engine which is used by Guerrilla's flagship title Killzone, as well as Guerrilla's new, unannounced IP.

Michiel has a passion for quality, code, collaborations and teams. He now enjoys a little bit of coding, a large part of setting the direction of Guerrilla's engine and a great deal of collaboration with other Sony studios.

Ben is the general manager of ngmoco Sweden, where he leads a team developing freemium mobile games aimed at core console and PC gamers. Prior to joining ngmoco, Ben was general manager of Easy, an EA studio overseeing a portfolio of free-to-play PC games including the groundbreaking Battlefield Heroes. Mirroring the industry's transition into direct-to-consumer distribution models, Ben has been working exclusively on digitally delivered games since 2005 and he is widely regarded as one of the Western world's leading authorities on freemium game development and operation. Ben started his games industry career as a QA tester in 1999.

Lars started out in the business as an artist on Codename Eagle back in 1999, just before the acquisition by DICE in early 2000. He has been involved in the Battlefield series from the beginning and was one of the persons who saw the huge potential in building upon the success of Codename Eagle and creating the Battlefield trademarked sandbox experience. Going on to become the senior producer for Battlefield 1942 and then creative the design direction of the game as the lead designer on Battlefield 2, today Lars holds the role of creative director at DICE. As creative director he is responsible for the direction of all games being developed at the studio - a visionary role that involves being part of the process from concept to final product for all future DICE games.

Daniel Kaplan is the business developer and the first person to be hired by Markus "Notch" Persson for his company Mojang, creators of the award-winning game Minecraft. Daniel Kaplan has been involved from the start, when the company was registered, and is currently working with the CEO and organizing the company.

Launched in spring 2009, Minecraft has grown to over 27 million registered users and has over 5.5 million paying customers. Daniel currently works on organizing the Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition and the Minecraft - Pocket Edition. Minecraft - Pocket Edition was released in August 2011 and has sold over 1.5 million copies on iOS AppStore and Google Play.

Prior to Mojang, Daniel was the CEO and co-founder of the game company Ludosity, and worked as a teacher at the University of Skövde's game development programme, as a pizza baker and as a freelance 3D animator.

Daniel was born in Skövde, Sweden.

As one of the key figures behind the company's success, Matias is responsible for handling Remedy's business affairs. Since joining the company in 1999, he has helped build Remedy into one of the world's leading independent game developers. He holds an MBA from the Helsinki School of Economics. When he's not playing or working on the company's next business move, Matias can be found traveling with his wife and two sons.

Dirk is one of founders of Phenomic, acquired by Electronic Arts in 2006. In his early career he worked as technical director on AAA PC products such as Settlers 3 and the SpellForce series. He shifted to a business role at Electronic Arts and as VP & EP of Phenomic, Dirk transformed his studio into a successful online browser developer working with well-known franchises such as Lord of Ultima and C&C Tiberium Alliances.

Teut Weidemann is a Senior Online Games Specialist and currently works for Ubisoft – Blue Byte on new online game projects after he assisted them on the browser game of the year "The Settlers Online".

Teut started in the games industry in the 1980's and since shipped over 100 titles on most known platforms.

After working for Apple Computer and Microsoft Games he founded his own developer in 1996, Wings Simulations, which shipped the highly rewarded Panzer Elite for Psygnosis, a Sony company back then. After selling his company he joined CDV as CTO for more than 2 years, where he was responsible for all development.

Since 2007 he is consulting companies who have or want to enter the future of gaming: the online space.