GDC Europe Advisory Board

Bob Bates
Chief Creative Officer for Zynga External Studios. Past Chair IGDA

Bob Bates began his game writing career at Infocom in 1986. Since then he has written, designed, produced, or contributed to more than 40 games that have sold over 6 million units and won over 55 industry awards, including two Adventure Game of the Year Awards.  He has worked on #1 titles for both the PC (Unreal2)and for consoles (Spider-man3).  In 1989 he co-founded Legend Entertainment, where he was a designer and studio head until it closed in 2004.  A frequent speaker at industry conferences and events, he has twice been Chairman of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and he is the co-founder of the Game Designers Workshop, an annual conference of storytelling game designers.  Bob is the author of the bestselling book:  Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games, which is used as a textbook by several colleges and universities.  He is on the Advisory Boards of GDC Europe, of the George Mason University Undergraduate Game Degree Program, and of Project Horseshoe, a game-design think tank.  Bob is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IGDA, and was selected as the IGDA’s 2010 Person of the Year.  He is now the Chief Creative Officer for the External Studios of Zynga.

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Don Daglow
President & CEO, Don Daglow Interactive Entertainment

Don Daglow is a pioneering video game and online game designer whose career stretches from the birth of the industry to the present day. His design for Neverwinter Nights was honored with an Emmy^® Award for Technology and Engineering in 2008, making him one of only three people (with id Software's John Carmack and Blizzard's Mike Morhaime) to accept both an Emmy^® and an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Achievement Award. Electronic Games has called him "one of the best-known and respected producers in the history of the field," and in 2003 he received the CGE Award for "groundbreaking achievements that shaped the Video Game Industry." He currently serves as a consultant for game developers, publishers and investors.

Starting in 1971, Don spent nine years creating games on mainframes, designing several first-ever titles that foreshadowed major game industry genres. After being selected as one of the original five in-house programmers at Mattel, he served as director of Intellivision game development during the first generation of Video Game consoles. In 1983 he accepted a position as one of three producers at a small start-up called Electronic Arts, where he produced two of the first three EA sports titles. He then took over leadership of the Entertainment and Education division at Broderbund, where he acquired the rights to Sim City and Star Wars, as well as managing development of the Carmen Sandiego series and the original Prince of Persia.

In 1988 he founded Stormfront Studios, which became one of the most successful game developers in North America. Over the next twenty years over 14,000,000 Stormfront games were sold, and the company also broke audience and sales records with pioneering online games. By the time the company closed in 2008 its products had generated over $500,000,000 at retail for packaged games and online titles.

Don designed and programmed the first-ever computer baseball game and first sports simulation in 1971 (now recorded in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown), the first mainframe computer role-playing game ("Dungeon" for PDP-10 mainframes, 1975), the first sim game (Video Game Hall of Fame title "Utopia" for Intellivision, 1981) and the first game to use multiple camera angles (Intellivision "World Series Major League Baseball", 1983). He led the design for Computer Game Hall of Fame title Earl Weaver Baseball (1987) as well as the original Neverwinter Nights for AOL (1991-97).

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Alexander Fernandez
CEO, Streamline Media Group

Alexander, CEO of Streamline Media Group, is responsible for defining, implementing and executing company vision and strategy worldwide. He develops high-level business relationships; builds brand awareness, and leadership of the group and all its subsidiaries. Alexander is a visionary entrepreneur in the converging field of media, entertainment, and technology. His vast network, ability to build and influence relationships across sectors and industries has been pivotal to the emerging success of the Streamline Media Group. Recently he has been expanding the group’s activities in advertising and film where he produced Streamline Production’s first project for Coke Zero and Twentieth Century Fox in conjunction with the release of James Cameron’s spectacular movie Avatar.

Prior to his position within the Streamline Media Group, Alexander fulfilled the role as CEO of Streamline Studios. In 2005 he secured Streamline Studios’ first equity and bank investments, and was influential to the studios’ success by annually growing its revenue by 45% for four straight years.

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Sean Kauppinen
CEO, International Digital Entertainment Agency

Sean Kauppinen is the founder and CEO of the International Digital Entertainment Agency. He has more than 14 years of strategic communications and business development expertise in the digital entertainment industry and his ability to bring companies together and provide strategic guidance has led to business growth for industry giants as well as start-ups. During this time Kauppinen has launched more than 400 titles on all major gaming platforms, ranging from big budget blockbusters to value games. He has held PR and marketing management positions with Sony Online Entertainment, Ubi Soft, bleem!, and 3dfx.

Kauppinen currently holds advisory board positions with GDC Europe and multiple early stage companies, and is a regular contributor to Gamers Magazine. He is a sought-after speaker at high-profile industry events around the world, where he has delivered keynote speeches and led interactive sessions on topics including marketing, strategic communications, business development, community creation, funding and bringing original IP to market.

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Matias Myllyrinne
Managing Director, Remedy Entertainment

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.

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Harald Riegler
CEO, Sproing

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 90's, 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.

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Johan Sjöberg
Lead Agent, DDM

Johan Sjöberg is Lead Agent at DDM where he works closely with the agency’s game developer clients on business development and corporate strategy, concept creation and IP development, contract negotiations and customer relationship management. He also leads DDM’s initiatives assisting licensors navigate the video game business.

Johan started his career in games more than 20 years ago in the pen-and-paper RPGs, where he spent over a decade as a best-selling writer and designer, before making the transition into video games. Since then Johan has founded, run, and sold game development studios, working in as disparate disciplines as writing and game design, project and studio management, as well as business development.

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Frank Sliwka
VP European Business Development, UBM TechWeb Game Network, & GDC Europe Event Director

Frank Sliwka entered the games industry in 1997. With his company Global Games Media, he worked successfully with GC - Games Convention, GC Developers Conference (GCDC) and GC Asia (Singapore) untill fall 2008. During this time, he established GCDC as one of the most important game industry conferences in the world, and GC Asia as one of the main game industry events in Asia. In November 2008, Think Services acquired Sliwka's company, Global Games Media, and from that time onwards, he has served as Think Services' Vice President of European Business Development and Event Director for GDC Europe. Sliwka has deep experience and knowledge in the games industry and has a worldwide network of contacts. He is very well known as a talented strategist and game industry expert around the globe.

From 2005 till 2008 he was a member of the board of the GC Developers Conference, and is now on the board of GDC Europe. Sliwka is a member of the jury of European Innovative Games Award (EIGA).

Sliwka also works in the eSports Sector and created the world-leading Business Platform for eSports, International eSports Conference (ESCONF), in 2004, which is now organized by Think Services as well. At the end of 2004, he founded the German eSports Association and was elected Chairman of the German eSports Association. In 2008, Sliwka was elected as Vice President of the International eSports Federation. He stepped back from both positions in summer 2009, to focus energy on growing Think Services' European network.

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Robert Wallace
Principal, Strategic Alternatives

Robert J. Wallace is principal of Strategic Alternatives, a consulting enterprise providing business and marketing strategy, positioning, infrastructure development, publisher relationships, and acquisition counsel to independent game developers.

Strategic Alternatives was formed in 1985 after the laser printer company Robert was CEO of and had co-founded was sold to a larger public company. The company had grown from zero in 1980 to $30M on $100K of invested capital. Strategic Alternatives was originally focused on providing services to start-ups and turn-around companies in the field of digital imaging hardware and software. In 1995 the company switched to a games industry focus by providing business strategy consulting to newly formed Ensemble Studios, ultimately managing the sale of the company to Microsoft in 2001.

Current clients include: Arkane Studios (FR), Blue Fang Games, Bonfire Studios, BreakAway Ltd., Her Interactive, Legacy Interactive, Massive Black, Robot Entertainment, Schell Games, Sidhe Interactive (NZ) Subatomic Studios, and Tencent (China).

Former clients include: Big Huge Games (sold 2008), Cryptic Studios (sold 2008), and Ensemble Studios (sold 2001). Strategic Alternatives also managed the sale of the City of Heros IP by Cryptic Studios to NCsoft in 2007.

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Avni Yerli
Managing Director, Crytek

After completing his degree in mechanical engineering in 1994, Avni Yerli started his career as a project manager at a leading Bavarian planning and consulting company. In 1997, Avni became Managing Director for a subsidiary of a foreign consulting company and by early 1998 he ran his own business as an independent consultant. However, as an ardent gamer, it didn't take long for Avni to join his two brothers, Cevat and Faruk, in founding Crytek, an interactive entertainment development company, in November 1999. As a founding member and Managing Director, Avni is responsible for business development, directing game development and finances, and legal and administrative issues.

Crytek is one of the world's leading independent development studios for interactive entertainment with its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) and additional studios in Kiev (Ukraine), Budapest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria), Seoul (South Korea) and Nottingham (UK). The company is dedicated to creating exceptionally high quality video games for the PC and next-generation consoles, powered by their proprietary cutting edge 3D-Game-Technology CryENGINE^®. Since its inception, Crytek created multi-award winning PC titles which include: Far Cry^®; Crysis, awarded best PC Game of E3 2007 and Best Technology at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards; and Crysis Warhead^®, awarded Best Graphics Technology at IGN Best of 2008 Awards.

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GDC Europe Summit Advisory Board (Social Games)

Jiri Kupiainen
VP & Founder, Rocket Pack

Jiri is one of the founders of Rocket Pack, which became a part of Disney in March 2011. Rocket Pack makes the Rocket Engine HTML5 cloud game development platform. Throughout his career Jiri has been keenly interested in web technologies and game development, successfully bridging the two as the CEO of Rocket Pack.

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Kristian Segerstråle
Co-founder, Playfish

Kristian is the general manager and co-founder of Playfish, now part of Electronic Arts.  He was chief executive officer of Playfish leading up to the company’s acquisition by Electronic Arts in November 2009. Prior to founding Playfish in late 2007, Kristian was a co-founder and later managing director of Europe, Middle East and Asia for Glu Mobile, a leading global publisher of mobile games.

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GDC Europe Summit Advisory Board (Independent Games)

Lau Korsgaard
Co-founder, Copenhagen Game Collective

Lau Korsgaard is co-founder of Copenhagen Game Collective, a multi-gender, multi-national, non-profit game design collective based in Copenhagen. He has been involved in several of the collectives’ experimental games such as Dark Room Sex Game and B.U.T.T.O.N. and showcased games at festivals like Come out and Play, IndieCade and Independent Games Festival. As his day job, Lau tries to make a living as game designer in the independent game studio KnapNok Games exploring new genres of social, physical party games.

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Hendrick Lesser
Managing Director, remote control productions/ Executive Producer Chimera Entertainment

...is managing director of the Munich based production house remote control productions, which was founded in 2005. He is Executive Producer of the development studio Chimera Entertainment as well as a member of the jury of the German Developer Award. Also, he is the executive board member of the non-profit association "Videospielkultur e.V." and teaches at different game-specific educational institutes like the MD.H, Qantm Institute in Munich or the Games Academy.

Hendrik Lesser has been working as Development Manager for Take 2 Interactive where he, amongst others, produced the bestselling title Sacred. He was responsible for national and international product strategies, reported directly to the US-headquarter of Take 2 in NY and managed the business development in Middle and Eastern Europe.

Since 2005, he has been gradually growing a network of development studios throughout Germany which he picked up in the early stages and developed into what they are today. The best example of this is Chimera Entertainment GmbH. Starting as a student team, Chimera now is a successful development studio with more than 20 employees, located in the centre of Munich.

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GDC Europe Summit Advisory Board (Smartphone & Tablet Games)

Jetro Lauha
Co-Founder, Secret Exit

Jetro is a co-founder of Secret Exit, where he works as a technical lead. He has worked in game industry since 2001, spending most of the time making games for smartphones. Recent works include recreation of the classic Stair Dismount for iOS, as well as being part of the team that created Zen Bound 2. His roots as developer lie in the demoscene, where he has found delight in tiny procedural demonstrations among other things.

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Michael Schade
CEO & Co-Founder, FISHLABS

Michael Schade, CEO & Co-Founder of FISHLABS, makers of the highly successful game series Galaxy on Fire, has been deeply involved with computer graphics, 3D animation, and software development for more than 18 years. With seven years in 3D mobile gaming and an award-winning portfolio of high-end 3D games distributed globally through mobile operators, Apple’s App Store and pre-loaded on Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets, Michael has a profound knowledge of the mobile business. Michael is a well known evangelist for high-end gaming on mobile phones and a seasoned speaker with several lectures at mobile and gaming events all around the globe. Since three years, advergaming became a major business for FISHLABS and clients like Volkswagen and Barclaycard are relying on Michael’s knowledge and his team’s expertise how to engage millions of consumers worldwide through ad games on smartphones and tablets.

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GDC Europe Summit Advisory Board (Community Management)

Linda Carlson
Director of Global Community Relations, Sony Online Entertainment

Linda has been involved in gaming since her very first, photocopied D&D manual arrived in the mail several decades ago. Over the years, she made the transition from tabletop to online to media to industry… and now serves as the Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment. SOE maintains over a dozen online titles, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Free Realms, Clone Wars Adventures and DC Universe Online. Whether delivering lectures at conventions, hosting SOE Webcasts as “Brasse,” (her garrulous Dwarven alter ego) or working on SOE Community Team projects, Linda is constantly inspired by the passion of the people who create and play games. “In no other field of endeavor do we see such rapid evolution of society, technology and communication,” she explains, “The gaming world is one incredible, organic social experiment, and I can hardly wait to see what’s next!”

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Thomas Lagemann
Founder, Two Pi Team

Thomas has been active in the games industry for over 10 years. Based on these activities, it seemed a natural consequence to found Two Pi Team together with Nadja Bastawi in 2005.

Next to his occupation in the strategic department at Two Pit Team, he has been increasingly involved in the promotion and development of the German gaming industry’s new blood, which is reflected by activities such as the promotion of the NRW Entwicklertreffen (NRW developer conference), the cooperation with the MD.H Düsseldorf, and being a jury member of the AV-Gründerzentrum (AV incubation unit).

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Chris Mancil
Director of Community Management and Social Media, THQ

Chris Mancil is Director of Community Management and Social Media at THQ. With more than 13 years in video games, Chris is one of the earlier pioneers in the Community Management field. He has developed, created, or lead communities in many of the iconic massively multiplayer online games over the past decade such as Shadowbane, The Matrix Online, Huxley, Rift, and is currently working on the highly anticipated MMO - Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online. Over a long career, Chris has also had the privilege of working at some of the most successful companies in interactive entertainment, such as Ubisoft, Warner Bros Interactive, Sierra Online, Trion Worlds, and THQ.

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