Playing is a Core Human Desire – How Social Games Change the Entertainment Industry

Speaker: Jens Begemann (CEO & Founder, wooga)
Date/Time/Location: Monday, 12:40-1:30pm, Congress Saal 1, 4th Level
Track: Business & Marketing

'Social' is not just a buzz term in the game world - it  is a movement that not only reaches out to new target groups, but will also lead to a transformation of the entire entertainment industry. As computer technology becomes increasingly integrated in our everyday lives, new tech-savvy target markets have emerged, paving the way for an evolution in game design encompassing new genres and wider tastes. In his keynote, Jens Begemann will talk about the success of Social Gaming beyond the game development landscape, and how it is shaping our perceptions about social games, interaction, and human communication. Begemann will share his ideas and thoughts about the future of social games, and discuss how social interactions in games will deepen and evolve to synchronize with real-time social interaction, therefore becoming communication. He will cover how to best bridge the gap between games and social reality by creating games that are fully integrated into the everyday life of everyday people in a fun and meaningful way. On the business side, he will also focus on Monetization, addressing how the free-to-play business model will change as social games become one of the biggest entertainment services by time spend. Begemann will also give personal insights about building wooga, a top three social gaming company, in less than two years.

About Jens Begemann: Before founding wooga, Jens Begemann attended the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, and was a chief product officer and member of the management board at Jamba (Jamster) for seven years. His position there focused on content acquisition and creation, and overall user experience. Begemann's passion for people, play, and technology led him to the formation of wooga.

About wooga: Founded in 2009 and based in Berlin, Germany, wooga is one of the top three social game developers on Facebook. wooga, developer of popular social titles Brain Buddies, Bubble Island, Diamond Dash, Happy Hospital, and Monster World, hosts more than 30 million active users per month. Wooga currently has the third largest number of active users on Facebook worldwide.

Postmortem: Castlevania: Lord of Shadow - How to Succeed and Not Die Trying

Speaker: Enric Alvarez (Founder, Mercury Steam)
Date/Time/Location: Monday, 3:20-4:10pm, Congress Saal 1, 4th Level
Track: Game Design

In his keynote address, Enric Alvarez, Mercury Steam founder and director and co-writer of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, shares surprising and insightful answers to some of the following questions:

• How does a game project of this magnitude fall into the hands of a small Spanish studio located in 'the middle of nowhere'?
  
• How does this studio face the gargantuan task of updating one of the most beloved franchises in the game industry?
  
• And if publisher-developer relationships can be tricky to start with, how does a small and relatively unknown Spanish studio successfully manage communications with its Japanese publisher?

Alvarez details for the first time what went right and wrong in making the critically acclaimed update to the classic console game series.

About Enric Alvarez: Enric is a frustrated astronaut, vocational writer and has a degree in Psychology. Despite all that, he started his career in the videogame industry back in 1998, when he was hired by Rebel Act Studios. He became a level designer for Blade: The Edge of Darkness, a medieval fantasy title set in the Middle Ages published by Codemasters in 2001.

In 2002, Enric founds Mercury Steam with some colleagues and privately financed their first project, Scrapland, with American McGee as collaborator and mentor. They put their shirts on it, and, of course they lost until the last cent.

Between 2005 and 2007, the studio resurrects and Enric directs the Clive Barker’s Jericho project for Codemasters - the first title developed in Spain for next-gen platforms (PS3 and Xbox 360).
Between 2008 and 2010 Enric co-writes and directs Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, the most recent installment in one of the Konami longest and most respected sagas. Again, the project became a Spanish gaming industry milestone in regards to scope and size. Castlevania Lords of Shadow was published in October 2010 and received both excellent reviews and sales. The game had the support of Hideo Kojima, father of the Metal Gear Solid series, who acted as a project advisor.

Currently, Enric and Mercury Steam are working on undisclosed projects.

Size Doesn't Matter: How Epic Brings AAA Attitude to Every Game, from Gears of War 3 to Infinity Blade

Speaker: Mike Capps (President, Epic Games)
Date/Time/Location: Tuesday, 12:40-1:30pm, Congress Saal 1, 4th Level
Track: Production

In its nearly twenty-year history, Epic has delivered fun, successful triple-A experiences of all kinds: console blockbusters, mobile games, experimental Internet shareware, legendary PC shooters, even floppy disks sold by mail. While the team sizes and budgets on those projects can differ by a factor of ten or more, there are still distinct similarities in the production of all Epic's projects. Certainly, there are similarities in production methodology and pipelines from shared staff and infrastructure, and this talk will discuss some of those, with the upcoming Gears of War 3 as a driving example. But the most important shared factor is the team's attitude: their passion for the game, their desire for the team to be successful, and their pride in the positive response from fans. And while management's priority-setting and budgeting provides some general guidance for a team's efforts, the drive to triple-A quality can only come from the individual. This talk will analyze how Epic strives for quality, and how company culture reinforces those values to ensure that every game, every time, every size, every platform, is triple-A.

About Mike Capps: Dr. Michael Capps is the president of Epic Games, makers of the mega-hit “Unreal” and “Gears of War” game franchises and the award-winning Unreal Engine 3.  Michael serves on the boards of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Michael also serves as a member of Governor Beverly Perdue’s North Carolina Innovation Council as well as Change the Equation, a non-profit, non-partisan CEO-led initiative to drive innovation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Michael was named 2009 Technology Executive of the Year by the North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA) and is listed in Game Developer magazine’s Game Developer 50, which recognizes significant contributors to the game industry.

An Old Horse Learning New Tricks - From AAA Retail to AAA Online

Speaker: Cevat Yerli (President & CEO, Crytek GmbH)
Date/Time/Location: Tuesday, 5:40-6:30pm, Congress Saal 1, 4th Level
Track: Game Design

In his keynote, Cevat Yerli will identify the challenges that a classic AAA retail developer like Crytek faces when embarking on the development of a highly innovative AAA online FPS such as the recently announced title Warface. With regards to the product there are significant differences in gamer expectations, tolerance of frustration or inconvenience, usability, service features or even fun. For the process of development there are great synergies between those two worlds but also insurmountable differences that require learning anew. The talk will outline how the two models, AAA retail and AAA online, can be mutually beneficial and how a developer can get the best out of both worlds.

About Cevat Yerli: Cevat Yerli is President and CEO of Crytek, creator of the CryENGINE and the multi-award winning Crysis game franchise.

Cevat's first game development experiences go back to the 1980s with the Commodore 64 and the Schneider CPC 6128, where he worked on various simulation games. While studying economics in the 1990s, he continued pursuing his passion of creating and playing games and began working towards his dream of founding a game development company. In 1999 he then founded Crytek together with his two brothers, Avni and Faruk.

Cevat gives creative direction for all Crytek products and focuses on expanding the company into new territories.

The Three Eras of Gaming and Why This One is a Game Changer

Speaker: Richard Garriott (VP and Creative Director, Portalarium)
Date/Time/Location: Wednesday, 9:30-10:20am, Congress Saal 1, 4th Level
Track: Game Design

From single player to massively multiplayer to casual/social gaming. In less than 30 years, the gaming industry has seen three eras of games. Pioneering game designer Richard Garriott takes his audience through all three and explains the lessons learned along each stop. But the current and third era, casual/social, may be the most impactful of all with hundreds of millions of consumers already playing games in the space, billions of dollars changing hands and companies both large and small, established and brand new fighting for a piece of the pie. What are the rules of this new order? Can traditional developers make the transition? Should they? “There are many lessons from the past that can be applied to this latest era of games,” says Garriott. “But the process is evolving much faster than before. What we saw take ten years to evolve before is taking five years or less now. The proverbial train is traveling at light speed this time, and developers must take advantage of this opportunity or risk getting left behind.”

About Richard Garriott: One of the gaming world’s legendary designers, Richard Garriott earned that status with his design of the Ultima role-playing games, one of the most successful computer game series ever. His Ultima Online game was the world’s first commercially successful Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).

In 2006 Richard was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame and was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Conference Choice Awards. In October of 2008, Richard realized a lifelong dream to travel to space when he launched aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft to the International Space Station and became the first second-generation American to fly to space. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on commercial space travel and currently serves on the NASA Advisory Council.

Today Richard is vice president and creative director for the Austin, Texas-based social media games developer and publisher, Portalarium.

Summit Keynote

Developing New Audiences: When the Past Can't Predict Your Future
Speaker: Kellee Santiago (President & Co-Founder, thatgamecompany)
Date/Time/Location: Monday, 2-2:25pm, Congress Saal 3, 4th Level
Summit: Independent Games

There’s a reason many studios don’t develop new types of games - because it relies on audiences we know nothing about. And these unknowns can impact every aspect of your development, from your design process, to pipeline development, to your marketing campaign. In this talk, Kellee Santiago will talk about the lessons learned from developing flOw, Flower, and Journey for the PS3 on how to make effective decisions based on little data to create commercially successful titles that, in the beginning and maybe right up until you ship), no one will think you can sell.

About Kellee Santiago: Kellee Santiago is President and Co-Founder of thatgamecompany. thatgamecompany’s goal is to make video games that communicate different emotional experiences, and expand the communicative possibilities of games. Their first two commercial releases, “flOw”, and “Flower,” went on to become award-winning and two of the top downloaded games on PSN; the studio is currently in development on their online PSN title, "Journey."
 
Kellee speaks around the world at video game, business, and entertainment conferences on the possibilities of video games, entrepreneurship, and better methods for video game development. She is also a partner in IndieFund, which aims to support the growth of games as a medium by helping indie developers get financially independent and stay financially independent.

Summit Keynote

Community Management's Time is NOW!
Speaker: Gordon Walton
Date/Time/Location: Wednesday, 10:50-11:40am, Congress Saal 3, 4th Level
Summit: Community Management

Community management is coming into its own as online communities become the norm in our modern world. Businesses are discovering the value of committed, coherent communities and the skills to appropriately manage these communities are critical to business success. This session will lay out the elements and strategies of managing communities and raise the call-to-arms for a professional society of community management to share best practices and develop a code of conduct that supports the growth and development of online communities.

About Gordon Walton: 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 at Sony Online Entertainment, prior to this he 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.