The GDC Advisory Board

GDC Advisory Board
Audio Advisory Board
Visual Arts Advisory Board
GDC Advisory Board Emeritus

These seasoned industry professionals volunteer their time every year to help construct the 400+ GDC conference sessions. 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. Read below to find out about the extraordinary members of the GDC Advisory Board.

Main Advisory Board

Ian Baverstock
Kuju Entertainment

Ian is co-founder and CEO of Kuju Entertainment and has been working in the games industry for 16 years. Originally a programmer, Ian has been responsible for the overall creative direction of Kuju in recent years as well as business strategy. Kuju now operates as 5 autonomous UK studios. Ian is also chairman of Tiga, the UK independent game developers' trade association.

 

Chris Butcher
Bungie

Chris is an engineering lead at Bungie where he is responsible for technical vision and game engine research. This involves equal parts of architecture design, hardware wrangling, and wild-eyed ranting about the future convergence of CPUs, GPUs, 4G, HMDs, and the cloud. Currently he is working on Step 7 of Bungie's Master Plan.

In his eight years at Bungie Chris has witnessed its evolution from independent developer to a first-party studio within Microsoft Game Studios and now back to an independent developer. During this time he has helped lead Bungie's engineering team by developing artificial intelligence, graphics and networking technologies for the Oni and Halo series. He holds a Master of Science in computer graphics from the University of Otago in New Zealand.

 

Simon Carless
Chairman, Independent Games Festival
Editorial Director, Game Developer Magazine & Gamasutra.com

Simon Carless is the Chairman of the Independent Games Festival and Editorial Director of the Think Services Game Group, overseeing both Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com. He has previously worked as a writer/editor for tech site Slashdot, and as a game designer for companies such as Eidos Interactive and Atari.

 

Louis Castle
Electronic Arts Los Angeles

Louis is a co-founder of Westwood Studios and vice president of Creative Development at Electronic Arts Los Angeles. As part of the management team, Louis helps direct EALA's programming, artwork, audio, and research & development departments, as well as contributes to studio business strategy. Louis was the general manager of Westwood Studios from 2000-2003 and served in creative, business and finance roles while growing Westwood from two employees in 1985 to over 250 in 2002. In his creative roles, Louis has contributed as executive producer, creative director, technical director, programmer and artist to over 100 games created by Westwood and EA over the past 23 years including best selling original franchises such as Command & Conquer, Lands of Lore and Eye of the Beholder as well as block buster licensed original products including The Lord of the Rings- The Battle for Middle Earth II, The Lion King, Blade Runner and Monopoly.

 

Mark Cerny
Cerny Games Inc.

Mark has been working in game design and technology for 25 years. He designed and programmed 1984s Marble Madness for Atari coin-op, and at Sega he oversaw the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. While president of Universal Studios game division, he worked in a variety of production and design roles on the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon series on the original PlayStation.

Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank series on PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation 3 launch title Resistance: Fall of Man. He has also been instrumental in the creation and guidance of the ICE team, a technology group based at Naughty Dog that specializes in graphics systems and tools for the PlayStation 3. In 2004 the IGDA honored Mark with its Lifetime Achievement Award, calling him a master collaborator and a jack of all trades.

Photo courtesy of Kate Romero

 

Carey Chico
Pandemic Studios

Carey has been working in the game industry since 1996, after graduating from UCLA with a bachelor's in design. His foray into the game industry began when he started at Activision Studios as an animator on Planetfall. From there, he rose through the ranks as lead artist on Battlezone and then as a founding member of Pandemic Studios where he completed Battlezone 2 as art director. After working again as art director on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he stepped up as studio art director to oversee more global and long term art interests. Some of the most recent titles under his supervision are Full Spectrum Warrior, Battlefront, Mercenaries, and Destroy All Humans.

 

Laura Fryer
Microsoft Game Studios

As executive producer for Microsoft Games Studios, Laura is responsible for shipping great games for the Xbox and Windows platforms. Her most recent titles are Gears of War and Zoo Tycoon.

An industry veteran, Laura was one of the first members of Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) in 1995. As a producer, she shipped several games, including the classic Crimson Skies, and Fighter Ace, Microsoft's first massively multiplayer game. She also conceived and produced Microsoft's first release of Zone.com.

Prior to her return to MGS in 2004, Laura was the director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, and a founding member of the Xbox project, which she joined in May 2000. During her tenure, she cultivated worldwide Xbox Developer Support, created the Xbox Advisory Board, and ran Xbox game developer events around the globe.

Named one of The Hollywood Reporter's "Top 12 Most Influential Women in Gaming" and one of Next Generation's "Game Industry's 100 Most Influential Women", Laura is dedicated to fostering diversity in the games industry.

An avid gamer, Laura enjoys taking "video game vacations" to play video games in marathon all-day sessions. Her other hobbies include reading, gardening, juggling, and playing with her dog Jazz.

 

Chris Hecker
Technology Fellow, Maxis/Electronic Arts

Chris focuses on solving hard game design and technical problems found at the intersection of gameplay, aesthetics, and engineering. He is an outspoken advocate for pushing the current boundaries of design and interactivity, in the hope that games will achieve their full potential as an art and entertainment form. To this end he helps organize the yearly Indie Game Jam and the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and his recent work at Maxis has centered around using advanced proceduralism to enhance player creativity and agency. Chris has been on the advisory board for the Game Developers Conference for many years and is a regular speaker at the GDC, Siggraph, and other conferences. A frequent contributor to Game Developer magazine, Chris was the technical columnist for the magazine for two years and the editor-at-large for three. Before joining Maxis he was an indie game developer for 8 years with his company definition six, inc. He is also on the editorial board of the computer graphics research publication, The Journal of Graphics Tools.

 

Noel Llopis
Power of Two Games

Noel is following his lifelong dream of being an indie game developer and co-founded Power of Two Games. He is hoping to prove that even today is still possible to create great games with tiny teams and lots of enthusiasm. He now gets to wear every hat imaginable, from code monkey, game designer, to company director and everything in between. He regularly contributes articles to Game Developer Magazine and the Game Programming Gems series, and he is the author of the book C++ for Game Programmers. Some of his past titles include The Bourne Conspiracy, Darkwatch, and the Mechassault series. He earned an M.S. in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

 

Cyrus Lum
Digital Investments

Cyrus Lum serves as Chief Creative Officer for Digital Investments, a multi-national organization focused on accelerating the growth of developers, publishers, educational institutions and governments in their pursuit of achieving a strong game industry. He is responsible for creative and strategic vision for DI and its partner companies. Cyrus has over 20 years of experience in game production, development and management roles with both publishing and independent development companies, and was most recently Studio Art Director (Oct 2004 - Feb 2008) of Midway Studios-Austin, where he helped to grow the company from 50 to over 150 employees. Cyrus is also an advisory board member for the annual industry Game Developer's Conference (GDC) and has served on the board for 10 over years. Prior to Midway, he was Co-Founder and Art Director of Inevitable Entertainment Inc, an independent game developer responsible for such titles as The Hobbit, Area51, Tribes2 PS2, and Defender – GameCube. In 2004 Midway Games acquired Inevitable, which became Midway Studios - Austin. In the 1990's, Cyrus was the Vice President of Digital Productions at Acclaim Entertainment where he coordinated and provided strategic direction to the advanced computer graphic art efforts of Acclaim Studios - Austin, Salt Lake Teeside (UK), London and the Acclaim Studios Cinematic and Motion Capture Group. Prior to Acclaim, Cyrus joined Crystal Dynamics where he founded the art department and became the art director for such titles as Crash 'n Burn, Total Eclipse and The Horde. Currently, he also serves as the Chief Technical Officer of UpstyleDesigns (a software development company), and Founding Director of Train Artisan Inc, a software development and media production company.

 

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, where he currently serves as worldwide CTO. Julien is fond of hardware architectures, gaming technologies and algorithms; he loves designing engine features and production pipelines.

 

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; 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 the 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.

 

David Perry
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 video game programming books in his native Northern Ireland. Since then, David has developed or programmed over 100 games across 29 video game platforms. All told, David's games (including #1 Hits like The Terminator, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , Disney's Aladdin & "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

 

Bob Rafei
Naughty Dog

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 Strikes 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.

 

Dave Ranyard
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

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 & 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.

 

Tommy Tallarico
Tommy Tallarico Studios

Tommy is a veritable video game industry icon. As one of the most successful video game composers in history, he has helped revolutionize the gaming world, creating unique audio landscapes that enhance the video gaming experience. An accomplished musician, Tommy has been writing music for video games 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 video game soundtrack worldwide and has released seven video game soundtrack albums since. In 2002, Tommy co-created the critically acclaimed Video Games Live which features music from the greatest video games performed by top orchestras and choirs around the world combined with synchronized video footage, lasers, lights, special effects, interactivity and live action to create an explosive and unique one-of-a-kind entertainment experience. Tommy is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), which is a non-profit organization educating and heightening the awareness of audio for the interactive world. With over 1,200 members representing over 30 countries since its inception in 2002, G.A.N.G. has quickly become known as one of the strongest and best examples of helping the game industry community. Tommy is an advisory board member for the Game Developers Conference, a governor for the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS/GRAMMY's), a spokesperson for the Entertainment Consumers Association, a proud member of the International Game Developers Association and a nominating peer panel leader for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. His popular website www.tallarico.com has received over 75 million hits by more than 3 million unique users.

 

Alan Yu
ngmoco:)

Alan Yu is vice president, artist & repertoire and a founder of ngmoco. As the company's liaison to the creative community, his responsibilities include evaluating and signing game concepts and ensuring ngmoco's collaboration with the world's best and most innovative game makers.

In 2004, Alan joined Neil Young at Electronic Arts. He was the director of creative affairs for EA Blueprint, a creative management group focused on developing and producing new properties across various media in a coordinated and connected fashion. Prior to Blueprint, he was director of artist & repertoire at EA Los Angeles and Maxis.

He worked for the Game Developers Conference from 1995 to 2004. He was executive producer and director the last five years of his tenure.

Alan is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

He's obsessed with and always looking for the next great idea.

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Visual Arts Advisory Board

Steve Reid
Red Storm Entertainment

Steve is the executive vice president/managing director for Red Storm Entertainment, a division of Ubisoft Entertainment. He is one of the original founders of Red Storm (1996), the studio known for creating the Tom Clancy line of games and helping to establish the genre of squad-based tactical shooters. After a successful run as an independent developer/publisher, Red Storm was acquired by Ubisoft (2000). The studio's most recent work is the multiplayer gameplay for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for Xbox 360. Before games, Steve received a master's of fine arts degree from East Carolina University. He has taught a variety of college art disciplines and now collaborates with local and national colleges as an advisor on digital art curriculum. Steve has participated as a moderator, a panelist and as a guest speaker at the Game Developer Conference, E3 and other industry events.

 

Steve Theodore
Bungie

Steve fell in love with computer animation in the Dark Ages, in more ways than one. He dropped out of a Ph.D. program in ancient history to start rendering scenes by typing text commands into the Brown University mainframe. Steve went pro in the early '90's, doing animations for a variety of commercial and television projects. His first game job was building mechs and environments for Mechcommander starting in 1995. He soon joined Valve, where he worked on Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike. After a stint as the artist-in-residence at Rad Game Tools, he helped Zipper Interactive make the leap to NextGen as their technical art manager. In 2006, he helped to found Seattle-based studio Giant Bite. He's currently content-side technical director at Bungie. Steve writes the Pixel Pusher art column for Game Developer Magazine and appears frequently at GDC and other games industry events.

 

Ru Weerasuriya
Ready At Dawn Studios

Ru is the art & creative director and co-founder of Ready at Dawn Studios. 2006 saw the release of their first game, Daxter, to critical and commercial acclaim, earning them a nomination for the BAFTA awards. Formerly a senior artist with Blizzard Entertainment, Ru initially worked on Starcraft: Brood War and then contributed to the blockbuster Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, his distinctive visual style influencing the direction of both game and cinematic art. Ru also led the cinematic art direction and production design for Starcraft: Ghost and World of Warcraft. As concept, storyboard and matte artist, he has helped the Blizzard Film Department win numerous awards and accolades over the years. His work has been published in several books and magazines, including The Art of Warcraft, The Art of World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons books and Monster Manuals.

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Audio Advisory Board

Brian Schmidt
Bio to be made available soon.

 

 

Chance Thomas
HUGEsound.com

Chance is the audio director and principal composer at HUGEsound.com. Notable credits include Lord of the Rings Online, King Kong, and the upcoming games Marvel Universe and Stargate Worlds. Significant awards include OSCAR, EMMY, GANG, TELLY, Best Original Theme and Music of the Year. Chance's efforts brought game music into the GRAMMY Awards and helped found the Game Audio Network Guild. He is a former chair of the Music and Sound Peer Committees for AIAS, and currently serves as GANG secretary.

 

Kenneth Young
Media Molecule

Kenny is from Edinburgh, Scotland, and lives near London working as an audio designer at Media Molecule, where he is solely responsible for the audio experience in the highly anticipated PlayStation 3 title Littlebigplanet. Before joining Media Molecule Kenny worked as a sound designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's London Studio where he worked on over a dozen titles including 24: The Game, Eyetoy: Kinetic, Fired Up, Gangs of London, The Getaway: Black Monday and Heavenly Sword. Prior to this he studied music technology as an undergraduate and went on to gain an M.A., with distinction, in sound design. Kenny is an active member of the game audio community and has spoken at the Develop Conference, GDC Europe, the University of Edinburgh, Leeds College of Music and Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies. In October 2005, Kenny set up www.gamesound.org as a resource for those wishing to learn more about sound for games.

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GDC Advisory Board Emeritus

Doug Church
Electronic Arts Los Angeles

Doug has been in the game industry since 1990, working on a variety of PC titles (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, a bit of Flight Unlimited thrown in) at what became LookingGlass Studios. He left in late 1999 and consulted on a variety of titles, a tiny bit on Ion's Deus Ex and Harmonix's Frequency, some MMP's in Hong Kong. Programmer by training, he focuses on game design and technology, and ways to elegantly blend the two. Doug also worked for Eidos where he was doing a variety of design direction, technology investigation, and management. In May 2005, he joined Electronic Arts Los Angeles as an executive producer. He has been coming to GDC for over 11 years now, and still finds it a pleasing blend of frustration and exhilaration.

 

Mark DeLoura
Independent Consultant

Mark is currently working on a variety of projects and contracts, mostly technical and sometimes "serious". He has previously worked as technical director for Ubisoft North America, developer relations manager for Sony Computer Entertainment America, editor-in-chief of Game Developer Magazine, and lead software engineer at Nintendo of America. He is also the founding editor of the Game Programming Gems series of books, which are big hardback volumes full of programming wisdom from professional game developers. In the past, Mark has also been an arcade game programmer and virtual reality researcher.

 

Julian Eggebrecht
Factor 5

Julian is co-founder and president of Factor 5, a game and technology developer located in Marin County, California, with additional R&D offices in Cologne, Germany.

Factor 5 was founded in Germany in 1989 and moved to California in 1996. Factor 5 was a technology partner in the development of Nintendo's Gamecube and Wii consoles, provider of the MusyX sound tools, partner in the Sony PlayStation 3 Edge toolset group, and has pioneered many technological advancements in the areas of audio and visuals in video games in collaboration with Dolby Labs, THX, and AMD/ATI.

Julian's work includes the classic Turrican line of games, the multi-million selling Star Wars: Rogue Squadron franchise, Indiana Jones, International Superstar Soccer Deluxe, and Contra: The Alien Wars. He served on the board of the IGDA as both board member and treasurer and has been a board member of the Game Developers Conference since 1999. Julian is Factor 5's president & creative director and has recently finished work on the PlayStation 3-exclusive Lair.

 

Rob Huebner
Nihilistic Software

Robert is president and co-founder of Nihilistic Software, a small development team located in Marin County, California. Robert's previous work includes Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 from LucasArts, Descent from Parallax Software, and Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. Nihilistic has been in business over six years and has worked with publishers such as Activision and Blizzard Entertainment on PC and console projects.

Masaya Matsuura
NanaOn-sha

Masaya graduated from Ritsumeikan University with a major in industrial sociology. In April 1983, Masaya formed the band PYS'S (pronounced "Size") with female vocalist. The band pushed the frontiers of computer music. After ten albums and several hit songs, PSY'S disbanded in August 1996. In 1993, Masaya explored new ground by combining music and multimedia with the release of The Seven Colors. It was the first CD-ROM from a Japanese musician and went on to win the Multimedia Grand Prix of 1993. December 1996 saw the release of Parappa the Rapper in Japan. It was like no other game that came before it, and it took Japan by storm. Parappa the Rapper went on to win the 1996 CECA Award, the Japan Software Award, and was named Japan Game of the Year 1997 by the readers of eighteen domestic game magazines. In 1999, Masaya crossed over from rap to hard rock with Um Jammer Lammy, and the game won an SCEI Gold disc after just two months. Masaya's imagination doesn't end with music games. Vib-Ribbon, released in Japan and Europe in 1999, is another game revolution that creates gameplay from the player's own favorite music CD. Parappa the Rapper 2 was released in Japan in 2001 and is now available worldwide. In 2003, Masaya produced and composed sounds for the new Aibo, ERS-7, which was very experimental and exciting work for him. November 2003, Masaya releases Mojibribon for PS2 in Japan. This is a network title that has very unique style of blending rhythm and Japanese calligraphy using speech synthesis technology to convert text into rap sound. October 2004, the music social community web sight "recommuni", in which Masaya is participating for the planning and operation, has started. http://recommuni.jp "recommuni" attracted people's interest for it's innovative system, especially from the music industry which is now changing from a package business to a pay per transaction model. In 2005, released Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop (NintendoDS) and sold more than a million. In 2006, released the sequel version of Tamagotchi Connection.

 

Ichiro Otobe
Chief Strategist
Square Enix Co., Ltd.

Ichiro is chief strategist of Square Enix, a leading interactive entertainment company, known for its video game 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.

 

Paul Steed
Exigent

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. Email: Paul Steed

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