Ed covers video games for Screen Digest. He has completed numerous major studies on the gambling and video games industries for Screen Digest as well as consultancy projects including board level strategic advisory work on online gambling, fantasy sports, skill gaming, mobile gaming, online gaming, games publishing, Asian MMO’s and next generation console software. Ed has spoken at industry conferences and is regularly cited in both consumer and trade coverage of the gambling and games industries.

Mary joined LucasArts in 1988 where she held positions leading both domestic marketing and sales teams until 1999. In 2000, Mary was appointed Vice President of worldwide sales and marketing. In this role, her responsibilities included management of distribution, merchandising, product marketing, advertising, public relations, and technical/customer support. She also oversaw third party OEM sales and marketing alliances.
In 2003, her team won the Effie Award for advertising effectiveness. In 2004, the Hollywood Reporter named her one of the top 10 most influential women in the videogames business, and in 2006 she was honored as one of the games industry’s 100 most influential women by Edge Magazine.

Rogier leads the European Sales & Marketing organisation for Zong in Europe. He is an established sales & marketing professional with a bachelor’s degree from HES Amsterdam School of Business and holds a long track record in Sales & Marketing. He has worked for global players such as United Parcel Services, Air Express International (currently DHL) and Galileo by Travelport, a leading technology provider and global distribution system for the Travel Industry. At Galileo Rogier was responsible for the commercial operations in The Netherlands with the responsibility over a team of 5 individuals and an annual turnover of € 16 million.

Prior to joining Zong, Rogier worked as Sr. Business Development Manager Online Gaming EMEA for world´s premier payment services provider GlobalCollect. In this position Rogier has worked with many leading online game publishers to support them in defining their online payment & monetization strategies.

Yannis has over ten years of experience in the gaming industry, and is one of four founders of Little Chicken Game Company. He provides game designers and programmers with a multitude of graphical styles, and directs the production of all visual materials for Little Chicken's games and related media.

As a graduate with a Masters Degree specialising in Business James joined Kuju in 1995.After a quick career he became head of Kuju’s Surrey studio, responsible for sales, forming strategies and preparing for the next generation, as well as overseeing Dark Messiah of Might and Magic multiplayer and Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics. He then “span-off” a new studio, “doublesix”, whilst delivering the critically acclaimed and award winning Geometry Wars: Galaxies. doublesix has gone on to create several games in the digital distribution space, such as South Park, Top Gun and Iron Man as well as the studios major success Burn Zombie Burn. James is now leading doublesix into the bold and exciting new world of self-published digital distribution, creating “small” and fun games more like the way they used to be made.

Taking advantage of the social revolution is top of mind in the gaming world. In fact, every casual-gaming company is trying to figure out how to capitalize on social gaming. Is the secret working with Facebook, or perhaps looking for alternatives that will still enable them to connect and engage with their players. At the end of the day everyone is asking how can this new social model become profitable?

Oscar Diele of Spil Games has the answers to these questions, and will share lessons learned from entering the social-gaming game and will offer valuable insight for companies looking to adapt to the demands of an increasingly social market.

Tom DuBois is Executive Producer at OnLive, the world’s first cloud gaming service, where he manages the teams responsible for games on the service, including publisher/dev relations, certification, and merchandising.

At EA, he was lead producer for online services on all game platforms, globally, providing e-commerce, in-game play, and community middleware to EA’s game studios. Prior to that, he led online merchandising teams Trymedia.

Tom has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon and an MBA from Georgetown. He lives with his wife, two children, a dog, a frog, and tank full of fish in Palo Alto, CA and is currently playing Black Ops and Top Bar (Facebook).

Read more about his session here.

Entrepreneur since 1996, managing start-ups and maturing online companies.

Founder and investor of several established web and mobile service and technology companies in The Netherlands.

Passionate about online technology with a social context - connected games, mobile applications, multimedia content, personalisation, knowledge management and networked consumer electronics.

From his position on the bridge of one of gaming's most influential companies, Nicholas Francis is in a position to take a unique view of the industry. In this talk, he will reflect over the larger trends happening in game development and what that means for developers. His talk will cover the practical implications of appliance-inspired design, the use of analytics (why developers should use it, and why they're largely not), and touch on gamification. He will also cover the rise of indies, new distribution trends, how those two fit together and how Unity is working to make small developers be more successful.

Read more about his session here.

Think of the most popular mobile games and probably angry birds will spring to mind. Joining the Festival of Games from Finish developer Rovio is Julien Fourgeaud. In this session Julien will focus on the technology behind Angry Birds and Rovio's latest venture the "Bad Piggy Bank". Bad Piggy Bank is the payment method introduced by Rovio which promises to completely smoothen the Android and all other "relevant platforms" payment process.

In his presentation, Vincent will talk about his experiences with the start-up of his own game development company ISOTX. The audience will be taken through the company history, from early formation to its current state. Along the way, Vincent will demonstrate the problems he encountered in each stage. He will talk about how he found investors, managed to form a good development team and how he handled outsourcing. He will then discuss in detail the challenges of coordinating international game production projects. A list of lessons learned will be presented in conclusion.

Online Games, moving the industry forward

Since the early, 8-bit arcade days, the games industry has continued to evolve at lightning speed. Unlike the single-player, low-fidelity experience of decades past. Which were widely successful in their time, todayís games are now online, interactive, dynamic, and customizable. Online gaming companies are generating strong ROI and  are growing exponentially. With all the ìbreakthroughî innovations in social platforms, online games, and with smartphones, it is hard to overlook that they will merge into something new very soon. This new advancement will allow users to navigate across multiple alternate realities. In addition to hardcore gamers, online games now also appeal to a wide range of society - women, academics, and seniors. These games offer entertainment and boost brain power, encourage physical activity, and improve eye-hand coordination.

The evolution of games will continue to deliver exciting new experiences. In the not too distant future, for example,, Sensors tracking the userís movements or brain activity will translate into virtual avatar reaction. Games are revolutionary because they connect people all over the world anytime, and everywhere. Is it so farfetched to assume that people will no longer be divided by nationalities, religious thoughts or the color of their skin through online games that so to speak they will bring peace to the world?

Jurie Horneman has been making games for over 20 years, working as a programmer, game designer and producer. He started off as a hobby programmer in the Netherlands and is now the Creative Director and co-founder of Mi'pu'mi Games in Vienna, Austria. A big part of his job is figuring out how to deal with the new opportunities in the games industry. He has made games on platforms ranging from the Atari ST to the PlayStation, Nintendo DS, PC and now Macromedia Flash. He enjoys learning new things every day.

The games industry has been changing rapidly, and is showing no signs of slowing down. People are playing games in new places, on new devices, and paying for them in new ways. At the same time, the games industry is in the middle of a massive disruption caused by the rise of online platforms and digital distribution. Barriers to entry are dropping, established companies are trying to make sense of the changing landscape while newcomers come in and dominate markets that didn't exist only a few years ago.
What are the implications of these rapid changes? What, from the point of view of a designer and developer, has really changed, and what has stayed the same? Find out in this session.

Stacey Horricks supplies the Business Development in Video Games, Film & Television at MassiveMusic. WIth over eight years of Industry Experience, Stacey has been credited on a broad range of productions. Supplying music and audio for video games, film, television, interactive media and commercials. Because of Stacey’s deep industry knowledge the Festival of Games has approached her for a specialised audio panel.

Jan Willem Huisman is founder and CEO of IJsfontein Interactive Media. The forty employees of IJsfontein develop serious games, websites & applications, interactive exhibits and online campaigns with a common aim being to change the attitude and behavior of a target group.

IJsfontein's philosophy ‘Playful solutions, serious communication’ is successfully applied in three different ways: -Serious gaming -Interactive communication on location (public domain) -Interactive communication targeted at children and teens, utilizing co-creation. Over the years IJsfontein worked with companies and organizations such as: Rijksmuseum, Albert Heijn, NTR and ABN AMRO. IJsfontein received awards and nominations including the SpinAwards, Cinekid New Media Award, Gouden @penstaart, Bafta Award, Prix Jeunesse and Japan prize.

Jan-Lieuwe Koopmans is a veteran programmer including eleven years in the gamesindustry with Engine Software. His demo-scene background gave him huge insight, creativity and determination in the field of technology programming which has often led to remarkable results during his career in video games. As Engine’s Senior programmer Jan-Lieuwe has often dazzled the team with his programs including the much licensed Pulse Sound System on Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, the Tilt-control without a tilt-sensor tech he wrote for the Nintendo DSi, and the karaoke-engine with which we launched our Just SING! series of games (now spanning seven titles). Whenever a new platform is launched, Jan-Lieuwe is the first programmer to head up the programming of new technology, including at this point: the Nintendo 3DS.

Alexander Kornelsen made his first steps in the gaming industry in 2008 when he worked as a support manager at the games publisher XS Software. After a short while he got promoted to country manager of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. During this time he acquired important partners such as SevenOne Intermedia or MVG Media. Afterwards he dedicated himself to Jayanda, a full service consulting agency, in order to support promising online games with their internationalization.

While looking for refined possibilities of monetarization, Alexander Kornelsen discovered the opportunities of product placement and joined the team at Branded Entertainment in order to contribute to the InsertBrands platform as a Business Development Executive. Since October 2010 Alexander is in charge of European and Russian accounts at OnLegends, one of the world's leading games licensing companies.

In his session Alexander will share strategies for succesfully publishing your games in the Latin American market.

Alexey Kostarev is Co-Founder and General Producer of i-Jet Media which is a world leading social games publisher and distribution network. He was named to five finalists of the Mashable Awards in the category “Entrepreneur of the Year” following the results of 2010 and awarded with the Man of the Year in IT prize established by a popular Russian business journal, Delovoi Kvartal.

In 2005, Alexey Kostarev co-founded i-Jet Media. In 2007, i-Jet Media published its first game projects on Rambler.ru. In April 2009, i-Jet Media launched Happy Harvest (Happy Farmer) which exploded the Russian Internet: the game succeeded to collect about 10 million unique active users, and earned USD $20 million during less than one year. This record of the Runet is still unbroken. Happy Farmer was also honoured with the Google Trend prize as the best game of 2009.

Nowadays, over 60 million users of 30 social networks all over the world play 70 applications published by i-Jet Media, and it continues developing European, Asian and American markets, as well as mobile social games service.

Dick Krikke is projectmanager for Serious Gaming at ABN AMRO where his experience and passion for training and developing people is used to identify a need for, and develop meaningful games. Dick gained valuable experience performing customer responsibility managementfunctions within the bank. ABN AMRO employees practice and perfect their customer relation skills in a safe environment with serious games by IJsfontein. It is a virtual training field. The goal is not only to improve at playing the game, but to apply the knowledge in real life situations with customers as well.

Albert sold his first internet company, the MyDesktop Network while in his teens to JupiterMedia (JUPM) for 7 digits in cash. Most recently he was the founder/CEO of BubbleShare, a photo-sharing company sold to Kaboose/Disney in 2007. He is now hard at work on Kontagent, his 5th internet startup.

A respected veteran of the online gaming industry, Thomas Lee is the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and head of U.S. operations for MMO Traffic, a division of MMO Life, the world’s leading international massively multi-player online game (MMO) marketing company. As CRO, he is responsible for MMO Traffic’s U.S. expansion, spearheading business development efforts, expanding operations, overseeing partner relations and bringing new developers on board. He also focuses on building relations with international companies, specifically those based in Asia.

A video game executive and entrepreneur with a deep understanding of both development and publishing, Thomas brings with him more than 15 years of game industry experience with some of the world’s most distinguished publishers, including Origin/EA, Square Enix, and most recently Gamepot (USA) Inc. As Gamepot’s Senior Director of Business and Marketing, he spearheaded efforts making gamepotusa.com a top free-to-play game portal in North America.

Prior to Gamepot (USA) Inc., Thomas served as head of business development at Nexon America, where he contributed to the explosive growth of the free-to-play online games market in the U.S., managing relations with major retailers including Target, 7-Eleven, Rite Aid, Best Buy and Wal-Mart to drive the adoption and sales of Nexon Prepaid Cards. He is also a founding member of the International Game Developers Association, Korea Chapter, and a consultant at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Thomas holds a Masters in Computer Animation from William Paterson University, New Jersey.

Sylvain Liège is a Director, co-founder and principle consultant at Liemur. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Nantes University and is President of the Board of Trustees for IS2T in France (who specialise in embedded technologies). Sylvain is an expert on the “human dynamics” that exist within software development projects, and played a pivotal role in the creation of the Project Cycle OptimisationTM model. He has consulted across business sectors such as energy, finance and software vendors and for the past year has been concentrating on the “human dynamics” that exist between computer games studios and publishers in the UK.

With experience from previous businesses, and MSc in Media Technology from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Patrick Liu entered the games industry with a breath of fresh air and thinking out of the box. He's since then had the opportunity and privilege to work with great studios and people, having worked at Starbreeze on The Darkness and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. And then at DICE with Battlefield: Bad Company amongst other projects, spearheaded the record breaking Battlefield 1943 and recently Medal of Honor.

Returning to the Festival of Games is Eidos life president Ian Livingstone. Together with Alex Hope, Ian Livingstone was asked by British Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative industrys Ed Vaizey MP to research the skillset needed by todays students to enter the games industry. What followed is a list of sweeping changes considered necessary for the games industry to allow growth and for a country as a whole to develop a healthy industry. At the Fesitival of Games, Ian Livingstone will be presenting his findings and discuss necessary change for a better future of the industry.

Starting of the Festival of Games this year is Al Lowe, the creator of the legendary game “Leisure Suit Larry”. The Sierra Entertainment designer started his career as early as 1982 and worked on titles such as ‘Kings Quest’, ‘Police Quest’ and was one of the fathers of ‘the Sierra Network’ an early online multiplayer service.
In 1987, Al Lowe gave birth to the most notorious, single-minded game character there is: Larry Laffer. A born loser constantly on the look-out for women, Larry instantly conquered the hearts of gamers everywhere. Besides being daringly explicit for its time, “Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards” was also full of humour. These two major innovations--being the first adult graphic adventure and the first comedy game--made LSL 1 a classic and a best-seller.

Super Crate Box? You mean the game that is nominated for nearly every award in the last couple of months? Yes, that game!

First presented at Dutch Game Garden's Indigo and later on at Indigo Replay during the Festival of Games 2010, the studio Vlambeer is now taking over the indie world. Vlambeer is a Dutch independent game studio made up of Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman, bringing back arcade games since 1968. They're the sponsor of the all new WINNITRON NL indie arcade cabinet at the Dutch Game Garden and they will give an amazing presentation during the upcoming Festival of Games.

More info about their session to follow.

Will is Creative Director at the award-winning boutique games and entertainment studio Mobile Pie. Based in the heart of Bristol the Pie create delicious own IP and work their magic on tasty licenses, with a client and partner list that includes the BBC, Orange and Hewlett-Packard and experience on every mobile platform from J2ME to iOS.

Will has worked in traditional AAA publishing at SEGA Europe, holds a BA (Hons) in Computer Games Design and in December was named one of Develop Magazine’s 30 Under 30 (30 people in the industry under 30 to watch).

Jurian van der Meer heads up Endemol newly launched division specialising in online gaming. Endemol Games focuses on licensing and monetising both Endemol and third party entertainment properties in the gaming space. Jurian also plays a key role in developing international business through the global operation arm Endemol Worldwide Brands (EWB) in distributing gaming properties internationally.

In his session, Jurian will give the audience a better understanding of the growth in partnerships between TV and gaming companies. As employee of the largest independent TV production company in the world, Van der Meer knows the ins- and outs of taking TV shows into online games and TV gaming. He will address the business models belonging to the convergence of TV and games.

Read more about his session here.

In this session, mobile development expert, Eyal Rabinovich, explains how cross platform development allows PC game developers that were previously out of the loop to enter new platforms ranging from mobile to even TVs.He explains how having to port games to platforms with different OSs, displays, interfaces, memory configurations, and other device-specific characteristics is just not in the best interest of anyone – developers, service providers, or end-consumer game players. Eyal will review the benefits and challenges of cross platform development, (spiced up with some real life war stories), as well as touch on time and resource management, accessing consumer markets, and the important concept of platform agnostic development. During the lecture, he will demonstrate how indie developers have managed to generate more revenue from their games using cross platform development and how it is changing the face of the industry as we know it.

Joost Rietveld is iSEN's Business Development Director currently focusing on positioning of the network, choice of strategic partners and organizational direction. As a PhD candidate in strategy and digital games at the London Cass Business School, Joost's approach can be characterized as grounded and entrepreneurial at the same time. At FoG2011, Joost will speak about iSEN's vision in terms of positioning a highly ambitious social media product in a dynamic market dominated by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. iSEN's innovative organization behaviour is bound to make the difference!

Hugo Smits is a true self-taught game developer, after receiving his first Nintendo Gameboy for his swimming-certificate Hugo instantly fell in love with Nintendo Handhelds. Hugo started working in the games industry at the age of 15 and has made games for Gameboy classic, Color and Advance. Now working in his own studio “Goodbye Galaxy Games” Hugo works on Nintendo DS titles. Goodbye Galaxy Games recently won a Dutch Game Award for Best Mobile/Handheld Game with the title “Flipper”.

As technology expert, Scott Steinberg will discuss the effects of the video game industry being turned inside out as users migrate online and embrace new platforms from the iPhone to Facebook. Business models are evolving from €50 console games to free-to-play games where gamers play for free and pay as they go for virtual goods such as better weapons.

The answer on how to survive the complete and utter transformation of a business that once was dominated by packaged goods to a new paradigm ruled by downloadable, online, social, community-driven and service-based offerings can be found in Scott's session.

Read more about his session here.

Kalydo is the technology which transforms Hi-end videogames to the browser. Going through many different projects Kalydo discovered that having your 'AAA' MMO directly playable on facebook can deliver some unexpected results. Joining the Festival of Games is Kalydo's founder Doki Tops. In his session Doki will present the lessons learned from the first 3d facebook MMO "Godswar" and to discuss the challenges game designers face when publishing high-end games in the browser.

InnoGames is a developer and publisher of online games. In our company, community management, development and system administration seamlessly work together. This, combined with the close contact to the players, creates a strong foundation that promotes the continued improvement of our games by instituting evolving concepts.

Our goal is to offer our players games that provide both long-lasting entertainment and continued satisfaction. We achieve this through our dedication to development, permanent system monitoring and excellent support done by a large and active team of moderators.

All of our online games are free to play without restrictions and time limits. Players have the option to purchase premium accounts that offer additional advantages in the games. We strive to make sure that all players, regardless of standard or premium account, have the opportunity to experience optimal gaming gratification.

The potential of audio and specifically music is far from being exhausted, even though nearly everyone knows that there is a huge suggestive power in interactive and intelligent audio strategies. In his lecture Cornelius will show how even older games like “Monkey Island 2” were using interactive soundtracks (iMUSE-engine) to enhance the gameplay.

The presentation will deal with common problems concerning linear music on the one hand and the interactive medium on the other. A movie soundtrack is a linear composition. The listening of game music is a linear process too. The difference between game and movie soundtracks is the influence of the players actions in the course of a game. A game can never be replayed the same way. Each player has his own tempo and his intention can hardly be foreseen. To intensify the immersion and the long term incentive of the player, music has to adapt specifically to each game situation.

Dan Winters is an industry veteran of over 19 years, with stints at Activision, Disney Interactive, and Electronic Arts. After getting his start at Activision in 1993, working on various titles including Mechwarrior 2, he spent 10 years at Disney Interactive where he eventually became Vice President of Product Development. Under Dan’s leadership, Disney Interactive contributed to or co-released over 50 games including; Kingdom Hearts, Tarzan, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, Tron, and many more. At Electronic Arts, he worked as Executive Producer of Medal of Honor: European Assault.

Before entering into the world of Video Games, Dan spent 4 years playing professional baseball for the Oakland A’s, San Francisco Giants and New York Mets. He also spent 6 years as an actor with appearances on day time TV, commercials and various other TV shows.

Read more about his session here.

Loes Wormmeester is occupied with making radio and television programs for more than 30 years. Her focus has mostly been programs for children. She tried to make programs that transmit a message of importance : things and thoughts you want to share with a new generation. Her programs have won many awards including the Prix Jeunesse (Munich), the Golden Dragon (Beijing), several Eureka Awards and several Cinekid Awards (Amsterdam) She is currently working as Editor in Chief for children’s programs for NTR Public Television in the Netherlands, producing a daily program called ‘Het Klokhuis’ (The Apple’s Core.

As Chief Executive Officer of NeuroSky, Inc., Stanley Yang is the visionary behind the bio-sensor company that has quickly become the global leader in mass market Brain-Computer Interface technology. NeuroSky has developed a revolutionary non-invasive neural communication sensor that converts brainwaves and other bio-signals into digital electronic signals. This “ThinkGear” technology can control electronic devices, enable machines to adept to people, and further enhance education and research on creative applications powered by the brain. NeuroSky has forged successful partnerships with a broad range of companies from Fortune 500 industry leaders to innovative independent developers. Furthermore, NeuroSky leverages collaboration with a number of top domestic and international academic institutions to move technology out of the lab and into the marketplace.

InnoGames is a developer and publisher of online games. In our company, community management, development and system administration seamlessly work together. This, combined with the close contact to the players, creates a strong foundation that promotes the continued improvement of our games by instituting evolving concepts.

Our goal is to offer our players games that provide both long-lasting entertainment and continued satisfaction. We achieve this through our dedication to development, permanent system monitoring and excellent support done by a large and active team of moderators.

All of our online games are free to play without restrictions and time limits. Players have the option to purchase premium accounts that offer additional advantages in the games. We strive to make sure that all players, regardless of standard or premium account, have the opportunity to experience optimal gaming gratification.

Yuval joined G2S in 2007 with years of experience in senior operational and strategic positions. Prior to joining G2S, he gained recognition as the Operation Manager at Formula, an international software company and prior to that, he served as Business and Control manager at various companies - ECTEL, MAFIL and Cellcom LTD, where he headed both national and international operations. Yuval holds a MA degree in Law, and a BA degree in Economics and Business, both from Bar Ilan University.

What do people think when landing on a payment page? What criteria must be taken into consideration in order to improve the conversion ratio? These are some of the questions that will be covered during the lecture. In addition, case studies will be shown that highlight the direct correlation between the different optimization methods used and the results that they bring. Lastly, an overall picture will be given of how a good monetization strategy can lead to a significant boost of sales.