GDC China 2007 Speakers

Laurent M. Abecassis
Founder, Di-O-Matic

Laurent has been working with 3ds Max since 3D Studio R3 under DOS on various character projects, including videogames, TV series, movie visual effects, motion capture Performances, etc. He has worked with many major production studios such as Microids, Fly Studio, Production Pascal Blais ( the Oscar-2000 winning company ) and Digital Dimension. In 2000 Laurent founded Di-O-Matic, a company that develops character animation plug-ins and custom plug-ins for 3ds Max as well as interactive training CDs for Autodesk Media and Entertainment animation product line. Since 2003, Laurent has been working on many high-end visual effects projects like Racing Stripes, Exorcist: The Beginning, and TV series like Alias and Lost. His work on the acclaimed TV series Lost recently won a prestigious Emmy Award for Outstanding Visual Effects.

Kim Daniel Arthur
CTO, Asia-Pacific, Glu Mobile

Kim Daniel Arthur has been a member of Glu’s global team for more than five years. He has headed up Glu's London-based studio and is now managing the newly established development team in Beijing. During his years with the company, Kim has worked on some of Glu's most recognized titles including Ancient Empires II, Brain Genius, Project Gotham Racing Mobile and Stranded.

As a key player in shaping Glu's internal and external development process Kim has a unique insight into the product development process of a global publisher and developer of mobile games.

Prior to joining Glu, Kim was creative director at iTet in Norway, where he developed online entertainment. Kim has a great passion for building the teams and processes necessary to produce high quality product.

Norbert Chang
Vice President and General Manager, Mobile - China, Walt Disney Internet Group

Norbert Chang joined the Walt Disney Internet Group as vice president and general manager – Mobile in China in 2007. He is responsible for WDIG’s mobile content business in China, including Disney-branded mobile entertainment and embedded content. Chang joined WDIG after Enorbus, the company he founded in 2000, was acquired by the Walt Disney Company in early 2007. An early mover in the Chinese wireless space, Chang grew Enorbus to become a top mobile developer of Content for many of the World’s largest brands.

Chang earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Information Systems form New York University. He has also studied at Beijing Normal University and Central University for Nationalities in Beijing. Chang is based in Beijing.

Jason Chein
Director of Asia Studio Development, Electronic Arts

Jason began his industry career in 1992 in pursuit of one dream - make fun games. Over the years he has played the role of game designer, development director, producer and studio manager for companies such as Electronic Arts and Microsoft. In April of 2006, Jason moved to Shanghai to build a studio for EA. He currently manages a team of 100+ developers and is responsible for overall studio development, strategies and execution.

Shigeru Chigusa
President, Tose Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

Shigeru has been in the entertainment and technology industry for more than 20 years. From major theme park resorts to PC online games, Shigeru has been on both the business side as well as the creative side. Now he is the president of Tose Software (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., one of the Chinese subsidiaries of Tose Co., Ltd, the world’s largest and one of the most successful outsourcing (work-for-hire) game development companies. Tose’s customer list includes more than a dozen global AAA game companies. Shigeru has been playing a pivotal role in turning Tose China from a Console-and-Japanese game project company to international business operation force. Prior to Tose, Shigeru has worked at companies such as Avid Technology, Tokyo Disneyland (Oriental Land Co.), Synergy Interactive, and Digital Age Artists Agency.

Kristine Coco
Producer, Midway Studios

Kristine is a producer at Midway, where she heads up the Central Outsourcing Group. She is responsible for finding vendors, and maintaining internal best practices for next-gen projects utilizing outsourcing. She works with vendors in the US, China, Vietnam, and Ukraine. Prior to joining Midway, Kristine worked at Ion Storm where she was an associate producer on Thief: Deadly Shadows.

David Coleman
CG Supervisor, Electronic Arts Canada

David Coleman is a CG Supervisor at Electronic Arts Canada, working in a character art department which creates next-generation character art assets for various Electronic Arts videogame productions. David is currently responsible for the art authoring tools and workflows for a large team of character artists, and specializes in tools for creating character likeness, facial animation and rigging. David has been with Electronic Arts since 1996, working on various teams including motion capture and art tools groups, and he has worked on over 30 video games. David also taught a motion capture class for 3+ years at the Art Institute of Vancouver.

Kjartan Pierre Emilsson
Managing Director, CCP China

Dr. Kjartan Pierre Emilsson has been managing director of CCP Asia since March 2006, but was previously lead game designer at CCP since 2001, where he led the design as well as taking part in the programming of the massively multiplayer title EVE Online, successfully launched in 2003. Prior to this he was CTO for OZ.COM, an Internet communication and messaging company, after having worked both in physics research and Internet communication technology at the Institute Non-Lineaire De Nice – Sophia Antipolis, the Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Arizona and the Science Institute of the University of Iceland. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Mathematical Physics from the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis, specializing in dynamical systems and pattern formation.

Susan Gold
Chairperson, IGDA Education SIG/Academic Coordinator, GarageGames

Susan is chair of the IGDA Education SIG and recently joined game technology provider GarageGames as academic coordinator. Susan's work with the SIG has created many new tools for instructors in the games genre, and she brings a wealth of academic experience and knowledge to the GarageGames team. Her current focus at GarageGames is to expand the curricular offerings related to the Torque Technologies suite of game engines and to increase the usability of Torque in the classroom. Susan is an artist, teacher, and activist with a specialization in digital art, new media and videogames. Her artwork and writing have been featured in numerous galleries/museums. As an educator, Susan has helped shape a niche program in Entertainment Technology. Prof. Gold also sits on the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Curriculum Committee for Computer Graphics and the IEEE WG16.3 Committee on Theoretical Foundation of Entertainment Computing.

James Gwertzman
Vice President, Asia/Pacific, PopCap Games, Inc.

James Gwertzman leads PopCap Games’ operations throughout the Asia Pacific region, a key market for PopCap as it expands its leadership role in producing hit casual games beyond the United States.
Prior to his current role, James was director of business development for PopCap in the United States where he was responsible for identifying and capturing new business opportunities for PopCap as well as managing relationships with PopCap’s key partners. James joined PopCap Games in 2005 when it acquired Sprout Games, the casual game studio he co-founded and managed, and creator of best selling games such as Feeding Frenzy and Pizza Frenzy. James has also co-founded the console game developer Escape Factory. Previously he worked at Microsoft in a variety of roles, including director of online marketing for Microsoft Asia, based out of Tokyo. James is a member of the IGDA Casual Games SIG Steering Committee, and is a frequent speaker at industry events. James graduated from Harvard with a degree in Computer Science.

Benoît Houle
Principal Project Manager, BioWare Corp.

Benoît Houle, principal project manager and certified scrum master, has over 14 years of experience developing software. He's currently managing the development team of Dragon Age, a next generation role playing game created by the acclaimed studio BioWare. Prior to coming to BioWare, Benoît worked for Intuit and contributed to several flagship products (e.g.: Quicken). Benoît has extensive experience in successfully managing cross-functional project teams and has been working with Scrum and XP since 2005.

Aaron Hsu
Chairman & CEO, XPEC

At XPEC, Aaron began as an investor, taking the role of Chairman, and gradually dedicated himself fully to the company as both the Chairman and CEO. He has successfully led XPEC to collaborate with industry leaders such as NAMCOBANDAI Games, Activision, and SEGA, and completed development projects on Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, PS3, PSP, NDS, Wii, and PC online platforms. XPEC’s recent products released include Hello Kitty – Roller Rescue (2005), which covers 8 languages, across PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and PC platforms (2005); Spectral Force 3, the first Japanese style game on Xbox 360 developed by Chinese; Bounty Hounds (2006), an action RPG for PSP; and Equal Card (2006), an educational card game for NDS.

Edward Hsu
Business Manager, PlayNew & HearNew, China Area, Multimedia Business Group, Nokia

Edward Hsu has 15 years of solid experience in Gaming industry especially in Asia. He has been playing a leading role in a number of pioneer and innovative Gaming projects that were successfully delivered in Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and the PRC.

Mr. Hsu joined Nokia in 2001 and takes the role of Business Manager, PlayNew & HearNew, of Nokia Multimedia in the China Area since 2005. He brings valuable expertise and experience to the planning and implementation of the complete N-Gage ecosystem in the China Area that includes billing, distribution, and title roadmap.

Andy Huang
Director of Operation - Online Department, International Games System

Andy is the director of operation of the Online Department at IGS. In addition to taking charge of online game operations, he's also passionately involved in the development of games and game platforms. His professional career in game developing and transnational background allow him to balance between practice and idealism when operating and creating games.

Shelby Hubick
Supervising Programmer, Relic Entertainment

Shelby has been a videogame programmer for over 12 years and is currently a senior gameplay/AI programmer at Relic Entertainment in Vancouver, Canada. In his seven years at Relic, Shelby has worked on the Homeworld and Dawn of War series, and most recently the multi-award winning Company of Heroes. Prior to joining Relic, Shelby worked on the first four parts of the Need for Speedseries with Electronic Arts Canada.

Xiaojun Hui
Product Manager & Game Producer, Netease

From his discovery of MUDs in 1998, he devoted himself into several MUD developments related to Journey to the West. In 2004, he joined the development team of Westward Journey Online II at Netease and began work on a game of numerical design. In 2005, he was promoted to the project manger of Westward Journey Online II and was responsible for the operation and R&D of the product. In the same year, he established the project of Westward Journey 3 as the project manger, responsible for the entire project including the construction of the worldview, numerical, system and project management. In June 2007, the development of The World II began and he was responsible for the construction of the worldview and system as game director. During his years of work in the virtual world, he has continued to research the humanities, societies and economies of the virtual world.

Johnny Jan
Founder, Winking Entertainment

For the past 15 years, Johnny and his team set-up studios in various cities and developed partnerships with over 10 top-tier gaming companies worldwide, and in the process, Winking became the largest outsourcing Chinese game development company with employees from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Europe and the U.S. At the end of this year, total employees will be over 500 people. Currently, the company has received investment from Intel, HSBC, NIF SMBC and other companies in 2006 and 2007. Mr. Johnny Jan, the Chief Development Officer and Chairman of Winking, is still developing many games and also concerned with how to create the best development teams in China.

Chris Jurney
Senior Programmer, Kaos Studios

Chris is a senior programmer at Kaos Studios in New York where he is working on AI for Frontlines: Fuel of War. Prior to Kaos, he worked at Relic Entertainment, where he was responsible for pathfinding and AI on the award-winning RTS, COmpany of Heroes. Before entering the games industry at Relic, Chris spent four years in Atlanta working on video slot machines and military weapon simulators as a programmer and project manager. He graduated from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Computer Science.

Mark Kern
President & CEO, Red 5 Studios

Responsible for Red 5 Studios’ overall production operations, Mark Kern possesses over 14 years of management and development experience for major interactive entertainment companies, including Blizzard Entertainment, Naughty Dog, and Interplay. During his seven years at Blizzard, Mark worked as a producer on Diablo II, Starcraft: Broodwar and Starcraft 64. He also served on design strike teams for nearly all of Blizzard’s major releases. As team lead for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft (WoW), Mark was instrumental in transforming Blizzard from a box-based developer/publisher to a worldwide subscription-based online service. He oversaw all aspects of strategy, development and operations, and was responsible for leading a development team of 65. Mark is recognized for his key role in making WoW the world’s most successful massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) with over 7 million current subscribers worldwide. Mark holds a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and a B.S. in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science from University of Rochester.

Chris Kim
Developer Technology Engineer, NVIDIA

Chris Kim, B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University works now as Developer Technology Engineer at NVIDIA Korea office. Before joining NVIDIA, he worked as a game development consultant for various game companies in Korea ranging from casual online games to MMORPGs using experiences he learned over 10 years in the industry. Other specialty includes writing game development tools. For example, his credit includes Final Fantasy 7, Parasite Eve, Mario 64, and etc, for deploying custom tools in their pipeline.

Gilles Langourieux
Co-Founder, Virtuos

Gilles founded the first Western game studio in China in 1997 as general manager of Ubisoft China. From 1997 to 2000 his team built two studios in Shanghai and Beijing into the largest in China; today, Gameloft and Ubisoft still represent the largest game development workforce in the country. At the head of Ubisoft’s online division (ubi.com from 2000 to 2004), his group was the first foreign group to self-publish and operate an online game in China in 2003. More recently, in 2004, he co-founded Virtuos, the first independent foreign game company in China which is now one of the largest outsourcing studios in the world and is backed by the Chinese IT giant, Lenovo.

Gilles entered the game industry in 1995 as a producer. Educated in France and the UK, Gilles holds a master's degree from HEC, France’s leading Business School.

John Laurence
General Manager and Studio Head, Taiwan, SOGA Interactive

After graduation, John moved to China in the late '90s and worked for Price Waterhouse working as a database systems applications programmer. He eventually took a job in Seattle at Enix, working on localization, marketing, product management, even PR. From there, he moved to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), taking a position as project manager on the EverQuest expansion packs: Planes of Power, Lost Dungeons of Norrath, and Legacy of Ykesha. John wound up moving back to China to take up a general manager position at a new studio in 2004. He's currently working with Stephen Chow on Kung Fu Hustle for SOE.

Gwanwoo Lee
Director of Business Division, Actozsoft

Mr. Lee is currently general manager of domestic and overseas business, services and web development at Actozsoft. Since 2000, when the online games industry first started, he has held many leading online game marketing roles working on a variety of projects such as: general marketing manager for Helbreath at Simentech; Korean and Chinese area marketing promotion director for MMORPG A3 at Actozsoft; business director for portals business and marketing at Sega Network China. This experience also makes him a Chinese market expert.

Mr. Lee has lectured at Sungkyunkwan University, Jeonju University, Jungbu University and many small and medium businesses.

Vili Lehdonvirta
Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

Vili is a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, where his job is to study virtual economies and virtual item trading. He founded the Virtual Economy Research Network and occassionally consults developers on virtual economy issues. He is currently a visiting researcher at Waseda University, Tokyo, and is working on a Ph.D. thesis on real-money trade of virtual property. Before embarking on an academic career, Vili developed casual multiplayer online games at Saunalahti and Jippii Mobile Entertainment. He is an avid speaker and has frequently appeared in mainstream media to explain real-money trade of virtual property to general audiences.

Tom Leonard
Senior Engineer, Valve Software

For the past year Tom has been at Valve as a programmer and "cabal" leader on Half-Life 2 and subsequent releases. His primary responsibilities have been AI systems and NPC design, systems programming, optimization, and leading multithreading development. Prior to that, he co-founded a venture funded non-game company along with several other former game developers, with the specific goal of working in a problem space very amenable to agile development. From 1995 to 2000 Tom worked at Looking Glass Studios, where he was the project director for the Thief 3/Siege project, and was the lead programmer for Thief: The Dark Project, writing the AI and core architecture of the game. Before that, Tom spent seven years working on C++ development tools at Zortech and Symantec. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two kids.

Diana Li
Corporate Vice President, Shanda Networking Co., Ltd.

Ms. Yu Diana Li has served as our Vice President since March 2007. Ms. Li previously was appointed Vice President of SDG (Shanda Game) Division in May 2006, and as Director of both Project Management Center and Game Design Center since February 2005. Before joining Shanda, Ms. Li was a project director at Expedia Inc., responsible for project management and operations for Expedia in Asia Pacific including Australia. From 1999, Ms. Li held management positions in various product groups including Office, Windows Server and XBOX at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington. She has won several Microsoft Best Practice awards. Prior to joining Microsoft, Ms. Li was a manager at Fidelity Investments in Boston. She was instrumental in the creation of an influential Sino-US publication, Harvard China Review, and served as the Chairwoman of the Board in 1998. Ms. Li began her career with Unifi Telecommunication Inc. in Boston in 1995. Ms. Li holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Beijing University and a Master of Science in Applied Statistics and Operations Research from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Jing Li
Project Technology Director, Ubisoft Shanghai

Li Jing has been working in the videogame industry for more than eight years. He started his career in games as a basic artist and then joined Ubisoft as a technical art director. Mr. Li is one of Ubisoft Shanghai's experts on next-gen art and art team pipeline organization. His name has been accredited to Ubisoft Shanghai blockbuster titles such as Ghost Recon 2 (PS2/GC), Ghost Recon 3 (Xbox/PS2), and Splinter Cell 4 (PC). He is currently working on a secret next-gen project.

Yue Li
CTO, Zpmax

Yue Li went to Cambridge to study Computer Science tafter graduating from Tsinghua University. During the studies, Yue focused on the computer security and chose the one-time password authentication technology as his research project, which is the prototype of the commercial PASSPOD system.
Yue founded Zpmax with some friends in 2004. Now, PASSPOD has become one of the best account security solutions in internet industry. We have made many partners in the online game industry the PASSPOD system has been integrated with more than 10 application systems already since 2005.

Jun Cheng Liao
Project Art Director, Ubisoft Shanghai

Liao Jun Cheng joined in Ubisoft ShangHai in 1997. During past decade, he has been working on many products as 3D level Artist and Art Director, currently he is Art Director of an originally creation game -- EndWar Xbox360, and is responsible for scene creation and quality control. Previously he has been working on titles such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Double Agent (Xbox360/PS3), Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow (Xbox), Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell (PS2), Brothers In Arms / ROAD TO HILL 30(PS2), The Sum Of All Fears (PS2), V.I.P (PS2), Rayman2/ The Great Escape (PS2), Rayman1 (PS) etc.

Jun Hao Liao
Art Manager, Epic Games China

Liao Jun Hao currently works at Epic Games China as an art manager who's responsible for art direction, quality control and project management. He has over nine years' experience in creating console games for the Xbox 360, Xbox, PS2, Nintendo 64, PS, and PC in the art field. He has previously worked for Tose, Konami, and Ubisoft, during which he developed many games such as Tom Clancy’s SplinterCell - Double Agent (Xbox360), Tom Clancy’s Ghost
Recon (PS2), Tom Clancy’s SplinterCell - Pandora Tomorrow (Xbox), Tom Clancy’s SplinterCell (PS2), World Soccer 2002 J-League (PS2), World Soccer 2002 (Xbox), Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball (PC Online), GUNBALLINA (PS) , Bioharzd Zero (NGC) , Chocobo Stallion (PS).

Joey Lin
Project Leader, International Games System

1995 HDTV animation: “Yo-Yuan”
1996 SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater Involved
1996 Movie “Tropical Fish” SX producing
Nominated by Golden Horse Award ’96 Best SX

Nan Lin
Developer Technology Engineer, NVIDIA

Lin Nan works in Developer Technology Engineer team of NVIDIA developing and promoting the latest 3D graphics techniques, with a particular interest towards the possibilities of real-time rendering and simulation. Before joining NVIDIA, he spent about six years at Ubisoft Shanghai as a senior graphics engineer, developing various titles from Tom Clancy franchise on just about every commercial platform. He studied computer graphics and received master degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Paul Meegan
CEO and Co-Founder, Epic Games China

Paul Meegan is the CEO and Co-founder of Epic Games China. Previous to Epic, Paul served as Executive Vice President, Production at Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai, where he managed the production of titles in the Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, and Rainbow Six franchises among many others. He began his career as the President and Co-founder of Sinister Games, an independent developer located in North Carolina. Paul is also a Partner at Axion Pacific Capital, a private equity and merchant banking group focused on China and South East Asia.

Bruce Mei
Recruitment Manager, GZ Netease Interactive Entertainment Ltd.

After graduating from the University of Science & Technology of China with a master's degree, Bruce received training in accepted human resource management at Hong Kong University. His interest and passion lie in strategic planning, project management, and human resource management. Bruce is experienced in human resource planning, recruitment and distribution, career development, team building, etc.

Peter Lykke Nielsen
SDK Product Manager, Nokia

Peter Lykke Nielsen started his career in the interactive entertainment industry back in early 1995, when he was part of the trio setting up and running the independent game developer Scavenger. In the late nineties he joined Activision as a Producer and in 2004 he relocated to Canada, where he worked as a Producer for EA. Subsequently he joined Nokia to become part of the team that will launch the next generation of the N-Gage platform.

In his current role as Product Manager for the N-Gage SDK, Peter Lykke Nielsen is responsible for researching, defining and communicating the feature set required to create cutting edge N-Gage titles.

Dejun Ning
IBM Rational PRC Solution Manager & PLM, IBM China Company

Mr. Ning is the IBM Rational PRC Solution Manager–Rational Brand. He is a certified consultant by nearly all Rational products and has almost seven years' working experience in IBM Rational China. During his career, Mr. Ning has helped many big organizations improve their software process and management technology, at the same time building very close business relationships with them. These organizations include China Mobile, HuaWei, ZTE, Alcatel Sbell, UTStarCom, Datang, WuHan JinLun, Tencent, Bocom, ICBC, SH EPC etc. Before joining Rational, Mr. Ning worked at Alcatel Sbell where he mainly focused on software analysis and design and project management for their telecom industry project. His personal interests lie in project management technology, process improvement technology, object-oriented visual modeling or architect management technology, testing technology and SCM technology.

Aaron Pulkka
Senior Director – Outsourcing, Vivendi Games

Aaron Pulkka began working in the game industry in 1995 after receiving his master's in computer science & engineering from the University of Washington, where he focused on robotics, artificial intelligence, and networked virtual reality. Aaron has performed a variety of production related jobs within the industry, including designer, programmer, technical director, project manager, and development director. Over the last few years he has begun to walk the line between production and business development, focusing primarily on art outsourcing. Aaron has worked for Disney, Sony and THQ, as well as on outsourcing projects for others including EA, Activision, and Midway.

At Vivendi Games, Aaron is directing the company's global outsourcing efforts to enhance the abilities of internal production teams.

Ashutosh Rege
Worldwide Director of Developer Technology, NVIDIA

Ashu Rege is the worldwide director of developer technology at NVIDIA. The "Devtech" Group works with developers from all over the world, providing technical assistance to help ensure that applications run best on NVIDIA platforms. A long time ago, he received his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.

Richard Rouse III
Director of Game Design, Midway Games

Richard is director of game design at Midway Games, where he consults on a wide range of next-generation titles. Most recently, he was creative director and writer on the hit action/horror title The Suffering and its sequel, The Suffering: Ties That Bind. During his time in the industry, Rouse has led the design on a number of games, including Centipede 3D, Damage Incorporated, and Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis, as well as contributing to the design on Drakan: The Ancients' Gates. Rouse has written about game design for publications including Game Developer, SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics, Develop, Gamasutra.com, and Inside Mac Games. His weighty book about game design and development, titled Game Design: Theory & Practice, has been released in two editions and remains one of the most popular books on the subject.

Vincent Scheurer
Founder, Sarassin LLP

Vincent is the founder of Sarassin LLP, a London-based legal consultancy for the game business. He has over nine years of experience in drafting, negotiating, and managing international contracts for mobile, console, PC, and online game projects, including publishing, distribution, outsourcing and license agreements.

Vincent read law at Oxford University and qualified at the English Bar before joining a U.K. games publisher as sole in-house counsel in 1997. He joined law firm Osborne Clarke's renowned interactive entertainment team in 1999 and left to found Sarassin in August 2004. Vincent is the author of the videogames law section of the Entertainment Law Handbook, published by the UK Law Society in 2007.

Greg Short
Director of Platform Product Management, Sony Online Entertainment

Greg Short currently serves as the director of platform product management at Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), overseeing the strategic and tactical roadmap for the company’s web based technologies and services.

Hired by SOE in 2004 to lead efforts in the production of comprehensive player and community services for EverQuest II, Greg has since been highly involved in the development of Station Exchange, an officially sanctioned user-to-user digital asset auction system and Station Launcher, a next-generation game store, patcher and community tool. Greg is also the driving force behind SOE's industry leading data driven web sites and Station Players services.

The founder of Casters Realm, a hugely popular fan site during the peak of the highly successful MMO title EverQuest, Greg was one of the pioneers of player-centric data services for MMO games. Through his many years bridging the gap between game developers and players, Greg has gained keen insights into how to expand, retain and monetize online communities.

Australian-born, now San Diego based, Greg was introduced to online games via text based MUDs and realized worlds such as Ultima Online and EverQuest while completing his Law degree in the late 1990’s.

Paul Steed
Chief Creative Officer, Exigent

For the past 16 years, Paul Steed has been making games, giving talks, writing books and generally doing his best to promote how cool the game industry is. His books, Modeling a Character in Max by WordWare Publishing and Animating Real-Time Game Characters by Charles River Media focus on character creation and animation. Mostly known for his work on the Wing Commander series at Origin Systems and Quake series at id Software, he also worked on the foundation of Xbox360 as the creative director for the Microsoft’s console division. He then spent a year as the creative director for Atari in New York and truly understood what it is game publishers really do. Steed then decided to join the outsource fray and co-founded Exigent, a high-quality game-art company with studios in New Delhi, India and now Beijing, China. Feel free to contact him at steed@exigent3d.com.

Petri Talala
Vice President, Mobile Business, Futuremark Corp.

Petri Talala is responsible for directing Futuremark’s global mobile business operations, maintaining a focus on sales and marketing of its handheld Benchmark Development Programs, handheld benchmark products and promoting its services in the mobile sector including technology demos and performance analysis projects. Mr. Talala joined Futuremark in 2006. Talala has a distinguished career in the IT and Telecom fields, holding a number of executive level positions and playing key roles building and developing businesses in those sectors. He has substantial experience in sales, marketing and business development honed from his successes at leading telecom companies in North America and Europe, including LM Ericsson and Tellabs Inc. Petri has an M.Sc from Telecommunication Technology and an eMBA from Venturing, Corporate Strategy.

Christine Thaarup
World-Wide Studio Outsourcing Manager, Eidos Interactive Limited

Christine Thaarup has a background as an Executive Producer in European films. Since 1996 she has been outsourcing creative production for animated TV-series to the Philippines, Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Three years ago Christine joined the game industry with IO-Interactive in Copenhagen, Denmark (an Eidos company); starting to integrate outsourcing as a natural part of the workflow in production of ‘Hitman’, ‘Kane & Lynch, Dead Men’ and current productions.

Recently, Christine Thaarup entered the position of World Wide Studio Outsourcing Manager for Eidos, establishing an outsourcing ‘hub’ in Shanghai: the beginning of Eidos China.

Christine Thaarup holds a Master from the Royal Academy of Arts in Denmark, and was in 2005 appointed Honorary Guest Professor of (SIFA) Shanghai Institute of Film Art.

Sheree Tsao
CEO, InterServ International Inc.

In 1989, Sheree together with her partners, established InterServ International. Headquartered in Shanghai, today InterServ also has offices in Taipei and Los Angeles. The company holds value in innovation, entertainment, professionalism, and quality.Under Sheree's guidance, over the past 15 years InterServ has successfully developed many award-winning games and educational softwares such as Dunhuang (Karma), Yamaraja, Swordman, Giant Eagle, and Iron Phoenix. Combined, these games have sold over 300 million copies globally in more than nine languages. Sheree's international development strategies have helped InterServ become one of the few successful Chinese 3D online game development companies.

Rich Vogel
Co-Studio Director, BioWare Austin

Rich Vogel has been doing game development for 15 years. His first five years was doing console development for CD-I, Sega, and PS-1. He started his online career as Senior Producer of Meridian 59 where he helped launch and run the live service. He left 3DO to join Origin in 1997 as Senior Producer of Ultima Online where he helped launch and run the live service for two years. He is currently co-Studio Director at BioWare Austin. Previously he was V.P. of Production at Sony Online Entertainment in Austin, and Executive Producer of Star Wars Galaxies. In 2000, Rich joined Sony Online Entertainment as Executive Producer and founded the Austin Studio. He shipped Star Wars Galaxies in 2003 and the first expansion Jump to Lightspeed in 2004. Rich speaks frequently on issues of online world design, online development process, and online community management.

Gordon Walton
Co-Studio Director, BioWare Austin

Gordon Walton has been building computer games for 30 years. He is currently co-studio director at BioWare Austin working on a MMO. Previously he was VP/Exec producer at Sony Online Entertainment, Maxis, Origin and Kesmai Corporation. He also led development at Konami of America and Three-Sixty Pacific, and his own studios.

Xiang Wang
Senior Programmer, Netease

Since joining in Netease in 2004, he has been working on the online game client engine architecture and design jobs for many years. As the main member in the development team of Westward Journey series, he is primarily responsible for the development and maintenance of the game client in Westward Journey Online II and Fantasy Westward Journey. After the establishment of Westward Journey Online III in 2006, he took charge of the game client and worked as the main programmer in the development process. In the development and maintenance process, he has spent a lot of energy to research and summarize many issues, such as anti-hack, anti-cheating, client security, and he has achieved much success. He is an expert on how to work effectively for online game’s anti-hack and anti-cheating jobs in the special environment of China.

Yue Wang
Customer Service Director, Shanda Networking Co., Ltd.

1994—2000, Program Executive, Singapore HP Co., Ltd.
2000—2001, Program Executive, South Bell Co., Ltd.
2001—2002, Customer Service Manager, Nine Five Information Co., Ltd.
2002—present, Customer Service Director, Shanda Networking Co., Ltd.

Under Mr. Wang, Shanda's customer service center achieved a game user and employee satisfaction of 85%. In addition, the center created its own service brand, Shanda Rainbow, and unified customer service web portal, which not only consolidated all customer information and data, raising service convenience and calling employee efficiency, but also greatly improved customer satisfaction through brand awareness. Mr. Wang's newly set-up process management system brings perfect management to staff management, on-site operation, quality regulation, and achievement review.

Owen Wu
Senior ISV Engineer, AMD

Owen Wu is a senior ISV engineer in the ISV group of AMD, where he is supporting game developers. He is responsible for assisting technical optimization, tracking bugs, training and evangelizing the latest graphics technology to game developers. Prior joining AMD, Owen worked in game companies and managed and developed PC games.

Erick Wujcik
Senior Game Designer/Writer, Totally Games

Erick Wujcik served as game design studio manager for Ubisoft Shanghai, from 2004 through 2006, where he had the pleasure of working with the creative leads on Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Brothers In Arms and the recently announced Endwar. His first in-depth Chinese experience teaching game design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he still serves as adjunct assistant professor of Game Design. Previously he worked on THQ's Alter Echo, and before that he was lead game designer for Sierra Studios, on Return To Krondor. He first started in the game industry working on paper role-playing games, and is well known for writing and designing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, Recon RPG, Ninjas & Superspies RPG, Mystic China RPG, After The Bomb RPG, and most recently the Rifts China series, all for Palladium Books. In the 1990s he wrote, designed and published Amber Diceless Role-Playing, through his own company, Phage Press. Currently Erick is working as senior game designer/writer for Totally Games in Northern California, U.S.A.

Binyu Ye
Director of New Product Management Center, Nineyou Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

Mr. Ye began his career in 2001. In 2002, he entered the world of operation management. After joining Guangzhou Guangtong Communication Co. Ltd. in 2003, Mr. Ye was promoted to product manager of Legend 3, and was responsible for its overall operation and development of all online games. Mr. Ye has long been devoted to the study of online games, especially the social formation and consumer psychology of MMORPGs. He has a deep understanding of the mutual relationship amongst development, operation and users. In 2007 Mr. Ye came to Nineyou Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., as the director of New Product Management Center.

Bryan Yuan
Senior Analyst - Consumer and Gaming Research, IDC China

Bryan Yuan is senior analyst in IDC China's Cross Products Research team. He focuses on the China Gaming and Consumer Devices and Services program, which tracks emerging markets and trends in online gaming, gaming console, digital audio, digital camera, digital TV, digital entertainment content, consumer behavior, home networking, and more. His responsibilities include sizing the market and forecasts, analyzing market trends with emphasis on the structural industry analysis for each of the specific markets. Bryan has released seven reports related to the China games market since he joined IDC in 2005.
Prior to joining IDC, Bryan worked for Lenovo and a well-known research firm. He has more than six years of industry experience in the consumer IT research. Bryan holds a MBA degree from Rennin University of China and a bachelor's degree from Beijing Institute of Technology, China.

Peisheng Yuan
Career Development Director, Ubisoft Shanghai

Peisheng Yuan has been working in Ubisoft Shanghai for nine years. He started his game profession as a level designer at Ubisoft Shanghai, and became a producer in 2001. As senior producer of Ubisoft Shanghai, he has released six titles, including Splinter Cell Double Agent(X360), Ghost Recon 1&2(PS2), Rainbow Six 3(PS2). In early 2007, he was appointed to be career development director, his experience in game production and vision in game studio management has helped Ubisoft Shanghai refine their training and career development system.

Yu Zeng
Assistant Manager Manager, Interactive Entertainment Division, Tencent

Joining Tencent in 2002 August, Zeng Yu is one of the three key founders for Tencent QQ Game portal. He structured and designed this mini-casual game platform for Tencent. Today QQ Game Portal is the world’s biggest mini-casual game platform.

Jian Zhang
Technical Training and Support Manager, Epic Games China

After several years of research in virtual reality in North America, Zhang Jian devoted himself to the games industry and joined Ubisoft Shanghai in early 2003, where he worked on Splinter Cell (Chinese version), Splinter Cell 2: Pandora Tomorrow, Ghost Recon 2, Splinter Cell 4: Double Agent. In these projects Zhang Jian worked in many different technical fields in game development: AI, rendering, gameplay logic, animation, loading, etc. Leading the international development team in globally collaborated projects, he has a lot of experience in organizing development activities in large next-gen projects. Zhang Jian’s passion in 3D rendering and virtual reality was further shown in his own 3D Medical Imaging project, where he led a full-fledged software engineer team as project manager, software architect, and director in technology. He joined Epic Games China in 2007, currently working as technical training and support manager, promoting Unreal Technology, training clients’ development teams and leading a development project.

Fang Zhou
Partner, Niko Partners

Ms. Zhou is a videogame and Internet industry veteran of 11 years. She has been a valued employee of Niko Partners since 2003, and contributes her vast knowledge of China’s videogame industry as well as her long-standing contacts in the industry to the depth and breadth of Niko’s market research. Her past experience includes chief representative in China for Electronic Arts from 1995 to 1999, general manager PRC of Renren Media, a publicly traded ISP based in Hong Kong. Her consulting projects include market entry analysis for Nokia N-Gage, Yahoo! Games, and DoubleFusion. Additionally Zhou Fang is bilingual in English and Mandarin and earned her M.A. and B.A. degrees with high honors from the esteemed Foreign Affairs College in China.

Bob Zhu
HR Director - Asia, Electronic Arts

Mr. Zhu joined EA in September of 2005 and helped establish EA Online and World Wide Studio business in China and Asia. Before EA, he took several senior HR positions in different multi-national companies including regional HR director of Tektronix for its Asia Pacific Region, Sr. HR consultant of Capital One Financial Operation in Richmond of Virginia in US. Mr. Zhu holds a bachelor's degree in Law from Fu Dan University.

Feng Zhu
Co-Founder, Possibility Space/Founder, Feng Zhu Design

For more than a decade, Feng Zhu has contributed to some of the highest profiled projects in the entertainment industry. Founding his own design company, Feng Zhu Design, his clients include Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Sony, Activision, Industrial Light and Magic, NCSoft, Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm, Bay Films, Epic Games, and many other top studios and directors. His recent projects include the just released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and the upcoming blockbuster, Transformers. His extensive experience in both video game and feature film design makes him one of the most sought after designer in the world. In addition, Feng has produced his own line of training DVDs and teaching materials. He has also spoken at many conferences around the world, from Asia, to Europe, to Canada.
In mid-2006, together with his business partner and friend Gage Galinger, Feng Zhu founded Possibility Space, Inc. PSI’s goal is to develop original entertainment IP and games aimed at the world-wide market. Their first title, Warrior Epic, is slated for a Q4 2007 release.

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