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The GDC Advisory Board
Hal Barwood was a project leader at LucasArts for more than 10 years, designing, writing and directing a number of story-game titles, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, a PC adventure game, Big Sky Trooper, a Super Nintendo RPG, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, a real-time 3D action-adventure, and RTX Red Rock, a character-action title for PS2. Before Hal began building games, he spent twenty years in Hollywood as a writer on Sugarland Express, writer-producer on Dragonslayer, and writer-director on Warning Sign.
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Ian graduated from Bristol University and worked on future weapon systems at British Aerospace before co-founding Simis, a games development company, in 1989. Ian has been part of the executive team running the business through the release of several world class products, the sale of the company, its subsequent return to independent ownership, its change of name to Kuju and its steady growth to over 160 people. Today Kuju operates 4 studios and is developing multiple console and mobile phone titles at any one time. Initially one of the software engineers coding games, Ian now concentrates on business development within Kuju. This covers new business areas as well as creative strategy and has seen Kuju significantly expand the range of game genres in development, including the move into mobile phone games and lifestyle console games. This move reflects Kuju's determination to bring games to a mass-market audience.
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Buzz Burrowes is Director of Audio for Sony Computer Entertainment America's Product Development division. He manages Sony's multi-room, audio recording facilities in both San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area. He is also the author of SCEA-PD's audio architecture, a proprietary, full-featured audio engine which includes sophisticated streaming, adaptive MIDI and Sound Scripting cores.
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Louis Castle is a co-founder of Westwood Studios and one of the senior studio leaders at EALA. As part of the management team, Louis directs EALA's programming, artwork, audio, and research & development departments, as well as business strategy. EALA creates product for some of the most successful and best-known intellectual properties within Electronic Arts' formidable portfolio including the original product lines of Medal of Honor and Command & Conquer and licensed properties Lord of the Rings and James Bond. 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 (including the Irvine office). In his creative roles, Louis has contributed as executive producer, creative director, technical director, programmer and artist to over 100 games created by Westwood over the past 18 years. His business positions include serving as the COO and finance officer for Westwood Studios between 1992 and 2000, a period in which the company negotiated 4 multinational acquisitions. Louis is passionate about the products and the people who create them. His role as vice president at EALA allows him to leverage his considerable interactive entertainment experience to add value across the spectrum of EALA's creative and business development. |
 Mark Cerny Cerny Games Inc. Mark Cerny has been working in game design and technology for over 20
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Doug Church 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 10 years now, and still finds it a pleasing blend of frustration and exhilaration.
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Mark is the founding editor of the Game Programming Gems series of books, which are big hardback volumes full of programming nuggets from professional game developers. Mark is currently the manager of developer relations at SCEA. He has also been editor-in-chief of Game Developer magazine, the lead software engineer in the developer support group at Nintendo of America, an arcade game programmer, and a game industry consultant. Prior to joining the game industry, Mark spent quite a few years working with virtual reality systems, and he's still a big VR fan. In the early 1990s he spent time at both of the top two virtual reality research institutions: the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington, and the Computer Science department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was also the co-moderator of the Usenet virtual reality newsgroups sci.virtual-worlds and sci.virtual-worlds.apps.
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Julian Eggebrecht is co-founder and president of Factor 5, a game and technology developer located in Marin County, California. Factor 5 was founded in Germany in 1989 and moved to the U.S. in 1996. Factor 5 is a technology partner for Nintendo's Gamecube console, provider of the MusyX sound tools, and has pioneered many technological advancements in the areas of Audio and Visuals in video games. Julian's work includes the Turrican line of games, the multi-million selling Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series, Ballblazer Champions, Indiana Jones - Greatest Adventures, International Superstar Soccer Deluxe, and Contra: The Alien Wars. Julian served on the board of the IGDA as both board member and treasurer. He was director of Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike for the Nintendo Gamecube. Julian is Factor 5's president and lead director/producer and currently working on several next-generation titles.
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Named one of The Hollywood Reporter's Top 12 Most Influential Women in Gaming in 2004, Microsoft's Laura Fryer is recognized as one of the most promising young leaders in the entertainment industry. In her day-to-day role as Executive Producer in Microsoft Games Studios, she is responsible for shipping great games for the Xbox and Windows platforms. Her current projects include the highly anticipated "Gears of War. In 1995, she became one of the first members of Microsoft Game Studios (MGS). During her tenure, she shipped six games including the classic "Crimson Skies." As one of the founders of MSN's Zone.com, Laura conceived and produced the first Microsoft release of Zone.com, and produced "Fighter Ace 1.0," Microsoft's first massively multiplayer game. Prior to her return to MGS in 2004, Laura was the Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group. A founding member of the Xbox project, she joined the Xbox team in May 2000. During her 4 years with Xbox, she cultivated worldwide Xbox Developer Support, created the Xbox Advisory Board, and ran Xbox game developer events (a.k.a. Xfests) around the globe. Laura is dedicated to fostering the role of women in the video games industry. In 2000 she was one of the founders of the annual "Women in Gaming" sessions at the Game Developers Conference. An avid gamer, Laura enjoys taking "video game vacations" to play video games in marathon all-day sessions. Her other hobbies include playing the guitar and violin, juggling, reading, and playing with her new puppy Jazz.
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Chris focuses on solving hard game design and technical problems found
at the intersection of gameplay, aesthetics, and engineering. He is an |
Elaine A. Hodgson, President and CEO of Incredible Technologies, a $50 million Rolling Meadows, IL company, and the country's largest privately-held game manufacturer in the coin-operated amusement industry, has been bringing Internet technology successfully to main street bars and taverns since 1996. The woman behind this statement is both an innovator and visionary. As a girl Hodgson flirted with the ideas of being an artist or veterinarian, but was increasingly drawn to math and science, eventually graduating from Purdue with a degree in biochemistry. In the early 1980's, after a stint at NASA, she traded her beakers and burners for computers, and took up programming. In 1985, Hodgson combined her love of games and proficiency in programming when she, along with partner, Richard Ditton, founded Incredible Technologies. After ten years of moderate success, they literally struck gold with the release of Golden Tee 3-D Golf in 1996. Hodgson is particularly proud of Incredible Technologies today. IT employs over 90 designers, programmers, artists, animators, sound engineers, technicians, and production personnel. "IT's success is due to the talent, creativity, and dedication of its employees," she said. "Not a day goes by that I don't marvel at something someone has done. I'm blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people. Working with them is truly inspirational."
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Robert Huebner 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 Forces2 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.
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Noel Llopis spearheads the research and development of next-generation technology at High Moon Studios. He has been successfully applying agile development and test-driven development to game development for several years. He regularly contributes articles to Game Developer Magazine and the Game Programming Gems series, and he is the author of C++ for Game Programmers. Some of his past titles include Darkwatch and the MechAssault series. He earned an M.S. in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his spare time he enjoys exploring different and unexpected ideas on his web site Games from Within.com.
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Cyrus Lum has been an artist in the computer game industry for over 10 years. He got his start at Strategic Simulations Inc., creating computer artwork for games based on the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons license. After 4 years at SSI, Cyrus moved on to Crystal Dynamics, Inc.; founded Crystal's art department and served as the Art Director. His work can be seen in such game products as Crash 'n Burn, Total Eclipse, and The Horde. Two years later, Cyrus packed up and left California for Texas and Iguana Entertainment, Inc. There, he founded the Advanced Technology Group which handles Acclaim Studio's high-end 3D rendering, and animation for games. Before Cyrus left Acclaim, he served as the Vice President of Digital Productions for Acclaim Studios where he coordinated and provided visionary 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. In March of 2000, Cyrus cofounded Inevitable Entertainment - a video game development company dedicated to creating innovative product for the next generation game consoles. He serves as Inevitable's Art Director.
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Masaya Matsuura graduated from Ritsumeikan University with a major in Industrial Sociology. An encounter with an Apple II Computer software "Kaleidoscope" at age nineteen changed his life dramatically. The images were mesmerizing, but he felt something was missing. He added music to it, his very first experience as a producer of computer entertainment. In April 1983 Masaya formed the band PYS'S (pronounced "Size") with female vocalist Chaka. The band pushed the frontiers of computer music, but the state of digital media at the time wasn't enough to satisfy Masaya's creativity. 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. The Seven Colors was followed by TOOL-X in 1994 and Tunin' Glue in 1996, both multimedia music titles that offered completely new ways to enjoy music. 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. Now in November 2003, Masaya releases mojibribbon 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.
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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. He will be serving there as Worldwide CTO. Julien is fond of hardware architectures, gaming technologies and algorithms; he loves designing engine features and production pipelines.
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David Perry is the president and founder of Shiny Entertainment, Inc. A
21-year game industry veteran, David launched his professional career at
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A twelve-year veteran of the gaming industry, Bob Rafei is the art director, character animator and lead 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 25 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 Legacy, JakII and Jak3 for the PS2, he lead visual development that set the look of this award winning franchise as well as contribute to character animations. He has lectured at GDC ('01-'04) on various design 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 cover art for Blues Traveler's: Travelers & Thieves.
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Steve Reid is the managing director for Red Storm Entertainment, a division of Ubi Soft. He is one of the original founders of Red Storm (1996), the studio know for creating the Tom Clancy line of games. After a successful run as an independent developer/publisher, Red Storm was acquired by Ubi Soft Entertainment (2000). Post acquisition, Red Storm and Ubi Soft have worked together to develop new products from both the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon franchise lines...with Ubi Soft adding Splinter Cell to the Tom Clancy line. Before games, Steve received a Master 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.
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Brian Schmidt currently serves as program manager for Xbox audio and media at Microsoft. Brian has been in the multimedia audio industry since 1987 as both a composer/sound designer and technical consultant. As a composer, he has personally composed music for over 120 interactive games, including John Madden Football, Jurassic Park, and the Star Wars Trilogy, as well as composing the award-winning music for Crue Ball. He has been contracted for custom game music compositions from Aaron Spelling, Michael Jordan, and Joel Silver, and his work has been shown in both television and film. His Theme from Narc (originally done for the videogame Narc) was later recorded and released by The Pixies. Prior to working at Microsoft, Brian was a freelance consultant, working with such companies as Sega, Sony, Capcom, QSound Labs, and several other makers of interactive entertainment, designing interactive audio systems including Capcom's arcade game audio system and the sound system for Sega Pinball.
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Kathy Schoback is responsible for all content acquisition for AGEIA, including developer support. She has nearly 15 years experience in the gaming industry, serving the majority of her career at Sega of America. She currently serves on the Board of the International Game Developers Association, the GDC advisory board, and the steering committee for Women in Games International.
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Paul Steed has been making games for the past 14 years. He's contributed art or design to over 20 games, visualizers or demos, written three books on modeling, and animating real-time characters. He's also an advisory board member for both Game Developer magazine and the GDC. After finishing two years providing creative direction for Xbox, he joined Atari as their creative director for product development. Paul now lives and works in the Manhattan area and is into fast trucks and high-polygon women.
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Tommy Tallarico is one of the most successful video game composers, writing music for video games for more than 15 years. He has worked in the game industry as a games tester, product manager, producer, writer, designer and heads of both music and video departments. He has won over 20 industry awards for best video game audio and has worked on more than 200 game titles. In 1994, he founded Tommy Tallarico Studios, the multimedia industry’s largest audio production house. His top titles include The Terminator, Earthworm Jim, Disney’s Aladdin, Tomorrow Never Dies, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Spider-Man and Advent Rising as well as top selling popular game franchises such as Madden Football, Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat, & Time Crisis. Tallarico was the first musician to release a video game soundtrack worldwide (Capitol Records) and was also the first to use 3-D audio in a game (Q-Sound) as well as being instrumental in bringing true digital interactive surround 5.1 to the gaming industry. He is also the founder and president of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G), a non-profit organization educating and heightening the awareness of audio for the interactive world (www.audiogang.org). Tommy hosts, writes and co-produces Judgement Day, as well as the longest running award-winning video game television show, The Electric Playground. Tallarico also teamed up with fellow video game composer Jack Wall to create Video Games Live, which features music from the biggest video games performed by top orchestras and choirs across the country combined with video footage, lasers, lights and live action to create an explosive and unique entertainment experience.
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Steve Theodore Steve Theodore fell in love with computer animation in the Dark Ages, in more ways than one. He dropped out of a PhD program in Ancient History to start rendering scenes by typing text commands into the Brown University mainframe. He spent the early '90's doing animations for a variety of commercial and television projects. In 1995 he joined FASA Interactive in Chicago, where he created mechs and environments for MechCommander. Two years later he moved to Valve, where he worked on Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortresss 2 and CounterStrike. He is currently the artist in residence at Rad Game Tools.
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Rob Titus Rob Titus is the character lead at Naughty Dog Inc. He started with the company in 1997. Since then, he has modeled, rigged, textured and animated characters, in-game objects and built backgrounds on Crash 2, Crash 3, Crash Team Racing and Jak and Daxter. Currently working on the sequel to Jak and Daxter, Rob splits his time between modeling, animation and fixing problems that come up with the insanely complex Naughty Dog object pipeline.
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Alan Yu is director of artist & repertoire for Electronic Arts. In this role, he works with executive producers and senior development directors to manage and develop studio talent. From 1995 to 2004, Alan worked for the Game Developers Conference. He was managing director the last five years of his tenure and was responsible for the strategic direction, business management and day to day operations of the conference. In his previous position as program director, Alan developed the conference programs and managed speaker relations for both the GDC and its related conferences. He was the liaison between the GDC and its group of industry advisors and maintained close ties to both the developer and publisher communities. Alan is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
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Hal Barwood
Ian Baverstock 
Buzz Burrowes 
Louis Castle
Doug Church
Mark DeLoura
Julian Eggebrecht
Laura Fryer
Chris Hecker
Elaine Hodgson
Rob Huebner
Noel Llopis
Cyrus Lum
Masaya Matsuura
Julien Merceron
David Perry
Bob Rafei 
Steve Reid
Brian Schmidt
Kathy Schoback
Paul Steed
Tommy Tallarico
Alan Yu