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1TB PlayStation 4 Slim Rumored to be Unveiled at Paris Games Week

sirpaul54
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1TB PlayStation 4 Slim Rumored to be Unveiled at Paris Games Week

Reports suggest that the 1TB PlayStation 4 Slim might be unveiled at Paris Games Week 2015. Many expected Sony to unveil the 1TB PlayStation 4 Slim at E3 2015, but it didn’t happen.

A total of 18.5 million PS4 units have been sold. Sony has released slim versions of previous consoles, but we have yet to see a slim PS4. Sony says that they plan to introduce the PS4 Slim in October 2015 but hasn’t announced an official release date for it. The company instead recommends checking with local retailers.

According to Digital Trends, Sony did register a 1TB PlayStation 4 model with the FCC earlier this month.

Paris Games Week 2015 is October 28, 2015, to November 1, 2015, in Paris.

TwitchCon 2015 Keynote Highlights Product Roadmap

Mathew Anderson
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TwitchCon 2015 Keynote Highlights Product Roadmap

The following is a press release from Business Wire.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – September 25, 2015 – Twitch, the world’s leading social
video platform and community for gamers, kicked off TwitchCon 2015 with a
keynote from CEO/Founder Emmett Shear, along with Twitch’s Director of
Programming, Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham. The two painted a detailed picture of
the live broadcasting platform’s history to its ongoing evolution. Upcoming
features include video uploads, an HTML5 video player and new ways to chat.
Also included were announcements related to industry partners, like
PlayStation’s dedicated Twitch viewing app for all its platforms,
Gameshow’s cutting edge broadcasting software, and a reveal of new content
for *StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void*.

“The Twitch community shapes everything we do through the creative new ways
they use our platform, through their feedback, and through the great videos
and hilarious chat messages we see every day,” said Emmett Shear,
CEO/Founder, Twitch. “All of the features we announced today, from our
HTML5 plans to our video upload system, are inspired by our awesome
community of broadcasters, viewers, and chatters. We want them to know
we’re always listening, and we can’t wait to meet them in person at
TwitchCon.”

Twitch announced the following improvements to its social video platform:

● Video Uploads: For the first time, broadcasters will be able to
use a simple web interface to upload their videos to Twitch without having
to stream them live first. Coming in early 2016.

● HTML5 Video Player: While some broadcasters currently have access
to the new player with HTML controls, Twitch will be rolling out a full
HTML5 player. Coming in early 2016.

● Customizable Thumbnails: Twitch is enabling customizable
thumbnails for broadcasters to use with past broadcasts and highlights.
This will ensure broadcasters have full control over how they present their
content.

● Whispers Update: Twitch’s real-time messaging functionality is
being separated from the main flow of chat to make whisper messages easier
to follow and respond to. Whispers’ history is also persistent so users can
return to their whispers conversation any time–even as they move from one
channel to another. Whispers will also be available on mobile, so messages
started on the web can continue when users are on the go. Coming in October.

● 24/7 Playlists: Broadcasters will be able to create a playlist of
their best pre-recorded content with a simple drag-and-drop interface. They
can use archived live broadcasts or highlights, and easily reorder and
remove videos as well. Upon activation, the video will start streaming it
to the broadcaster’s channel. Coming in Fall 2015.

The keynote presentation also featured several announcements related to its
industry partners.

● PlayStation App: When PlayStation®4 (PS4™) launched in 2013, it
offered the ability to easily live broadcast PS4 gameplay sessions using
the SHARE button on the DualShock®4 wireless controller and view live PS4
gameplay sessions via Live from PlayStation®. Today it was announced that a
dedicated Twitch app will be available on multiple PlayStation platforms in
the Americas starting with PS4 next month and followed by PlayStation®3,
PlayStation®Vita and PlayStation®TV. The app will make it even easier to
watch game streams and to follow favorite broadcasters on PS4.

● Gameshow: Gameshow is cross-platform, livestreaming production
software that lets broadcasters easily set up and produce the highest
quality streams, with beautiful graphic templates designed for specific
games, unlimited shots, dynamic editing, live switching, green screen
technology, and built-in interactive widgets. With Gameshow, broadcasters
can simplify the process of creating a consistent, branded game stream,
which helps them build their community, build their brand and make their
streams worth watching.

TwitchCon 2015 is taking place September 25th-26th at the Moscone West
convention center in San Francisco and is the first ever convention
dedicated to Twitch’s community of partners, broadcasters, and viewers. To
be kept in the loop with all TwitchCon news, follow the TwitchCon Twitter
feed https://twitter.com/twitchconsf or tune into live TwitchCon content
via the TwitchCon Event Page .

For general Twitch news, visit the Twitch blog http://blog.twitch.tv/, https://twitter.com/Twitch, Instagram https://instagram.com/twitch and https://www.facebook.com/Twitch pages.

About Twitch

Twitch is the world’s leading social video platform and community for
gamers. Each month, more than 100 million community members gather to watch
and talk about video games with more than 1.7 million broadcasters.
Twitch’s video platform is the backbone of both live and on-demand
distribution for the entire video game ecosystem. This includes game
developers, publishers, media outlets, events, user generated content, and
the entire esports scene. For more information visit the Twitch website blog.

Gaming Insiders 2015 Conference Preview

Paul Philleo
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Gaming Insiders 2015 Conference Preview

Events for Gamers attended Gaming Insiders 2014 and found it to be a rather unique combination of exclusivity and intimacy with a number of familiar and not-as-familiar movers and shakers in the game industry. Fast forward to 2015, and we’re looking at the third iteration of this conference, with over 500 attendees in the house. Here are a few highlights about the conference for those attendees to look forward to.

Revitalizing MMOs

Mobile game growth is slowing down, or so the numbers say. PC gaming is resurgent. Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games are one potential opportunity within that growing realm, or so the talk, “Why the World Needs Another MMO” will conjecture. The talk, led by moderator Michael Cai, SVP at Interpret, will focus on Brad McQuaid, CCO at Visionary Realms. Brad McQuaid was a key figure in the creation of the legendary MMO “EverQuest.” What lessons can be learned from mobile and console while creating the next generation of MMO games? Presumably this core question will be addressed in this interesting talk.

More Mobile Opportunities?

However, there are many believers who back the ongoing potential of the mobile games market. PEAK MOBILE: Are We There Yet? addresses that very topic. Neil Young, CEO of N3TWORK will take on the idea that the best years of mobile are still ahead. Neil Young developed bing brand console and PC games, as well as founded ngmoco:). Neil Young has a longer view of the industry even few insiders possess, so perhaps he will be ablwe to lay out an argument for a robust and growing mobile games market.

Future of Fun

Keeping F2P in games without compromising the fun factor or the revenue stream has remained a thorny issue. Russ Frushtick, editorial director at Product Hunt moderates this talk with Jeri Ellsworth, inventor and lead hardware engineer with castAR. With any luck, fresh insight will emerge developers can use to help balance out effective game play with creating non-disruptive revenue opportunities. Doing so is an outcome that’s good for the developers and good for the gamers who want to love their games, after all.

Expanding Horizons for Game Development

As the game industry struggles to grow its fundamental beyond AAA franchises, as indie development expands, there’s a new space being carved out for non-competitive gaming. That’s the topic of the talk, “The Friendly Frontier: Designing Non-competitive Games,” led by Naomi Ladinzinsky, CCO and co-founder of Nix Hydra. Cooperation and discovery as effective gameplay mechanisms will get a closer look in this talk.

New Venue

Last year, Gaming Insiders was hosted on the remote Treasure Island, near to, but away from, San Francisco proper. The venue was thoroughly exclusive and intimate, with the city skyline as a horizon. This year the conference shifts a few miles in to the heart of the city’s downtown area, to the InterContinental Hotel. In fact, this conference takes place next door to TwitchCon 2015, which starts at Moscone West September 25, 2015. It will be interesting to see the mix of B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) attendees, if there are any.

Gaming Insiders will take place September 24-25, 2015, in San Francisco at the Intercontinental Hotel. We’ll be covering the event from there!

Q&A: Christian Sandor Talks About SIGGRAPH Asia 2015, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

Mathew Anderson
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Q&A: Christian Sandor Talks About SIGGRAPH Asia 2015, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

Christian Sandor, the chair for the Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive Applications, recently chatted with Events for Gamers about SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 and more.

Events for Gamers: Please share with us a quick history of your involvement as the chair for the Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive Applications and as a speaker at SIGGRAPH Asia.

Christian Sandor: Since 2000, I have a clear research focus on augmented reality (AR). As a result, with regards to conferences, I have volunteered many times at the IEEE International Symposium on Augmented Reality (ISMAR); most recently, I was the program chair in 2014 and 2015.

As SIGGRAPH has recently been expanding its scope toward augmented and virtual reality (VR), I have also started volunteering at SIGGRAPH Asia as a program committee member for technical briefs (2012), program committee member for emerging technologies (2013, 2014), and most recently program chair for Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive Applications (2015).

I am excited to see that my research passion for the past 15 years is recently receiving a lot of attention!

E4G: The concept of AR, or augmented reality, has been around for a while now, and products like the Samsung Gear VR are becoming increasingly accessible to the average consumer. However, mainstream adoption of AR technology is still limited. What do you think are the challenges faced by mobile game developers in harnessing AR technology, and how can they best overcome said challenges?

Christian: In my view, there are two main challenges for developing compelling AR games: First, we need solid AR platforms to run games on; second, we need to find game concepts that are suitable for AR.

With regards to platforms I think that VR is always several years ahead of AR. For AR, we do not only have to create highly responsive computer graphics, but we have to additionally fuse them coherently with the user’s real environment. Any AR system can be trivially turned into a VR system; we just need to block the user’s view of the real world. However, for AR, there are several additional difficult requirements including matching the lighting conditions of the user’s environment and dealing with correct occlusions between real and virtual objects. Although especially Microsoft’s Hololens shows promising technological developments as an AR display, the quality is still several years behind the comparatively easier challenge that VR devices like the Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR are facing.

With regards to game concepts: At the moment, due to technical challenges, only research labs can run wide-area AR games. Therefore, this kind of scenario has only been insufficiently explored by game developers. Once the technology gets ready, I am looking very forward to what creative game designers can come up with!

E4G: In a TEDx talk a few years ago, you talked about the importance of considering a person’s perception of the world in which they are immersed, not just the matter of that world itself. How does AR get to the heart of this concept?

Christian: Not only AR, but also VR are directly based on fooling the user’s senses. In a recent presentation of Oculus’s Chief Scientist Michael Abrash at Facebook’s F8 conference, he spent about half of his talk speaking about perceptual illusions and how these are the basis of any VR experience.

A recent example from our research is a prototype of an AR display, which measures the user’s eyes’ accommodative state. Simply speaking, from the accommodative state, we can derive the distance at which a user is focusing. Based on this information, we can apply a matching depth-of-field effect to the computer graphics that we embed into the user’s real environment. This is imperative for making real and virtual indistinguishable.

E4G: Is there anything beyond AR that you can see the mobile game industry moving into in the near future? How will this impact developers and designers?

Christian: Since 2005, I have been working on the integration of haptics into AR systems; haptics enables users to also touch virtual objects. In 2010, I presented a TEDx talk on this topic. (Watch the live demo; watch the full talk; check out the slides.)

In the aforementioned talk by Michael Abrash, he has also pointed out haptics as a key area for future research at Oculus Inc. So, I predict that haptics will be a key direction for the future of AR and VR.

While game designers are already familiar with the integrated experience of sound and graphics, it will be very interesting to see how haptics will be used by them!

E4G: Earlier this year, Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa announced in a statement that “mobile is where the future of gaming lies.” What are your predictions on the balance between mobile and multiplatform console gaming for the next five years?

Christian: The questions are: Will AR and VR games succeed? If so, mobile or at home?

I see the most likely scenario as VR games at home and AR games for mobile.

E4G: What looks set to be the “next big thing” in mobile game design?

Christian: AR games.

E4G: Any advice for both veteran and rookie game developers on finding new ways to engage the player on mobile devices?

Christian: As we don’t yet know exactly how to exploit the AR/VR capabilities, rapid prototyping is essential. I often get asked how to get started with rapid prototyping AR experiences. My recommendation is to use Qualcom’s Vuforia + Unity3D. Vuforia runs on iOS and Android and provides all AR functionality. Then, prototyped scenes from Unity3D can be played in AR. E.g., see Vuforia SmartTerrain.

E4G: Anything else you would like to share about the success of SIGGRAPH Asia and any other special mentions for the 2016 event?

Christian: Besides the chairing the Symposium on Mobile Graphics and Interactive Applications, I am co-organizing the panel “Pioneers?? You can become one too!” together with Conference Chair Yoshifumi Kitamura. We have three very exciting panelists: Steven Feiner, Takeo Kanade and Tomoyuki Nishita.

Their advice will range from the expected (how to identify life-changing career opportunities and how to select great research questions) up to the unexpected (how to deal with the intricacies of academia, including organizational politics and malicious competitors).

It is scheduled before the Technical Papers Fast Forward on the first day.

E4G: Thanks for chatting with us about SIGGRAPH Asia!

Christian: See you in Kobe!

SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 is November 2-5, 2015, in Kobe, Japan.

Montreal International Game Summit Reveals Headliners

Mathew Anderson
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0
Montreal International Game Summit Reveals Headliners

The following is a press release from Montreal International Game Summit.

Montreal, September 23rd, 2015 – Montreal International Game Summit – MIGS 2015 will welcome Sir Ian Livingstone, one of the founding fathers of the UK games industry. He will present the session “Life is Game” in which he will give an account of his struggles and how he overcame many challenges as an entrepreneur in the 1970s, from the creation of Games Workshop, to the inauguration of Dungeons & Dragons in Europe or the launch of Tomb Raider, not to mention writing the multi-million selling Fighting Fantasy gamebooks series.

MIGS also announces Jade Raymond, General Manager at Motive, Electronic Arts who will share her vision on how to manage creativity and the challenges of building a studio. The talk will be moderated by Jason Della Rocca, co- founder of Execution Labs and a key figure in the video game industry.

MIGS15 will be held November 15-17, 2015, in Montreal and offers a conference program dedicated to the challenges of the interactive entertainment industry – whether it be technological advances (such as virtual and augmented reality) or issues around digital distribution. A wide-array of topics will be addressed by international experts including Insomniac Games, Ubisoft, Ludia, Moment Factory, Rovio and many more.

“Dynamic job growth, technological advances and creativity distinguish our industry. MIGS is a key opportunity to measure the quality and scope of our advancement and its impact on Quebec’s economy”, said Martin Carrier, president of Alliance Numérique.

In addition, this year the MIGS will give the floor to the independent scene and will present various games by being open an additional day on Sunday, November 15th. Many activities are planned during the three day event, including a job fair to promote recruitment. The Exhibition Zone will showcase numerous live demos to bring the space to life, as well as contests and on-site games. The Business Lounge will be reserved for the industry’s decision-makers from over 20 countries such as Glu Mobile, China Mobile, Devolver, Click Jogos, Tencent, Nintendo, Rovio, Chillingo, Microsoft and many others.

MIGS is co-presented by the Canada Media Fund, an essential support for innovation in the industry of Canadian production. For more information on rates and offers visit: migs15.com.

About Alliance numérique

Since its creation in 2001, Alliance numérique (AN) has been the business network for Quebec’s video game industry. Its membership includes a full range of video game and digital entertainment developers of all sizes. It is also a key industry contact for government relations. Its mission is to support the growth and competitiveness of its members and put the province of Quebec, center stage in the field of interactive content creation, production and distribution. www.alliancenumerique.com.

About the Canada Media Fund

The Canada Media Fund (CMF) fosters, develops, finances, and promotes the production of Canadian content and applications for all audiovisual media platforms. The CMF guides Canadian content towards a competitive global environment by fostering industry innovation, rewarding success, enabling a diversity of voice, and promoting access to content through public and private sector partnerships. Visit www.cmf-fmc.ca.

2015 Australian Game Developers Awards Nominations Open

sirpaul54
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2015 Australian Game Developers Awards Nominations Open

The 2015 Australian Game Developers Awards nominations are now open. In connection with the Game Connect Asia Pacific 2015, the Australian Game Developers Awards for 2015 will take place in October. The awards celebrate the talent that make up the Australian game development industry. Developers and companies can submit their games for nominations in the following categories:

  • Studio of the Year
  • Game of the Year
  • Excellence in Art
  • Excellence in Design
  • Excellence in Audio
  • Technical Excellence
  • Innovation Award
  • Accessibility Award
  • Representation Award
  • The Adam Lancman Award

The Representation Award is the newest award. It is given to a game that makes an effort to include characters and stories that depict under-represented or marginalized groups such as women, ethnic and sexual minorities, and those with disabilities who have been overlooked in the industry. Games submitted for this award need to be publicly available or intended to be released within six months of the AGDA ceremony. The categories of games can include art games, serious games and games for health.

Visit the Australian Game Developer Award Nomination form to submit your vote. The deadline for nominations is October 2, 2015. The AGDA ceremony takes place October 28, 2015.

Indie Gameleon 2015 Postmortem

Mathew Anderson
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Indie Gameleon 2015 Postmortem

Christian Oeing, an indie developer (Slash Games) and Gameleon staff member writes a great postmortem article about this year’s recently concluded Indie Gameleon festival.

This was the first of the festival and looked to be a huge success with all involved. Game jams was a strong theme with several participants. The conference portion had several great talks with some of them recorded and linked in Christian’s postmortem.

If you want to know more about what it takes to start and run an event, whether it’s a tightly nit conference or a full blown festival, have a look at Christian’s article!

The 2015 IGDA Leadership Summit

Mathew Anderson
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The 2015 IGDA Leadership Summit

From IGDA.org: The International Game Developers Association Leadership Summit commenced late last Tuesday at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, Washington (US). Since many of the Summit’s attendees had been involved in either PAX Dev or PAX Prime in the days prior, this event presented a nice second chance for additional professional development, and to do some off the clock socializing with industry peers.

The 2015 Leadership Summit is a new iteration of the IGDA’s previous Leadership Forum events that proved very popular when conducted 2007 through 2011. The event is intended to help attendees improve their leadership skills in all areas, not only as company leaders or in management roles but also from the perspective of exhibiting creative leadership.

The conference kicked off on Tuesday night, featuring the IGDA Seattle chapter’s latest recruiting event, in additional to light networking for both the recruiting event and Summit attendees. A wide variety of developers attended, ranging from owners of serious games one-man studios to directors of AAA powerhouses. One attendee, Swatee Surve, was excitedly promoting her predictive healthcare application. “The next big trend in gaming is prescribed mental healthcare,” Surve noted, painting a picture of the future were psychiatrists use games to discern the needs of patients, like in Ender’s Game. Another group of attendees were Universe Builders Studios, who were in process of developing a space startup simulator so entrepreneurs could plan the harvesting of planetary resources. “Neil Degrass Tyson made science cool. We want to be cool, too,” they said.

Read the complete summit overview at IGDA.org!

PAX South 2016 Registration Open for Business

Paul Philleo
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PAX South 2016 Registration Open for Business

PAX South 2016 registration is now open to attend the Midwestern location-friendly (and winter-warm) version of Penny Arcade Expo. Registration rates range from single day passes at 35 dollars to 75 dollars for a full weekend bundle.

As of today (September 17, 2015), all ticket options for PAX South 2016 remain available, which, while unusual in the sell-out-quickly tradition of PAX, also can be seen as unsurprising as this particular expo is a second-year event.

Earlier this year, it was reported PAX South 2015 had measured up well with a record-setting inaugural year in attendance, compared to PAX East or PAX Prime’s first time out as expo events, coupled with 120 exhibitors showing their games, products and services.

PAX South 2016 will be held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, January 29-31, 2016. Be sure to follow Events for Gamers for news about PAX South 2016 as more about the agenda emerges.

Tim Sweeney to Be Premier Speaker at GamesBeat 2015

sirpaul54
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Tim Sweeney to Be Premier Speaker at GamesBeat 2015

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games and a game pioneer for 25 years, will be the premier speaker at GameBeats 2015.

Sweeney will discuss the future of gaming in both technological and business terms. Sweeney also said that he is excited about 3-D graphics on mobile devices and the Unreal Engine allowing developers to make sophisticated graphics and physics effects in games.

Also on the discussion list is GamesBeat 2015’s theme: Game of Thrones. All of the game companies are fighting to be on top, and at this event, Sweeney and others will dissect how these companies are battling for gaming supremacy and growth.

GamesBeat 2015 takes place October 13-14, 2015, in San Francisco. This year, 80 speakers are scheduled to appear at the event.

Family-Friendly Boston Festival of Indie Games Takes Place at MIT

Mathew Anderson
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Family-Friendly Boston Festival of Indie Games Takes Place at MIT

September 11, 2015 – Cambridge, MA – The Boston Festival of Indie Games is taking place tomorrow, Saturday, September 12, 2015, starting at 10am at the MIT Johnson Athletic Center! BostonFIG is an inclusive, welcoming environment filled with family-friendly activities and games you won’t see anywhere else.

Some key highlights at the event include:

  • Over 100 indie games! Developers from near and far will be showing off their digital and tabletop games to BostonFIG attendees over the course of the day.
  • HTC Vive virtual reality demos, taking place throughout the day. With demonstrations of some of the most exciting titles being developed for the HTC Vive, both players and developers will be able to explore the innovative technology with the HTC Vive Developer Edition.
  • Musical performances by the Videri String Quartet, a classically trained string quartet. Videri will be performing some old favourites from Halo, Bioshock Infinite, and Yoshi’s Island as well as premiering an arrangement from Ori and the Blind Forest.
  • Keynote speech by Susan Gold, an artist, teacher, and activist who is deeply passionate about fostering the richness and diversity that makes up independent game development community. Susan will focus on the unique, artful, and uncanny stories that fuel independent game developers’ passion to let those stories come to fruition, play out their tales, and make amazing games.

The Boston Festival of Indie Games is open to the public and will take place at the Johnson Athletic Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA. Festival attendees play video games and tabletop games in a casual, inclusive environment, plus attend a musical performance by Videri String Quartet and keynote speech by Susan Gold, Founder and President of Global Game Jam. Tickets are available now at www.bostonfig.com – online tickets are just $12 each, and kids 12 and under can attend for free!

Thanks to our terrific sponsors, the Boston Festival of Indie Games is able to remain a focal point for the indie gaming community each year. This year’s festival sponsors include HTC Vive, AdMagic, Turbine, White Wizard, virZoom, WGBH, Phonetic Eyewear, and Scirra. A full list of our sponsors can be found on our site here.

About the Boston Festival of Indie Games (www.bostonfig.com):

The Boston Festival of Indie Games is a celebration of independent game development with emphasis on the New England and neighboring regions. The Boston Festival of Indie Games seeks to support and showcase the efforts of independent game developers by providing an inclusive, safe, family-friendly event that encourages attendees to share and interact with games in various media, from video games to tabletop games and beyond. The Boston Festival of Indie Games is focused on creating an intersection between community, academic and development interests in game play.

Q&A: Martin Rae Talks About D.I.C.E., AIAS, Other Events

Mathew Anderson
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0
Q&A: Martin Rae Talks About D.I.C.E., AIAS, Other Events

Martin Rae brings his experience in video games and finance and business development to his position as president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS). Rae took the helm of the nonprofit organization in October 2010, championing the 22-billion-dollar video game industry by raising awareness of individuals, games, companies, organizations and associations, and changing issues. As president of AIAS, Rae is the voice of the academy and its more than 30,000 trade members. He oversees the annual Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit, the D.I.C.E. Awards, D.I.C.E. Europe, the AIAS Foundation and the Into the Pixel video game art exhibit.

Q: Who in the game industry is D.I.C.E. most suited for, and how can newcomers to the industry benefit in attending?

Martin RaeA: D.I.C.E. attracts a strong cross-section of seasoned creatives and biz-dev folks. Emerging talent who have a keen interest in new business opportunities, making connections with C-level industry executives and getting inspired from our creative talks should absolutely mark D.I.C.E. as one of their must-attend events. We make a concerted effort to be inclusive of young talent from a programming perspective and through encouraging general attendance. With our conference in February, we sponsor the attendance of our student scholarship recipients through the Academy Foundation. While our event remains exclusive in feel, we do our best to continue to diversify.

Q: In your years of experience being the voice for D.I.C.E., what do you feel was one of the most professionally or personally impactful experiences you (or your attendees) felt at one of the events?

A: Each year is so unique and takes on a new life of its own — it’s so hard to choose. Now that we’ve started establishing themes for our conferences each year, we really are able to utilize these themes as time capsules for what has been top of mind in the industry. We search for themes that offer our speakers the ability to explore from varied angles that are a strong reflection of what is in the zeitgeist. The fact that many of our attendees are long-term supporters leads me to believe we are able to achieve this goal reasonably well.

Q: The theme for D.I.C.E. Europe 2015 is The Art of Engagement. Do you feel engagement in games is more art than science? What areas of engagement do you expect to be highlighted during the summit?

A: I think engagement is both art and science and found in how these two elements are employed together. Our speakers are really going to address this from many unique angles. 343 Industries Kevin Franklin will be sharing some analytics on how they improve player engagement based on data; DICE Studios speaker Maria Sayans will be discussing how they were able to work together with their “Battlefield 4” community to really improve the online experience over time; Mobcrush speaker, Greg Essig, will be talking about new frontiers of engagement on mobile live-streaming platforms. Engagement is central to maintaining an audience and a community, and it is achieved in so many ways today.

From a planning perspective, we’ve engineered D.I.C.E. Europe 2015 to be a premium networking experience. For the second day, we are facilitating focused roundtable sessions where we have leaders help navigate a discussion on a topic of their choice without necessarily the pressures of a main-stage presentation. Also we are taking advantage of the resort vibe of our host hotel, the W, and Barcelona itself. We encouraged attendees to bring their significant others/spouses. They get to attend all the networking events, adding a new dimension to things. I think attendees will have great fun meeting their colleagues’ significant others. If we pull it all off, the whole thing should have the feel of a unique leadership retreat that emphasizes new ways to connect and share ideas.

Q: Overall, what role does D.I.C.E. play within Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences outreach strategy? What impact do you feel this conference has within the game industry?

A: Our D.I.C.E. Summits are designed to present and promote really high-level thought leadership within the industry. Attendees leave the conferences inspired, educated and with better creative tools to continue to lead the industry forward. In addition, I can’t think of a better place to nurture deep professional relationships.

Q: Has the fundamental mission of AIAS changed, as the game industry has been evolving and expanding?

A: The mission remains the same — recognize the outstanding creativity and talent within our great industry.

Q:Staying on the theme of events, what other events, apart from D.I.C.E., does AIAS create, partner with or promote?

A: I’m glad you touched on this — the AIAS is often only associated with our main conferences, but as an organization, we represent so much more. Each year around the E3 Expo, we collaborate with the Entertainment Software Association to curate the annual Into the Pixel video game art exhibit. We have a group of fantastic jurists from both the fine art and digital worlds who review the submissions to curate a really stunning collection each year.

We are also very proud of the AIAS Foundation, which as I mentioned provides scholarships to video game students. These students also have an opportunity to attend the D.I.C.E. Summit, where we set them up with mentors who help provide invaluable connections with industry executives. Several of our past scholarship recipients came out of the conference with job offers!

Q: Is there any way for consumers to check out the speakers from D.I.C.E. Europe 2015?

A: Absolutely! We will be live-streaming on Twitch the speaking sessions on Monday, September 14, beginning at 10 a.m. CET (Central European Time). You can subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss it at www.twitch.tv/dice. Also check out our speakers lineup on our website, www.diceeurope.org.

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