MIT Sloan Business in Gaming Conference – March 10, 2011

Dr. Bartle is Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He is best known for having co-written in 1978 the first virtual world, MUD, and for his 1996 Player Types model which has seen widespread adoption by the MMO industry. His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds, is the standard text on the subject, and he is an influential writer on all aspects of MMO design and development. In 2010, he was the first recipient of the prestigious Game Developers Choice award of Online Game Legend.

Nik Davidson is a veteran MMO designer, having worked on Asheron’s Call, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and Lord of the Rings Online in his role as Producer and Lead Designer at Turbine Entertainment. He has ventured into social gaming with Dungeons and Dragons: Tiny Adventures at Wizards of the Coast, and is now the Design Director at The Amazing Society, working on Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, an all-ages MMO.

Ken Levine is the Co-Founder, President and Creative Director of Irrational Games. He led the creation of the multi-million selling, multiple game-of-the year award-winning title BioShock. He was named one of “Storytellers of the Decade” by Game Informer and was the One Up Network’s 2007 person of the year.

Eric is a Product Marketing Manager at Capcom. He is currently responsible for the Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter and Okami brands in addition to other products. A former Video Producer, specializing in editing and creative concepts, he has produced, directed, and edited numerous CG pieces, trailers, and videos including the Ghostbusters: The Video Game TV spots as well as having served as the Marketing Manager for the BioShock TV spots. He has worked on several gaming industry mainstay franchises, in various capacities, including the Civilization, Resident Evil, BioShock, Devil May Cry, MLB 2K, and Ghostbusters franchises. He is also an editor, playing word-smith for academic studies of street art/graffiti, and a published author in the field of Psychiatry (Journal of Primary Psychiatry 2004).

Fire Hose Games is a Cambridge-based indie start up making Slam Bolt Scrappers, a new title coming out on the PlayStation 3 in March, and Eitan is the studio’s founder, creative director, and Fire Chief. Awesome! Before Fire Hose Eitan spent several years making educational and accessible games, including AudiOdyssey, the first Wii Remote game accessible to the blind. Eitan plays ice hockey religiously and thinks Lemmings is the greatest game ever made.

Fred is a games production and business executive with two decades of experience in the games business. He is the co-founder & president of Global Mind Games located in Belmont, where he creates social games that provoke debate and inspire real world change. GMG’s inaugural game is Global Innovation Game, played on the Facebook platform. GiG is being developed as the official online game of Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Michel is Co-Founder and Managing Director of Moonshot Games, an indie developer based in Seattle and Somerville dedicated to the creation of AAA downloadable games set in rich, original universes. Moonshot is hard at work developing its first project. Prior to co-founding Moonshot, Michel worked as a Producer at Bungie Studios on Halo for PC, Halo 2 and Halo 3.

Wade has been designing and developing games since 1996. He founded Large Animal Games with Josh Welber in 2001. He founded the Casual Games Quarterly in 2004 and has led the NYC Chapter of the International Game Developers Association since 2006. Recent games include Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Bananagrams, and What to Wear. For more information visit largeanimal.com or follow Wade on Twitter.

As the CEO of Nexon America, the North American publishing arm of Nexon Group, Daniel S. Kim oversees the company’s day-to-day management and operations.

Daniel joined Nexon Group in November 2006 and most recently served as the executive vice president for Nexon Group’s global content strategy division in Korea, where he was responsible for directing brand strategy and content licensing development for Nexon on a global level.  Prior to joining Nexon, Daniel served as vice president in charge of Asia-Pacific business development for IDEO, a leading firm in innovation and design.

Ichiro Lambe is Founder and President of Dejobaan Games, LLC, a Boston-area indie game development studio. He has worked in the industry since 1993, co-founding Worlds Apart Productions (now Sony Online Entertainment Denver) in 1995 and Dejobaan Games (still Dejobaan Games) in 1999. Since Dejobaan’s founding, he’s led development on the studio’s 13 titles, working on titles for mobile and desktop PCs. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but takes game development very seriously.

Now driving social systems design for the LEGO Universe project, Daniel is a veteran of the New Media industry. Having cut his teeth in the late 90s developing online media solutions for a variety of studios and clients in Europe and the US, Daniel moved to Sulake Ltd in 2005 to develop and operate a Virtual World for Disney Online. Subsequently, Daniel consulted on designs for social and online games for notable media and entertainment companies including Marvel, Lucasfilm, and National Geographic. Prior to his current placement with LEGO, Daniel headed up Tweehouse, a Finnish company building a customizable and rapidly deployable web based multiplayer game engine. Since mid 2009, Daniel has been the lead designer of social and user experience systems in LEGO Universe, LEGO’s AAA MMOG project released to the general public in October 2010.

As a lead designer at Harmonix, Matt guides the direction of some of Harmonix’s premier titles. Matt began at Harmonix 4 years ago, with a Visual and Environmental Studies degree from Harvard University. In his first position, as creative hardware designer, Matt helped develop the look and feel of Rock Band’s iconic set of instruments. Matt transitioned to the game design world when Harmonix began work on Dance Central, where he was able to utilize his love for both music and dance. In his spare time, Matt is the lead singer for the Main Drag, is a VJ and video artist and makes video game remixes through his music project, AniGif.

Dr. Ian Lane Davis has been in the game industry since graduating with a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon in 1996.  After working for 3 years at Activision as a Lead Programmer, Technical Director, and Project Director, he founded Mad Doc Software in the Boston area, creating 100s of jobs and several million selling games.  In early 2008, Rockstar Games (makers of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption among other hit games) purchased Mad Doc.  Dr. Davis continues to be Studio President and Mad Scientist at Rockstar New England.

Jon Radoff is an entrepreneur and author focused on the intersection of the Internet, entertainment and social communities. In 1992, he started NovaLink, an online game publisher that created Legends of Future Past, distributed commercially on the CompuServe network. Legends became one of the first independent, commercial game products on the Internet. In 1997, Jon founded Eprise, the creator of a content management system that was a forerunner of modern blog and wiki technology. At Eprise, Jon raised venture capital, established product strategy and recruited a management team that succeeded in taking Eprise into Fortune 500 customers, culminating in a public offering on NASDAQ in 2000. In 2006, Jon started GamerDNA, a venture-capital funded social media company that built products driven by real-time gamer behavior. GamerDNA’s advertising product reached over 10 million unique users per month and counted top-tier game publishers including Blizzard/Activision, Electronic Arts, Namco and Turbine amongst its customers. GamerDNA merged with Crispy Gamer in 2009.

As the Vice President and General Manager of Integrated Services, Monty Sharma is a central role in leading the product development team and identifying the voice technology opportunities that will help social Web publishers build a more engaging and exciting community for their customers.

Prior to founding Vivox, Sharma brings an extensive experience with hosted services, broadband and the networking e-business space. Sharma was vice president of business development at Jamcracker, Inc., where he extended the company’s market share as a leading provider of IT management platforms. Prior to Jamcracker, Sharma served as vice president of Novell Service Provider Network at Novell, Inc. and played a key role in creating an independent business unit and brand that provided software and professional services to carriers, ASPs, and Novell’s extensive reseller channel.

Sharma has held numerous positions on corporate and public boards and is the author of several trade press articles and a well-received speaker at industry events.  Sharma earned a BA in History from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Ben is the co-founder of Digitalmill, a games consulting firm based in Portland, Maine. Since beginning his career in game development over ten years ago, Sawyer has pioneered major initiatives in the field of serious games and has become a nationally recognized leader within the games community.

For the past seven years, Sawyer has dedicated his professional life to discovering new ways to expand the use of games beyond entertainment. In 2002, he co-founded the Serious Games Initiative, a project of the U.S. Government’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He currently resides in Freeport, Maine with his wife Olivia and their two sons (and future gamers), ages 6 and 4.

Dave is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Tap Lab, a Cambridge-based startup that develops social mobile games with a real-world twist. His focus is in game design and business development. Prior to The Tap Lab, Dave was the Co-Founder and President of the Boston University Entrepreneurship Club. Dave has a passion for entertainment and has experience working as a marketing intern/representative at Walden Media, Universal Pictures (UK), and Warner Music Group.

Kahn Jekarl has over a decade of varied experience in the video game industry as a Brand Manager, Entrepreneur, and Software Engineer.

Most recently at Activision Blizzard, Kahn launched Call of Duty: Black Ops, the Largest Entertainment Launch of All Time, with $650M sold in 5 days. Prior to Activision, Kahn was an Operations Consultant on MTV/Harmonix’s Rock Band, the VP of Product Development at the social networking firm Back9Links, an Adjunct Professor of game development at NYU, and a software engineer of six years working on platinum-selling franchises such as Midnight Club and Test Drive.

Kahn was author of the MIT Sloan Case Study, “Sony’s Battle for Video Game Supremacy” and helped publish IDG Consulting’s “The Economics of Game Publishing 2006 Report.” At the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn obtained a BSE in Computer Science Engineering and a Minor in Psychology. In 2007, Kahn completed his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Robert Ferrari is VP Global Publishing and Business Development at Sanrio Digital, a publisher and developer of interactive entertainment properties across online games, social apps, mobile apps and console platforms. He manages business strategy, global partnerships, licensing, marketing, and digital and retail distribution of the company’s suite of interactive properties. Previously from 2003 thru 2008 Robert served as VP Global Business Development at Turbine (a division of WB Games), a leading developer and operator of online games and interactive communities. At Turbine he managed the company’s hyper growth, global expansion, strategic partnerships, licensing, and digital and retail publishing. Based in Boston MA, Robert Ferrari is a highly respected and renowned industry speaker within the interactive entertainment and digital media industries. He serves on the exec committee of the MIT/NE Games and Interactive Entertainment SIG, and the Massachusetts Tech Leadership Council/Entertainment Cluster.

Ayeah Games was founded in 2010 with the idea that social games should be highly graphical, very social, and very entertaining.

Prior to founding and leading Ayeah Games, Levin has acted as a consultant to mPath, a product tester (e.g., “Asheron’s Call” by Turbine Entertainment), and recently as an advisor to gamerDNA.

In 2002, Levin founded Black Duck Software, where he served as CEO and President for seven years. In 2008, he was awarded the Massachusetts “CEO of the Year” award. Levin remains an active member of Black Duck’s Board of Directors. Prior to Black Duck, Levin served as CEO for MessageMachines and X-Collaboration Software Corporation, two Boston VC-backed companies.

Dayna actively invests in companies seeking to change the way the Internet is used to deliver and monetize consumer services. She has led investments such as Awareness, Currensee, and Viximo, where she served as the CEO during 2009.

Before joining North Bridge in 2006, Dayna led new product development efforts at Blackbaud [NASDAQ: BLKB], the leading global provider of software to nonprofit organizations. She managed products throughout their life cycle as the company grew to over $130 million in revenue and completed a successful public offering. Previously, Dayna was a consultant at Cap Gemini Ernst and Young.

Dayna is active in the start-up communities in Boston and New York, and mentors entrepreneurs through various organizations. She is also on the board of the Independent Film Festival Boston.

Dayna has a BS from the University of Virginia in Systems Engineering and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Peter Wexler is TrialPay’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, where he is responsible for all worldwide advertising partnership initiatives. Peter comes to TrialPay from GetConnected, Inc. where he held Senior Business Development and Account Management positions focused on growing industry adoption of GetConnected’s digital services platform that enabled merchants to seamlessly sell high speed Internet, VoIP, Satellite, Wireless and Cable services through their various sales channels. Earlier in his career, Peter held senior leadership positions with both Grant Thornton LLP and Arthur Andersen LLP specializing in network security implementation and consulting, as well as financial data modeling solutions. Peter holds an M.B.A. with a concentration in Entrepreneurship from Babson and B.S. from The University of Delaware.

Dan is a consulting executive producer with 15-years experience with social media and electronic entertainment. Dan was CEO of massively-multiplayer developer Turbine during its initial five years, serving as producer of the Microsoft-published Asherons Call. He was then founding Content Director of a new mobile-games venture within telecom giant Comverse.

Before joining Turbine, Dan proposed and led a new game-publishing initiative for Papyrus Design Group, where he produced IndyCar Racing. He then deployed new online publications for Interchange Online Network from Ziff-Davis/ATT. Dan has been an advisor to Floodgate Entertainment and other online-content and online-community ventures. He has guest-lectured at local universities and presented at MIT Enterprise Forum, HBS Cyberposium, Game Development Conference (GDC), E3 Expo, CTIA, and other mobile- and game-industry conferences. Dan holds AB, AM (Linguistics), and MBA degrees from Harvard.

Kent is a 30-year veteran of the software development industry. His first computer was a Z-80 he built himself, and he still hacks hardware for the fun of it. He’s shipped code in every language from Assembler to Smalltalk, and from C++ to Java to Python. He’s spent the last 15 years in and around the computer game industry, most recently with Linden Lab as a Director of Software Engineering for Second Life. He’s been an entrepreneur, game designer, tech writer, and college professor and is a frequent speaker and lecturer. He is currently working on a new venture he can’t talk about yet. He was told there would be cake.