Kazunori Yamauchi

Director of Polyphony Digital

His first project at Sony was designing a car racing game in the Mario Kart style, called Motor Toon Grand Prix, which was released in 1994. The game was reasonably successful, but Yamauchi-san suddenly felt the urge to abandon the comic strip look to make the game experience as close to a real racing car as possible, so he started developing Gran Turismo®. The game was completed in 1998 and not only became the best selling PlayStation® original game, but was hailed as genuinely revolutionary for its meticulous detail in the simulation and the vast selection of vehicles.

Gran Turismo®has become one of the most successful franchises in history, with each of its five titles achieving stratospheric sales figures! But its influence goes beyond the world of videogames: certain vehicles that were previously only sold in Japan were now being exported to the United Sates. Moreover car makers such as Aston Martin, Ruf, Venturi and Alfa Romeo saw their popularity rise, and Yamauchi-san was even hired as a consultant for major brands such as Volkswagen.

Hironobu Sakaguchi

Founder of Mistwalker

Hironobu Sakaguchi (born on November 25, 1962) is considered the "father of RPG fantasy games" and is also the creator of the successful global hit saga Final Fantasy. Sakaguchi has enjoyed a long career in videogames, and has sold more than 80,000,000 units of videogames worldwide. In 2000, Sakaguchi became the third person in history to enter the hall of fame of the American Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.

Hironobu Sakaguchi's career has spanned more than 2 decades, he has founded companies, directed big-budget Hollywood movie and created what he thought was to be his last game... twice! Sakaguchi founded Square with Masafumi Miyamoto in the early 1980s after leaving university, but the late success was still to come. In a last bid to save his company, he invested all of Square's finances to create Final Fantasy, a title that ultimately turned out to be one of the most venerated games in the videogames history.

In 2003, when his company merged with Enix, another Japanese entertainment colossus, Sakaguchi decided to launch a new venture: he founded Mistwalker, and started developing games for the Xbox 360, which were mainly financed by Microsoft. He released titles like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey with this company, and he is currently working on one of the most eagerly anticipated games: The Last Story.

Alexander Seropian

CEO of Industrial Toys

Alexander Seropian is a video game developer, entrepreneur and founder of three game studios; Bungie (with famous games like Marathon or Myth), Wideload and most recently Industrial Toys. Alex has also held executive positions at Microsoft and Disney. He is currently focused on building mobile games for core gamers at Industrial Toys.

Seropian is the original creator of Halo, a project so ambitious that Microsoft bought the company years before its release to make it a star project for the Xbox. Some years later, Seropian founded another company, Wideload Games, which is now part of Disney Interactive Studios, where he has brought his wealth of games experience to mobile phones.

Corrine Yu

Principal Engine Architect of Microsoft's Halo team

Corrinne Yu is the Principal Engine Architect of Microsoft's Halo team. She programs lighting, facial animation for Halo. Sheís been videogame Director of Technology for the last 2 decades. She won Best in Engineering at GDC for 2 years. Sheís founding member of Microsoft's Direct 3D Advisory Board. Sheís one of the 10 Most Influential in Gaming. She is the only Director of Technology in the list.

Julien Merceron

Worldwide Technology Director of Square Enix Europa

Julien started developing on the Atari Jaguar in 1993 at Shen Technologies in Paris. He then joined Ubisoft Entertainment in 1994 working on Rayman 1 (Jaguar and PlayStation), Pod (PC and M2), and he became lead programmer on Tonic Trouble for the Nintendo 64. Julien became the Worldwide Technical Director of Ubisoft Entertainment in 1999, playing a major role in technology design, multi-platform strategy, and AAA features integration. At the end of 2005 Julien started to serve as Worldwide CTO working on the Technology Strategy for Eidos, as well as initiating Eidos Montreal and Eidos Shanghai. Julien is now Worldwide Technology Director for Square Enix Group, and he's starting to learn Japanese.

Chris Avellone

Creative Director of Obsidian Entertainment

Creative Director of Obsidian Entertainment, Chris started his career at Interplay's Black Isle Studios division. Titles include Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2, the Icewind Dale series, Dark Alliance, Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Mask of the Betrayer, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, FNV DLC: Dead Money, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, South Park, and now, Wasteland 2.

Al Lowe

Game Designer / Advisor of Replay Games

Al Lowe was a public school music teacher who taught himself programming. In 1982 he created three games for the Apple ][: Dragon’s Keep, Bop-A-Bet, and Troll’s Tale. Sierra Online bought these games and began a 16-year career for Al as a programmer and game designer. His projects included Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood, Donald Duck’s Playground, and The Black Cauldron, all based on Disney properties. He was lead programmer on King’s Quest III and Police Quest I and created music for other Sierra games.

Although best known for Leisure Suit Larry and its theme song, which he composed, Lowe also created Torin’s Passage and Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. He often calls himself “the world’s oldest game designer.”

Phil Fish

President of Polytron

Phil has been making games since he was two years old. After attending both art school and game school, he got his industry start at Ubisoft Montreal. He has been involved with Kokoromi, creating the Gamma events, which started in Montreal, 2005. The 2009 edition of Gamma, with a single button theme, was showcased in San Fransisco, at the IGF. Winning the 2008 Excellence in Visual Art award at the Independent Games Festival for Fez, Polytron got a publishing deal to release the game on XBLA in the first quarter of 2012. FEZ is also one of the 3 games featured in the Sundance-nominated documentary INDIE GAME : THE MOVIE!.

Paul Flanagan

Business Development Director of Tequila Mobile SA

Paul has responsibility for new business development. Prior to this role he was Executive in Residence at Ariadne Capital in London. He has been involved in video gaming, on-line games and 3D technology since 1997. Previously he worked with J P Morgan, Citibank and Reuters. Paul earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada and an MBA from INSEAD.

Michael Schade

CEO & Co-Founder of FISHLABS

Michael Schade, CEO & Co-Founder of FISHLABS, makers of the highly successful sci-fi game series Galaxy on Fire, has been deeply involved with computer graphics, 3D animation, and software development for more than 18 years..

With seven years in 3D mobile gaming and an award-winning portfolio of high-end 3D games distributed globally through mobile operators, Apple’s App Store and pre-loaded on Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets, Michael has a profound knowledge of the mobile business.

Michael is a well known evangelist for high-end gaming on mobile phones and a seasoned speaker with several lectures at mobile and gaming events all around the globe. Since three years, advergaming became a major business for FISHLABS and clients like Volkswagen and Barclaycard are relying on Michael’s knowledge and his team’s expertise how to engage millions of consumers worldwide through ad games on smartphones and tablets.

Daniel Sánchez Crespo

CEO of Novarama

Novarama is today one of the leaders of game development in Spain. His latest production, Invizimals, has sold over 400,000 copies in Europe, the third best selling PSP game in 2009, surpassed only by Fifa and Gran Turismo. Novarama is the first and only developer of Spain First Party to be a console maker. And all this with a team of fifteen people..

Xavier Carrillo

Founder of Digital Legends Entertainment

With over 10 years experience in games industry and technology software for mobile phones , after being Director of Production and Development of the popular game “Blade, the Edge of Darkness”, founded in Barcelona Company Digital Legends, which appears as First Party Developer of mobile phone giant Nokia since 2004.

Combining his duties as CEO of the company, Carrillo was also Executive Producer and Director of Development for various titles of PC, console and mobile. His production for Nokia N-Gage platform, “One” received international awards such as “IMGA Excellence in 3D Award” at the Mobile World Congress 2008.

In 2008 he was invited by Apple at the Worldwide Developers Conference where Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 3G and selected to present the game “KROLL”, entirely developed by his studio, the game also won the “People’s Choice Award in the Mobile World Congress 2009.

Jim Ying

SVP, Publishing of 6waves

Jim Ying is SVP, Publishing for 6waves, the leading publisher of independent games on social networks and mobile devices. In this position, he oversees developer outreach, product management and growing 6waves' network of 20+ million monthly active users. Prior to joining 6waves, he served as Director of Product at GameHouse, the casual games division of RealNetworks. He has also spent time on the core gaming side of the industry, having managed titles in the Halo and Age of Empires franchises at Microsoft Xbox. Jim holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.

Randy Pitchford

Founder of Gearbox.

Randy is one of three owners and founders of Gearbox software and under his guidance as President and CEO, Gearbox has grown from an idea into a leading independent game development studio with titles that have sold over 20 million units worldwide earning over $500 million.

In 2000, Randy accepted the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences award for Best PC Action Game of the Year for Half-Life Opposing Force (1999, PC), for which he served as Executive Producer and Director. With Gearbox, Randy also directed, produced andor was executive producer for Half-Life Blue Shift (2000, PC), Half-Life (2001, PS2), Counter-Strike Condition Zero (2004, PC), 007 James Bond Nightfire (2002, PC), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (2002, PC), Samba de Amigo (2008, Wii) and Halo Combat Evolved (2003, PC).

In 2005, Randy served as Co-Director and Executive Producer of Gearbox's original franchise 'Brothers in Arms'. In March of 2005, Gearbox launched the franchise with publisher Ubisoft Entertainment on three platforms to achieve record sales, critical acclaim and numerous industry awards and accolades making it the bestselling and highest rated WW2 action game ever released on the Xbox video game system. Since its launch, the Brothers in Arms series has released ten different games across all major console and mobile platforms generating over $250m in gross revenue. The most recent release, Brothers in Arms Hells Highway, was a 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards nominee for Outstanding Achievement in Original Story.

In 2009, as Executive Producer, Randy launched Borderlands, the fastest selling new video game brand of the year. Borderlands was released on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Windows PC last October to earn universal critical acclaim and record-setting sales. Featuring seamless single player and cooperative game play, Borderlands, as Randy put it, is the first, great shooter looter. Borderlands has been nominated for and has won multiple Game of the Year awards throughout the industry and has been nominated in two categories in the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

Before becoming a full-time video game developer, Randy was a professional magician in Hollywood occasionally performing at the famous Magic Castle between classes at UCLA. Under the handle DuvalMagic Randy is also is a feverishly dedicated gamer who has earned a competitive reputation since the days of Doom to the end-game raids of World of Warcraft and his Gamer Score on Xbox Live exceeds 80,000 points

Pablo Santos

President and co-founder of Codice Software an Plastic SCM.

Prior to enter in start-up mode to launch Codice Software an Plastic SCM back in 2005, Pablo worked as R&D engineer in fleet control software development (GMV, Spain) and later digital television software stack (Sony, Belgium). Then he moved to a project management position (GCC, Spain) leading the evolution of an ERP software package for industrial companies. During these years he became an SCM expert working as consultant and participating in several events as speaker. Pablo co-founded Codice Software in 2005 and since then he played several roles ranging from core engineering to marketing, business development, advertising and sales operations. Together with David, secured a initial VC round in 2009.

Pablo stepped down as CEO when Francisco Monteverde joined the company, to put more focus on his role as chief engineer, although he continues involved in marketing and key sales operations. Pablo contributes as technical evangelist as main contributor to the Codice's blog, speaker on software events, and occasional writer on different technical magazines. Back in 2004 Pablo joined the regional professional association of computing engineers as vice-dean and moved to dean in 2008, position he still holds. Pablo is an associate professor in the University of Burgos, where he is very involved in the training of young engineers teaching project management including important areas such as agile methods and software configuration management.

Pablo got his Master Degree in Computing Engineering back in 2000 (University of Valladolid, Spain). Pablo has a deep passion for software development but when not coding or designing new features he loves motor-bikes, especially track days, but including long touring trips.

Cevat Yerli

CEO & President of Crytek GmbH

Cevat Yerli is President and CEO of Crytek, creator of the CryENGINE and the multi-award winning Crysis game franchise. Cevat’s first game development experiences go back to the 1980s with the Commodore 64 and the Schneider CPC 6128, where he worked on various simulation games. While studying economics in the 1990s, he continued pursuing his passion of creating and playing games and began working towards his dream of founding a game development company. In 1999 he then founded Crytek together with his two brothers, Avni and Faruk. Cevat gives creative direction for all Crytek products and focuses on expanding the company into new territories.

James Ohlen

Game Director of Bioware

James Ohlen, Studio Creative Director for Bioware Austin, is the Game Director on the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic. In his 16 year career at Bioware he has led the design efforts on Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age.

Carsten Van Husen

CEO of Gameforge 4D, Germany.

Gameforge is the leading publisher of free-to-play MMO games in the Western hemisphere, with more than 300 million users in over 75 countries. Gameforge hired Carsten in early 2006 to start publishing client-based MMOs within a newly established Gameforge 4D daughter company. its leading title Metin2 has surged to dominate the Western hemisphere with an active customer base of 9 million monthly.

Robert Bowling

Presidente de Robotoki

Robert is a 14 year veteran of the entertainment industry, well know worldwide for being the most popular face behind the multi-billion dollar Call of Duty franchise, where he acted as Creative Strategist until march 2012. Robert has always been focused on developing entertainment properties that trascend beyond traditional audiences and influence experiences beyond gaming. Right after announcing the founding of his own independent game studio, Robotoki, he visits Gamelab to let us know about it and to share his particlar vision of the industry with the conference audience.

Andres Bou

Founder and CEO of Social Point

Andres is, together with Horacio Martos, founder and CEO of Social Point. With head-office in Barcelona, Social Point employs nowadays more than 70 people and is one of the world reference companies in social gaming.

Andrés took his Bachelor in Computer Science and took the Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship at EM Normandie during the final year of the degree. Before founding Social Point, Andrés worked as a computer analyst and consultant in different companies.

Horacio Martos

Founder and CEO of Social Point

With a University Degree by the Faculty of Computer Science of Barcelona in 2008, Horacio took (together with Andrés Bou – the other founder of the company), the Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship at EM Normandie, where he worked as well as a consultant in different technological companies.

Since the end of 2008, Martos leads Social Point, one of the world’s most important companies in the social gaming sector.

Unai Landa

CTO de Digital Legends

Nace en Bilbao en 1975, programador por vocación, autodidacta desde su infancia a los 9 años consigue su primer spectrum, con el que se dedica a investigar y explorar el mundo de la programación.

Interesado en la demoscene en general y la programación grafica en particular, a los 20 años se traslada a Madrid donde comenzará su andadura en el desarrollo de videojuegos, trabajando en Noria Works, Pyro Studios (donde lanza la saga Comandos) y Trilobite Graphics, ocupando puestos realacionados con el desarrollo de tecnología a todos los niveles.

Su carrera da un giro cuando en 2007 se traslada a Barcelona para trabajar en Digital Legends como CTO dónde junto con el resto del equipo de tecnología han desarrollado el motor multiplataforma con el que Digital Legends ha lanzado al mercado hasta la fecha 10 juegos, 3 demos de tecnologia sobre un total de 8 plataformas distintas.

Teemu Huuhtanen

Vice Presidente, M&A de Rovio

As Vice President, M&A, Mr. Huuhtanen is the head of Mergers & Acquisition for Rovio Entertainment.

Previously he worked 9 years at Sulake, home of Habbo Hotel. As executive vice president, Marketing and Business Development, Sulake Corporation and president, North America, Sulake Inc., Teemu Huuhtanen is instrumental in leading the continued development and growth of Finnish-based Sulake’s top property, Habbo, one of the world’s most popular online social networking and virtual world communities for teens. Huuhtanen also overseed global marketing, advertising sales and public relations efforts for Sulake Corporation.

As an accomplished thought leader for the digital entertainment landscape, Huuhtanen has regularly been a speaker at the industry’s premier conferences and business forums.

Few years ago, The Hollywood Reporter ranked Huuhtanen on its “Digital Power 50 List” of top innovators who influence the creation and distribution of online content. He was also named one of Digital Media Wire’s “25 Executives to Watch in Digital Entertainment.” American Venture Magazine appointed Huuhtanen to their list of the “Top 40 Under 40” executives to watch in the technology industry for 2007.

Matthew Wilson

Senior Manager of publishing of Rovio

Matthew Wilson is the rare Canadian export residing in Finland, and Rovio’s marketing manager from the launch of the Angry Birds phenomenon until the summer of 2011. Matthew achieved amazing results for Angry Birds on zero budget through a mixture of careful market analysis and intimate knowledge of the mobile application space. Matthew is now Rovio’s senior manager of publishing, with the mission of discovering new exciting properties for Rovio.

Matthias Sala

Co-founder & CEO of Gbanga

Matthias Sala is an award-winning Swiss entrepreneur, a visionary inventor having worked on activity-based advertising at Xerox PARC, smart vacuum cleaners at the ETH Zurich and self-refilling refrigerators at Siemens Smart Home Lab in Munich. Together with a friend, he won the Sentient Future Award for Bin It!, a futuristic waste disposal system with a gamification component. Today, Matthias is working on Gbanga, the future of location-based gaming where reality and fiction are blended to mixed-reality. Besides this, Matthias is founding member of Mobile Monday Switzerland and president of the Swiss Game Developer Association (IGDA.ch). He is also co-organizer of SuperHappyDevFlats and StartupCamp Switzerland. Matthias holds a Masters degree in Computer Science with a minor in constructional Architecture from ETH Zurich. He has spoken at, and given presentations for MIT Media Lab, Prevasive 2006, Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona and GameBeat SF among others.