Program Europe 2012
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEPitching to Publishers: How to Impress and What to Avoid
Pete Smith, Director, Product Development at Sony Computer Entertainment
The presentation will outline what publishers and external developers are looking for from game developers.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEHow to Self finance your production using a completion bond
Risa Cohen, Computer Games Executive at European Film Bonds
How can independent game studios and producers use the experience of other creative industries such as film and TV? The Completion bond modelcould be the solution.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEFundraising 101 for Game Companies
Paul Heydon, Managing Director at Avista Partners
Now is the actually the best time ever in the history of the game sector to raise money. The question is how to do that successfully with fair terms.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEFree-to-play: State of the Industry 2012
Joost van Dreunen, CEO & Co-founder at SuperData Research
Some questions have emerged from the shift toward digital gaming.In this lecture you'll find the answers.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEGames Publishing in 2012 and beyond: new process, new roles, new business models
Sergei Klimov, Business Development & International Publishing Professional at sergeiklimov.biz
We will discuss how exactly the releasing process has evolved, and how studios can best adapt to those changes.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEThe Evolution of Game Publishing
Andrew N. Green, Director of Business Development at TinyCo
Insight on the current state of publishing in the digital world, and how it could potentially change for the better or worse.
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BUSINESSPANELPayment Manager Panel - Insider Secrets to Payment Methods
Mark Gerban, Director of Business Development at gamigo AG + Victor Bacre, Director of Business Development & Payment at Just A Game GmbH + Jose Ramos, Online Payment Manager at Ubisoft + Jochen Siegert, Head of Payment at Bigpoint + Alexander Samak, Executive Director Monetization at Gameforge. MODERATOR: Jens Bader, Chief Commercial Officer at Paysafecard
As payment companies are often present at international shows, how do you know which ones to use and trust? This panel will focus on payment industry secrets coming directly from some of the top payment managers in the industry!
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BUSINESSCONFERENCERunning a Real Cash Economy Isn't Easy, Ask Anyone Who's Tried!
John Bates, Director of Business Development at MindArk / Entropia Universe
As Free to Play games and virtual economies continue to mature Entropia Universe stands out as a clear leader. Come find out why and how you can benefit from Entropia's knowledge.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCETop Eleven: The road to the Top via emerging markets
Nikola Cavic, Head of Business Development at Nordeus
In this presentation, Nikola Cavic explains how Nordeus, the award-winning gaming startup, published and pushed Top Eleven to the #1 spot by recognizing and embracing gaming audiences in the emerging markets.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEGlobal Opportunities for Social and Mobile Games
Rex Ng, CEO and Co-Founder at 6waves
6waves, the largest publisher of independent social and mobile games, will share key insights on how it helps developers all over the world to publish their games not just on Facebook and to the US App Store, but also on the platforms thriving in China, Japan and Korea.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCE7 Learnings from Making AION Free-to-Play
Carsten Van Husen, CEO at Gameforge 4D
Carsten van Husen will provide a closer look at the process and lessons learned behind the 2012 migration of the MMORPG AION from a subscription based pay-to-play system into a free-to-play business model for the European market.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEMaking Money with Casual Games: What's real today!
Jessica Sachs, Director-Developer Relations at Big Fish
How to successfully increase the ROI on an individual game.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEChinese mobile gaming market-path towards a bright future
Haosu Wang, Senior Business Development Manager at Tencent Technology Company Limited
With his expertise in mobile game distribution and localization, Haosu will show you how your game can be successful in China.
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BUSINESSPANELFunding Your Game with Kickstarter
Cindy Au, Director of Community at Kickstarter + Matt Edmunds, CCO at Stainless Games + Thomas Bidaux, CEO at ICO Partners
Join Kickstarter's Community Director Cindy Au, Matt Edmunds of Stainless Games (Carmageddon), and Adrian Hon of Six to Start (Zombies, Run!) as they discuss strategies and best practices for using Kickstarter to fund your next game development project.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEThis town ain't big enough for both of us - Trend Compendium for the F2P online games industry
Cedric Genin, Regional manager France and Italy at Bigpoint
Join Cedric GENIN as he talks about how to keep on innovating, stay ahead of the competition and the challenges in F2P games developers and publishers will have to face in the next years.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEGameFounders Demo Pitch
Kadri Ugand , Co-founder at GameFounders
6 promising gaming startups from GameFounders accelerator will pitch their games and teams to investors and publishers.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCESelected Projects Conference
Game Connection's Selected Projects
Discover unpublished & original projects as well as the name of Game Connection Europe 2012 Best Project
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BUSINESSPANELFraud: How it may Steal your Revenues and the Options to Limit it Seriously
Mark Gerban, Director of Business Development at gamigo AG + Pierre Forest, CEO at Metaboli + Johan Lingvall, Web Development Manager at GamersGate
This panel will address Fraud and its impact on free to play games and digital distribution.
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEBlackBerry 10 - we got game!
Volker Hirsch, Director, Global Head of Business Development - Games at Research in Motion
This talk will explore the opportunity and offer insights in how BlackBerry is going to boost social discovery and monetization for game developers
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BUSINESSCONFERENCEGIS Day: Protection of minors in Europe – models, trends, alternatives
Malte Behrmann, General Secretary at EGDF
The GIS Day will be a 2-hours meeting reserved for associations and association members. This year Malte Behrmann will focus on protection of minors in Europe.
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Game DesignCONFERENCEGuidelines for Successful Games for Children
Carla Fisher, President at No Crusts Interactive
This session aims to help developers build a foundation of knowledge by uncovering existing research on children and technology from a variety of fields, including child developmental psychology, human computer interaction, television, and market research.
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Game DesignCONFERENCEGua-Le-Ni: a story of lie-detectors and paper beasts.
Stefano Gualeni, Game Designer at Double Jungle
Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade is an iPad-exclusive action puzzle video game developed by Double Jungle. Besides for its quirky philosophy-inspired concept, the game is the first commercially-released attempt to tune a casual video game with the aid of medical technology: Gua-Le-Ni was iteratively tested biometrically.
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Game DesignCONFERENCEStory Development for Games
Jeff Combos, Narrative Producer at Microsoft Studios
In this session, award-winning game developer Jeff Combos will illustrate how interactive narrative development differs from other mediums and give practical advice on how to integrate story into the iterative game development process.
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Game DesignCONFERENCEVideo games as articulators of mathematical and scientific phenomena
Hamish Todd, Game Designer at Girih Games
There is an emerging and natural relationship between interesting maths and fun video games. This relationship has implications for discourse, art, and education. But it holds the most promise for level designers, for whom it can open doors to new purposes and new kinds of beauty.
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Game DesignCONFERENCELanding on Mars: Our Rocky Path to Innovative Gameplay
Randy Smith, Owner, Designer, and Creative at Tiger Style
Join creative director Randy Smith through a tour of their well-documented experiments, mistakes, theories, and victories to get a glimpse into what this award-winning studio has learned about the problem of inventing new gameplay.
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Game DesignCONFERENCE2 cases, 2 approaches, 2 solutions: cross platform development of two pc online browser games for mobile devices
Hendrik Lesser, Managing Director, Remote Control Productions GmbH
Hendrik will be talking about decisions made, problems encountered and lessons learned during the development of 2 browser MMOs, soon to be available on a smartphone near you.
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Game DesignCONFERENCEBreaking Up With Armageddon: Examining the Stakes of Game Stories
Richard Dansky, Central Clancy Writer at Red Storm/Ubisoft
Are big titles doomed to risk all of humanity with every annual release (plus DLC)? Or is there a way to harness the power, spectacle and scope of AAA to develop alternative narratives that fit more harmoniously with the gameplay systems around them?
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MarketingCONFERENCEThe User Experience: Past, Present and Future
Tobias Edl, Media Relationship Manager at InnoGames
Tobias presents what he believes is the perfect balance between getting as much information from the user as possible, and getting them in the game fast.
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MarketingCONFERENCEMarketing multi-platform games
Tommy Palm, Mobile Guru at King.com
In this presentation, King.com takes a case study approach on how to design, market and then monetize social games that run across multiple platforms.
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MarketingCONFERENCEShifting from a product industry to a service industry: Marketing Implications
Steve Fowler, General Manager at [a]list games
This discussion will draw parallels between what is happening now in the games business and what happened then to filmed entertainment.
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MarketingPANELYou've got a good game... now, how the heck do you make it sell well? Games Marketing: a DIY Guide
Guillaume Rambourg, Managing Director at GOG.com + Sergei Klimov - Industry Professional with over 15 years of experience at companies such as 1C-Softclub, Snowberry Connection, and Larian Studios + Mikael Haveri, Sales and Marketing Manager at Frozenbyte.
During this panel, indie developers Frozenbyte and Larian Studios will team up with a digital platform GOG.com to share practical stories on how they've engaged press, users, and social media to make their games a success.
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MarketingCONFERENCEOnline Marketing under Pressure How to work smarter, not harder in Free2Play online games
Simon Usiskin, Co-Founder at iQU
Simon Usiskin looks at tactics and strategies in the free2play online games space for player acquisition. He will show with examples what works and what doesn't as well as sharing explanations why that is the case.
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MarketingCONFERENCEDynamic Pricing
Philip Reisberger, Co-founder of AllSocialData
This talk starts by stating what free to play means when you break it down to pricing. It also opens the treasure chest of business intelligence and analysis, dynamic pricing models, big data and predictive data mining.
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MarketingCONFERENCEHow to Acquire & Retain users of mobile gaming apps?
Jerome Stioui, CEO at Ad4Screen
Ad4Screen presents how game publishers can acquire new users and moreover how to retain, convert and upsell them to maximize the ARPU.
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MarketingCONFERENCEHow to build a mobile game business through new revenue models
Pepe Agell, International Business Development and Operations at Chartboost
Pepe Agell will provide specific cases where companies have made more than $500,000 in just a few months. Pepe will be joined by game developers who will share valuable insights and experience.
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MarketingCONFERENCEWhat's next for PR ? How Public Relations need to evolve to keep up with a changing landscape
Julien Wera, PR & Marketing Manager for Massive and Nadeo, two Ubisoft studios
This talk will focus on the key areas where PR has changed and how to adapt to a new world of communication, touching on topics such as the relation to user communities, the management of global communications, the relevancy of big trade shows, and more.
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MarketingCONFERENCEConquering Community Triage - Every Second Counts!
Linda Carlson, Director, Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment + Richard Weil, Vice President of Client Services at Metaverse Mod Squad
At Sony Online Entertainment, the Community Team went from 23 full-time salaried employees to 10, and yet increased their services both internally and externally, as well as supporting more online games. In this lecture, the speakers will reveal how this was accomplished.
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MarketingCONFERENCEGambling with Matchsticks - the Convergence between Social Gaming and Gambling
Raf Keustermans, CEO, Co-Founder at Plumbee
Why are social casino games are so hot right now? And why are gambling companies buying free-to-play game studios? What can the game industry learn from the world of gambling, and vice versa? In this session, Raf Keustermans, co-founder and CEO of social casino startup Plumbee will share insights and data from both worlds
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MarketingConferenceGame Connection Marketing Awards Ceremony
All Marketing Awards nominees!
Let's unveil the winners of this amazing first edition!
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MarketingPANELNew vs Old - What does Video Game Marketing Look Like Now?
Thomas Bidaux, CEO at ICO Partners + Rahim Attaba, Marketing Director, Europe at Wargaming.net + Tommy Palm, Mobile Guru at King.com
In this panel, experts in the field working in different segments of the industry will confront their views on what will happen in the coming months and years and how that changes the way marketing is going to be more and more in the center of the battlefield.
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MarketingCONFERENCEMobile Marketing for Smartphone Game Apps
Megumi Jinno, Director of Advertising at GREE UK, Ltd
Talk from the experience earned by GREE as a mobile platform player, ad a mobile game developer, and as a mobile advertising business player.
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ProductionCONFERENCEImplementing an In-House Playtesting Process
Graham McAllister, Founder at Player Research
This talk will outline a complete playtesting process and show the best methods to help developers make better games.
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ProductionCONFERENCEHow to improve the Quality of the Quality Assurance
Artur Foxander, QA Manager at Paradox Interactive
Couple of months ago the Paradox Development QA team of one lead, one QA and 4 interns was assigned on testing of two different Gold Masters on the same day. Both releases were considered very stable by critics and users. The total crunch time was 1 man-hour. This is a story about how it was achieved and what can be done to build up a highly effective QA and maintain it's effectiveness.
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ProductionCONFERENCEProblems and Solutions Encountered During Work for Hire Development
Gabor Kadas, CEO at Human Soft Inc.
The presentation showcases two real-life examples of game development. Both games were what is called work-for-hire, meaning that the IP and the rights to it belong to the publisher.
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TechnologyCONFERENCEHow Smart Programmers write Stupid Code
Tony Albrecht, Principal Programmer at Overbyte
Tony Albrecht spent the first 5 years of his professional game dev life writing his own game engines, and then the next 10 working with (and fixing) other people's engines. This talk is a distillation of the lessons learnt over that time.
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TechnologyCONFERENCEGame Tools in the Browser
Don Olmstead, Software Engineer at Sony Network Entertainment
This session will show how to design tools utilizing the functionality available in the browser and on the server.This session is intended for programmers, of all levels of experience, interested in game engine and tools development utilizing the browser.
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TechnologyCONFERENCEThe Difficulty of Going Mobile
Dietmar Hauser, Head of Console Technology at Sproing Interactive Media GmbH
Based on practical experience, this session will show what those differences are and how one can overcome them, without having to stray too much from traditional game development.
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TechnologyCONFERENCECUTTING THE PIPE: Achieving Sub-Second Iteration Times
Niklas Frykholm, Founder at Bitsquid
This session will show how we designed the content pipe for War of the Roses and the Bitsquid Tech to achieve sub-second iteration times (from a change is made, until it can be seen in-game, on the target hardware) without compromising on the runtime performance.
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TechnologyCONFERENCEMaking a Multiplayer 3D Shooter in the Browser
Will Eastcott, Co-founder at Play Canvas
This presentation will detail the main challenges of developing a game while subject to extreme time constraints.
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TechnologyCONFERENCELocal Image-based Lighting With Parallax-corrected Cubemap
Sebastien Lagarde, Engine/graphic programmer at DontNod
This sessions will present a new efficient method for simulating static local reflections for specular or glossy objects with local cubemaps, targeting game applications.
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TechnologyCONFERENCEDebugging memory stomps and other atrocities
Stefan Reinalter, Managing Director at Molecular Matters
In this talk, Stefan shares tips and tricks how to identify the root cause of such problems and how to debug them with little or no help from a debugger.
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TechnologyCONFERENCESquare Enix: Getting prepared for the Future of Technology
Julien Merceron, Worldwide Technology Director at Square Enix
During this session Julien will show you through its experience with Agni's Philosophy and other tools the group’s focus over the next 3 years, both on consoles, Mobile and on Web Browsers.
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TechnologyCONFERENCEAutodesk Gameware: Production-Proven, Future-Ready Middleware (Presented by Autodesk)
Kevin Booth, Gameware Business Lead, EMEA at Autodesk Media & Entertainment + Mustapha Bismi, Senior AI Developer at Autodesk Media & Entertainment
Attendees will learn about Autodesk Gameware solutions, and how they can enhance and simplify a modern day development pipeline.
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Visual artsCONFERENCEZBrush Creature Design - Session
Scott Spencer, Creature Designer at Weta Workshop
Scott will be presenting on how ZBrush is used as a design tool for creatures and characters in the film, game, and entertainment industry.
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Visual artsCONFERENCENext Gen Texturing or... How to create 5x more assets for 5x more platforms with the same amount of people
Alexis Khouri, VP Strategy and Sales + Jérémie Noguer, Technical Artist at Allegorithmic
This session describes how to overcome the challenge of next generation texturing.
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Visual artsCONFERENCEHoudini as a procedural content creation platform in games - Session
Coen Klosters, Senior Technical Artist at Guerrilla Games
This lecture will be focused on production examples and current implementations at Guerrilla Games.
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Visual artsCONFERENCEHigh-End Mocap Tips and Tricks for Games and Films
Ricardo Tobon, Lead Technical Animator & Mocap Specialist at Sony Computer Entertainment Am
During this lecture Ricardo will share his collection of tips and tricks used to get most out of a high-end mocap process for AAA games and films.
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Visual artsCONFERENCETHE "HELL YEAH!" MAKING OF: a lot of fun, a lot of lessons learned,too.
Aurelien Regard, Graphic Artist / Co-Founder at Arkedo Studio
How ""HellYeah!"" is born.








