Striking gold with world’s largest platform game engine and publisher

Activision and Unity sharing the secret of success at the Festival of Games conference.

UTRECHT – December 16th, 2010 - Two major powers from the games industry share their vision on striking gold in the games industry on April 28 & 29, 2011. The VP of Developer Relations for Activision, Dan Winters, will address the change in the developers pitch in the hunt for the “golden game deal”. Unity’s co-founder Nicholas Francis will discuss how the recent growth in gaming-capabale devices is changing our industry.

In his keynote session, Dan Winters will present solid practical advice to developers on the hunt for a golden game deal. Next to some do’s and don’ts for a developer hoping to impress, Dan Winters will address how to hit the right note in a publisher meeting. “With the changing industry landscape, developers have to adapt their project pitch and consider things such as changed media consumption and alternative gaming experience” according to Winters.

Nicholas Francis will discuss where Unity percieves the games industry is heading, what new trends are coming up and how game developers best can take advantage of them: "We're living in a truly exciting time - new ways of gaming are popping up left, right and center. This gives game developers fantastic opportunities, but also a lot of new design considerations when creating games."

Nicholas is looking forward to his Festival of Games’ session: “I love to contribute to the debate on gaming experience and the effects on the game development process. But I'm also very excited to hear the thoughts of the audience."

Seth van der Meer, Chairman of the Festival of Games, is very pleased with the two speakers: “Having the biggest multi-platform game engine together with the largest game publisher in the world at the Festival of Games shows the growing importance of Europe in the games environment.”

Dan Winters is an industry veteran of over 19 years, with stints at Activision, Disney Interactive, and Electronic Arts. After getting his start at Activision in 1993, working on various titles including Mechwarrior 2, he spent 10 years at Disney Interactive where he eventually became Vice President of Product Development. Under Dan’s leadership, Disney Interactive contributed to or co-released over 50 games including; Kingdom Hearts, Tarzan, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, Tron, and many more. At Electronic Arts, he worked as Executive Producer of Medal of Honor: European Assault.

Before entering into the world of Video Games, Dan spent 4 years playing professional baseball for the Oakland A’s, San Francisco Giants and New York Mets. He also spent 6 years as an actor with appearances on day time TV, commercials and various other TV shows.

Nicholas Francis is co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Unity Technologies, who recently launched their game engine Unity3, enabling developers to quickly develop for a large number of platforms. With the launch of the latest version of the engine, the number of developers adopting the technology increased 20-fold: from 13,000 to 260,000. In daily life, he heads up the Unity editor design. In a past life, he developed games as well as directed a handful of indie films. He also runs Unity's marketing efforts but is trying to get back to fulltime coding.

The Festival of Games
The Festival of Games takes place on April 28-29, 2011, at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht (the Netherlands). The 2010 event attracted over 2000 visitors, with 180 companies from 25 countries.

The Festival of Games is the most effective games industry event, that combines a conference, an international matchmaking event, called Pitch & Match, a business Expo for trade visitors, and the largest games industry Career Fair of Europe. The Conference in 2011 is powered by GamesIndustry.biz.

On December 2nd, the Festival of Games announced the Conference theme for 2011: Entitled "Games Anywhere" the Festival of Games will be all about how the eruption of games in every sector of the consumer market has interacted the videogames business. The two-day Conference on April 28-29 will have a strong focus on convergence and transmedia, with the first speaker recently announced: Managing Director of Endemol Games, Jurian van der Meer will share his knowledge on the fusion of TV and Games.

The Festival of Games is organized by the NLGD Foundation and is made possible by the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, the province of Utrecht and the city of Utrecht.

See www.festivalofgames.org for more details.