GDC Europe 2012 Strengthens Its European Roots, Adding Multiple Notable New Advisory Board Members To Help Program August Event

BERLIN, April 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the industry-leading Game Developers Conference™ Europe (GDC Europe), have added fourteen of Europe's leading game developers to the advisory boards of the event's main conference and summits to help program the lectures, panels and roundtable sessions taking place at GDC Europe 2012 this August. 

Joining the advisory board for the main conference of GDC Europe 2012 are luminaries including former Battlefield Heroes game-runner Ben Cousins, now general manager of ngmoco Sweden; as well as Dino Patti, CEO of Limbo creators Playdead; Crytek veteran Bernd Diemer, design director of Yager Interactive; Lars Gustavsson, creative director at EA DICE; Christopher Schmitz, head of production at Ubisoft Blue Byte (The Settlers and Battle Isle); VP at EA Phenomic, Dirk Ringe; Adrian Hawkins, COO of Kuju Entertainment (Battalion Wars).

Also signing up to the expanded GDC Europe main advisory board are Michiel van der Leeuw, technical director of Killzone franchise creators Guerrilla Games, Jetro Lauha, co-founder and technical lead of Secret Exit (Zen Bound series), Sven Liebech, head of art at Bigpoint GmbH, and Teut Weidemann, the online game veteran consulting companies such as Ubisoft Blue Byte. They join continuing board members including Remedy Entertainment's Matias Myllyrinne (Alan Wake franchise), Avni Yerli of Crytek, and Harald Riegler of Sproing.

Helping to program the increasingly vibrant GDC Europe submarket Summits will be Thomas Grip, one of the key creatives at Amnesia developers Frictional Games, who will join the advisory board for the Independent Games Summit, alongside Die Gute Fabrik's Lau Korsgaard (B.U.T.T.O.N).

Elsewhere, Jami Laes, general manager and co-founder of social game giant Playfish, and Henric Suuronen, head of studio at Non-Stop Games (and formerly at wooga) will both join the board of the Social & Online Games Summit.

In addition, Ansu Lonnberg, chairman of the board of Secret Exit, and Semyon Voinov, co-founder of Cut the Rope creators ZeptoLab will join notables such as Fishlabs CEO and co-founder Michael Schade (Galaxy On Fire) on the advisory board of the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit.

Now it in its fourth year and happening alongside the European-leading gamescom trade fair, GDC Europe will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 13-15, 2012 at the Congress-Centrum Ost Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany. 

The event will once again serve the European game industry by gathering the world's leading speakers in areas specific to current European game development trends across platforms and development disciplines.  The addition of some of the continent's top game developers to the event's advisory boards is a sign of the conference's renewed commitment to focusing its content on the development community and on those issues most relevant to those creating games in Europe.

"It has been an honor for us as we enter our fourth year of GDC Europe to learn how many of the continent's top developers have wanted to join us in programming the event's content," said Meggan Scavio, general manager of all Game Developers Conference events.  "With this incredible influx of new energy and ideas across the advisory boards for both the main conference and all three summits, I believe we can expect this year's GDC Europe to continue to blossom into the most important event on the industry calendar for those who want to push the European development industry into new territory."

GDC Europe 2011 hosted over 2100 attendees, 170 speakers, 45 exhibitors and more than 300 media representatives. With a developer-focused Expo Floor area, and myriad day and evening networking events, GDC Europe 2012 will continue to offer business and networking opportunities to all attendees. For more information on GDC Europe please visit www.gdceurope.com.

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