2008 Worlds In Motion Summit Adds Nexon, GoPets

Author: by Staff

The organizers of the online worlds-focused Worlds In Motion Summit about online worlds have announced additional speakers participating in the upcoming event. Nexon's Min Kim, Millions of Us' Reuben Steiger, Rmbr's Gabe Zichermann and GoPets' Erik Bethke will be joining the event, and previously-revealed speakers include Areae's Raph Koster, Worldwide Biggies CTO and Nicktropolis co-creator Chris Romero, Conduit Labs' Nabeel Hyatt and Relic Labs studio head Adrian Crook. The Summit, which is organized by the editors of Gamasutra sister website WorldsInMotion.biz, will be held on Monday and Tuesday, February 18-19th 2008, as part of the 2008 Game Developers Conference. The Summit will focus on the intersection of online worlds and games, and the official description of the event is as follows: "The Worlds in Motion Summit is a definitive event tailored for the growing number of industry professionals and Fortune 500 companies developing interactive online spaces for both entertainment and commercial purposes. Discussion forums will delve into online worlds, social gaming and media and player created activity. These will provide insight for developers of all backgrounds into how the game industry is collectively building socialization into games and integrating personalization and player-generated content into gameplay — while widely accessible Web and networking tools are looking to the game industry for their way forward." In addition, following its initial announcement, the inaugural Worlds In Motion Summit has announced four more speakers, and is expected to debut many more over the next few weeks. More details are as follows: - Nexon's Min Kim (Already a pioneer in areas of online socialization, personalization and microtransactions-based virtual economies in Korea, Nexon successfully brought games like MapleStory and Audition to a variety of markets around the world, including North America and Europe, and Min Kim of Nexon U.S.A. will discuss how knowing individual markets helped these titles achieve big success wherever they've gone.) - Millions of Us' Reuben Steiger (Millions of Us has successfully brought various music and television properties into the virtual world, most recently supporting CNN's Second Life launch, and Millions of Us CEO Reuben Steiger will be discussing how virtual worlds will play a pivotal role in the convergence of entertainment media, as formerly disparate content meets in a single online experience.) - Rmbr's Gabe Zichermann (Ten-year industry veteran Zichermann developed the concept for rmbr in early 2007 after realizing that he had stopped enjoying the process of dealing with his friends’ online photos, and that a game-centric approach might fix the problem. He will share his perspectives on web concepts and 2D virtual worlds as a dominant paradigm.) - GoPets' Erik Bethke (Author and developer Erik Bethke, CEO of GoPets.com, will discuss the tenets of user engagement, and share how taking a lesson from Richard Bartle's four gamer "types" helped grow revenue and create user engagement with his virtual pets product.) The Summit is available to attend via several different Game Developers Conference 2008 passes, and more information is available on the Worlds In Motion Summit webpage.