GDC '08 Announces New Advisory Board Members

Author: by Staff

CMP Technology's 2008 Game Developers Conference (GDC) has announced five new members for its advisory board, each with considerable talent, knowledge and experience in video game design and visual arts. The new additions "...reflect the GDC's response to both evolving industry and attendee input for even more visual arts and design content for the event", according to a statement from the organizers. The new members of the GDC '08 advisory board are: - Carey Chico, studio art director at Pandemic Studios, who first started at Activision Studios as an animator on Planetfall, and went on to work as lead artist on Battlezone before becoming a founding member of Pandemic Studios. More recently, Chico has overseen work on Full Spectrum Warrior, Battlefront, Mercenaries, and Destroy All Humans. - John Feil, designer at Snowblind Studios, whose industry duties have spanned from quality assurance, to technical writing, and finally to level designer, and designer. Currently, Feil is a system designer for Snowblind Studios, the chairman of the IGDA’a Credits Committee, and co-author of Course Technology’s Beginning Game Level Design. - Ichiro Otobe, chief strategist at Square Enix, who joined the company in 2003, serving as the president of Square Enix Inc., the U.S. arm of Square Enix, until 2005. - Rob Pardo, vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment, who supervises the overall design and implementation of game-play features for every Blizzard game, including World of Warcraft, after joining in 1997 as a designer and strike-team member on the real-time strategy game StarCraft. - Dave Ranyard, creative services manager at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's London Development Studio, who is responsible for the following departments: audio, music, graphic design, and video, and has worked on titles such as Wip3Out, The Getaway & The Getaway: Black Monday, and the EyeToy and Singstar brands. Said GDC executive director Jamil Moledina, "In order to continue to push global game creation forward, we have refreshed our own content development team with a mix of international, art, design, and online thought leaders. We are extremely excited and grateful to be working with all the cutting-edge developers of the GDC Advisory Board in crafting the vision and curriculum of GDC 08." [The full GDC advisory board is listed on the official Game Developers Conference website - the event, like Gamasutra, is run by the CMP Game Group.]