Game developers Brian Reynolds of Zynga and Richard Lemarchand of Naughty Dog will present sessions at Las Vegas' DICE Summit 2010 in February, alongside oceanographer and Titanic co-discoverer David Gallo.
Also scheduled to speak is Mike Yuen of Brazilian download-based console maker Zeebo. In addition, entertainment writer Jamin Brophy-Warren will lead a panel featuring Raven Software designer Manveer Heir, USC assistant professor Dmitri Williams, and video game and film writer Navid Khonsari.
Reynolds is perhaps best known for his collaborations with designer Sid Meier. Reynolds worked with Meier at MicroProse and co-founded Firaxis Games, where he designed
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. He was later CEO of Big Huge Games, and this year joined social game giant Zynga as its chief designer.
Lemarchand is also a veteran of MicroProse, and also spent a decade at Crystal Dynamics. For the last several years, he has worked at Naughty Dog, where he has lead or co-lead design on both
Uncharted games.
More surprising is the inclusion of Gallo, the director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Organizers of the DICE Summit did not specify the nature of his planned session, but did note that he was "one of the first oceanographers to use submarines and robots to map the undersea world" -- a distinction that is likely to be related to game development.
The summit is scheduled to take place from February 17 to February 19 at its traditional venue, the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas.
