With only one week to go, the roster of top-level speakers and hard-hitting topics at the ELSPA International Games Summit grows ever more impressive.
Keynotes will include Electronic Arts’ Rory Armes, who is VP and general manager of its $300 million grossing European Studio. The Summit also plays host to an industry super panel which will close the event on Wednesday 22nd June. Discussing a range of issues and taking questions from the floor, the panel will include senior decision makers from the European computer and video games industry.
Other additions to the schedule include a session that will look at new routes to market, considering new technologies that offer alternatives to the traditional channels. Additionally, the phenomenon of advertising in games will be studied by Massive Inc.’s VP of Global Business Development, Nicholas Pertin. Pertin will look at the potential new revenue streams for the industry from blue chip advertisers who want to get close to gamers.
Heading a session called ‘Fake Nation’ will be Dr Jason Rutter, research fellow at the ERSC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition at The University of Manchester and Dr Jo Bryce, senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire. They will be exclusively unveiling new research into attitudes that motivate consumers to buy and accept pirated or counterfeited games.
Professor Stephen Heppell, director Ultralab, Anglian Polytechnic University, will be hosting a panel session considering the ways video games are being embraced by education, looking at what training and courses are being developed to help bring through future crops of new gaming talent. The panel members include Adrian Hall, team leader of multimedia resources at the DfES and Ian Livingstone, chairman of Skillset’s Game Group (Sector Skills Council for the Audio and Visual Industries).
Other keynotes include David Reeves, president and COO of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Peter Moore, corporate VP worldwide of marketing and publishing, Microsoft Xbox.
It has also been confirmed that Lord Puttnam, film producer, former CEO of Columbia Pictures and founder chairman of the Trustees at BAFTA, will address the Eve of Summit speakers’ dinner.