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Home , Behaviour Interactive, CCP Games, Defiance (season 1), Jungle Rumble, Kesmai, Monolith Productions

Event Program

February 26 & 27, 2016 Microsoft New England Research and Development Center Cambridge, MA

@Mass_DiGI #GC16

Wifi – Network: Cambridge Password: md0227

Schedule

Friday, February 26

9:15 – 10:00am +Registration and Networking+

10:00 – 10:15am +Overview of the Game Challenge: What to Expect+

10:15- 10:30am +Welcome from the Commonwealth+ Helena Fruscio, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Technology, MA EOHED

10:30 – 11:00am +Creating a New Category: Innovating as an Indie+ Seth Sivak, CEO, Proletariat, Inc.

11:00 – 11:30am +From Student to CEO: The First 10 months of a New Company+ Ryan Canuel, CEO, Petricore Games

11:30 – 12:00pm +Getting Your Game Noticed+ Dennis Scimeca, Writer, The Daily Dot

12:00 – 12:45pm +Indie Showcase opens and Lunch+

12:45 – 1:15pm +Keynote: On Player Engagement+ Nathan Richardsson, Senior Producer, Behaviour Interactive

1:15 – 5:00pm +Mentor and Peer Sessions+

5:00 – 5:30pm +Closing Remarks and Charge to the Teams+

6:00pm +VIP Reception+

Saturday, February 27

8:30 – 9:30am +Registration and Networking+

9:30 – 11:30am +Initial Judging (see assigned schedule for your team; up to 8 minutes with each judge) and Supplementary Activities: Sponsor Talks, Indie Showcase or Peer Meetings+

11:30 – 12:30pm +Lunch+

12:30 – 1:00pm +Finalists Announced+

1:00 – 1:15pm +Break and Set-Up For Finalist Pitches+

1:15 – 3:15pm +Finalists Elevator Pitches (5 minutes each)+

3:15 – 4:15pm +Lightning Talks+

4:15 – 5:15pm +Awards Ceremony+

Mentors

Kellian Adams – Green Door Labs

Kellian Adams Pletcher is the Founder and Mastermind of Green Door Labs, a company that focuses on educational games for spaces like museums, cities and libraries. Among other things, Kellian has worked as a middle school teacher, senior producer for Active Chinese in Shanghai and the director of cultural projects for SCVNGR in Boston. Green Door Labs has built games and playful experiences with great big organizations like Education First, The University of Arizona and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as great tiny organizations like single-founder startups, house museums and nonprofits helping them discover their new media capabilities and tell their story through games.

Green Door Labs is also known for its Edventure Builder, a platform to building mobile scavenger hunts, interactive fiction or choose-your-own adventures. Check out Kellian’s adventures and follow the blog at www.greendoorlabs.com or www.edventurebuilder.com. Kellian likes tater tots and peas.

Elicia Basoli – Disruptor Beam

Elicia has over a decade of PR, marketing and events experience under her belt specifically focused on the games and interactive entertainment industries. She has helped to promote numerous games and the people that make them from companies such as Disruptor Beam, Demiurge Studios, Roadhouse Interactive, Turbine / Warner Bros., Disney Interactive Media Group, gamerDNA, Wizards of the Coast and Upper Deck Entertainment. Born and raised in Massachusetts, Elicia is an avid supporter of the games business in the New England area and she thinks MassDiGI is the bee’s knees.

Michael Carriere – Zapdot

Michael Carriere is the founder of Zapdot, the creator of the Collective and a leader of the Boston Indies. The Indie Game Collective aims to help local indies develop their studios and games through criticism and mentorship. His studio, Zapdot, has collaborated with multiple studios building serious, free-to-play, PC and mobile games.

Jack Dalrymple – Cap and Cut

Jack Dalrymple is an industry veteran at marketing video games and producing game trailers; SVP of Marketing at Ape Law, VP of Marketing at Bit Fry, and founder of Cap and Cut the Boston based trailer house and creative design studio. As Lead Editor and Technical Director at WB Games’ Turbine Studio from 2004 to 2014, he developed and edited more than $10 million in marketing trailers and ingame cutscenes with over 9 million views online. Jack continues to lead the marketing initiatives for AAA and indie developers worldwide with an all encompassing approach to design, presentation and consistency across brand.

Alex Engel – Disruptor Beam

As a Product Manager for Disruptor Beam, Alex helps guide the product development for Game of Thrones Ascent and Star Trek Timelines. As Product Manager for Game of Thrones Ascent, he was responsible for the financial results, development direction, and performance of an online mobile game downloaded and played by millions. As a Product Manager on Star Trek Timelines, he guides ongoing product development for the launch and deployment of Star Trek Timelines.

David Lennon – Proletariat Games

Following a career of professional business software development and consulting, David saw a path to combine his passion for games with his chosen vocation and jumped at the opportunity. The subsequent decade plus in the industry has brought no regrets. A Software Engineering career has helped him appreciate the patterns that make good software – good GAMES – not just possible, but rewarding. Those patterns are only possible through people and the team dynamics that drive them. David enjoys working with strong engineers, setting up productive environments, and helping teams make great products. He is presently working in the code mines on Proleteriat’s newest game, Streamline! Streamline is designed to let streamers play together with their in new ways. http://playstreamline.com

Tom Lin – Demiurge Studios

Tom is the Creative Director at Demiurge Studios. He’s been making games for over 15 years and has contributed to a diversity of franchises, including Bioshock, Borderlands, , Medal of Honor, and . Recently he’s focused on mobile development and UI/design challenges on mobile/portable devices. Tom helps oversee the art and design departments at Demiurge. Tom holds a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jonathon Myers – Ear Play

Jonathon co-founded to pursue his interests in simulated conversation, interactive systems design, and narrative entertainment platforms. As a games industry thought leader and an expert on interactive story and narrative design, he has spoken at local, national, and international conferences on these topics. Formerly a professional playwright, screenwriter, and student Academy Award nominee, Jonathon received his MFA in creative writing from Boston University. He spent summers in the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive and studied with Nobel laureates Elie Weisel and Derek Walcott.

In his prior work in the games industry Jonathon led the adaptation of major story properties into mass market casual games. As a freelance narrative designer and writer, he was first the writer for Zynga Boston’s Indiana Jones Adventure World, named a top-five social game of 2011. Jonathon next designed and led implementation of narrative content for Game of Thrones Ascent, an adaptation of the HBO and George R.R. Martin property, produced by Disruptor Beam. He enjoys collaborating with high-profile authors to care for their property in a new interactive medium.

Jeff Orkin – Giant Otter Technologies, Inc.

Jeff Orkin is Co-founder / CTO of GiantOtter, a company developing conversational AI for games and chat messaging. Jeff holds a PhD from the MIT Media Lab, where his research focused on simulating social interaction and dialogue from crowdsourced data in virtual environments. Prior to MIT, Jeff spent a decade working in the videogame industry. At , Jeff led the development of award winning Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems for No One Lives Forever 2 (Computer Games Magazine: Best AI 2002) and F.E.A.R. (Gamespot.com: Best AI 2005, AIGameDev.com: #2 most influential AI game). Jeff has served as a Contributing Author and Section Editor of the AI Game Programming Wisdom book series, and Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games. Widely recognized as a leader in the field of AI for games, Jeff regularly speaks at academic and industry conferences, and has published 25+ peer-reviewed articles about AI. Jeff holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington and Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Tufts University with a minor in Studio Art.

Jay Piette – Turbine/WB Games

Jay grew up playing many, many computer and video games in nearby Smithfield, Rhode Island. After attending the University of Rhode Island, he landed a TV Production internship at Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet network in Bethesda, Maryland. But still, gaming called! Jay got his start in the Game Industry in 1997 working at Discovery Channel Multimedia. After having shipped what should be anyone’s limit on edutainment titles, in 1998 he moved on to manage the QA Team at online gaming pioneer Kesmai in Charlottesville, Virginia. Kesmai was acquired by a year and a half later. Over his 6 years at Kesmai/EA, Jay served as QA Manager for such projects as Online, Web Portal EA.com, 3, Aliens Online, Majestic, Legends of Kesmai and many other online games. In 2003, Jay returned to his old stomping grounds of New England to take on the role of Director of Quality Assurance at Turbine. In his ten years at Turbine/WB Games, Jay has led the QA teams responsible for Infinite Crisis, The Lord of the Rings Online™, Dungeons and Dragons Online®, Asheron’s Call® 1 and 2, Expansion Packs, in-house Billing System Infrastructure, Turbine’s transition to a free-to-play model and more game content updates than he can still count.

In his spare time Jay enjoys, shockingly, playing tons of video games! Although he owns many consoles past and present, he’s quite insistent that PC gaming will never die. He also frequents the Boston club scene, enjoys watching/attending Red Sox games and is always willing to debate why is better than your favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy story.

Nathan Richardsson – Behaviour Interactive

With more than 15 years of experience in product and game development, Nathan has served on the Executive Board of CCP Games, Executive Producer of and Vice President of Development at Trion Worlds, the first massive online multi-platform shooter (PC, 360, PS3) interconnected with the TV series Defiance. Other tenures include , Iceland Telecom and mentoring startups such as Clara game analytics, later acquired by Jive. He also likes spandex, technoviking and conquering worlds. He is now Senior Producer of Warhammer 40,000 : Eternal Crusade, a Massively Online Third Person Shooter on PC, PS4 and .

Key titles:

, Sci-Fi PC MMO  , Sci-Fi PS3 FPS MMO  , PC MMO  Defiance, Sci-Fi PC, PS3, MMO  Eternal Crusade, PC, PS4, XBOX ONE TPS MMO

Dennis Scimeca – The Daily Dot

The Daily Dot is the newspaper of record for the internet. Dennis works in the Geek section, on the video game beat.

In his four years as a freelance writer prior to writing for the Dot, Dennis wrote for a wide range of quality outlets and ran the gamut from personal essays and opinion columns, to news reporting, feature writing, and media criticism, and wrote from mainstream audience, enthusiast-facing, and business and development perspectives. Dennis has a particular interest in first person shooter design, the development of narrative in games, serious games, and social justice issues in the .

Monty Sharma – MassDiGI

Monty Sharma is the Managing Director at MassDigi an institute developed to foster a strong bond between academia and the games industry. He leads outreach and the development of innovative programs. He also currently hosts a podcast on Game Breaker TV on the business of games.

Sharma was formerly a Founder/General Manager of , a voice chat service provider in the games industry. He oversaw product and marketing for a company that servers over 60 million users around the world. With key relationships with EA, Ubisoft, Sony, , Big Point and many others, Vivox is the largest games communication provider and the second largest IP voice provider in the world.

Before joining Vivox, Sharma was vice president of business development at Jamcracker, Inc., where he developed partnerships and channel agreements that extended Jamcracker’s market share as a leading provider of IT management platforms. Prior to Jamcracker, Sharma served as vice president Novell Service Provider Network at Novell, Inc. and played a key role in creating an independent business unit and brand that provided software and professional services to carriers, ASPs and Novell’s extensive reseller channel.

Sharma also held management positions at Nova Scotia telecommunications service provider MT&T where he served as chief technology officer of Mpowered PC deploying leading edge DSL and ASP solutions. He began his career working for consulting organizations including BDI Business Development Information, Inc. and Software Experts.

Sharma earned a BA in History from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has held numerous positions on corporate and public boards and is the author of several trade press articles.

Dan Silvers – Lantana Games

Danny is a game designer with a focus on creating positively-influenced games for kids and adults alike. As a co-founder of both Lantana Games and the Boston Festival of Indie Games, Danny has experience from many different sides of the industry but specializes mainly in game design, graphic design, business, and marketing. Being a lifelong game developer himself, Danny has a major interest in helping young developers find success, both artistically and commercially.

Trevor Stricker – Disco Pixel

Trevor started making games on the when games came on disks and people read about them in magazines printed on dead trees. He spent a decade making console games like NBA and Panzer Dragoon Orta in roles from coffee fetcher to designer to lead programmer. He went indie in 2008, way before it was mainstream. He was in charge of development for Quickhit NFL Football, an early F2P online game that raised VC, signed the NFL, and sold to a publisher. After that he founded Disco Pixel where his love of rhythm games drummed up . It recently launched on PlayStation Vita and iOS, where it rose to the top of the music game charts in countries from the US to the Netherlands to Japan.

Nikita Virani – Wizdy Games

Nikita is the co-founder and CEO at Wizdy. She believes in gaming for good. Wizdy leverages games to empower kids to take ownership of their lives; tackling asthma first on iOS and Android! Nikita has experience in launching a game from concept to market, business development, marketing, pitching and early-stage startup problem-solving.

Rules & Judging Criteria

Please visit www.massdigi.org to view the event rules and judging criteria.

Prizes

 1 category prize-winning team will be awarded our Grand Prize Winner Pack, which includes:

o $2,000! o Legal services package valued at $5,000 from Greenberg Traurig** o Mentorship package* o PAX East 2016 demo space at MassDiGI booth* o Dell Chromebook 13 courtesy of Dell and Ellucian o Valve mystery box o Trophy

 6 teams will be awarded Category Prize Winner Packs (Indie: Beta/Near Release – Entertainment, Indie: Demo/Alpha – Entertainment, College: Beta/Near Release – Entertainment, College: Demo/Alpha – Entertainment, Indie & College: Beta/Near Release – Serious, Indie & College: Demo/Alpha – Serious) each of which includes:

o $250! o Legal services package valued at $750 from MBBP** o Mentorship package* o Trophy

 6 teams will be awarded Category Runner-up trophies, one in each category.

 1 team will be awarded a High School Category Prize Winner Pack and 1 team will be awarded a High School Category Runner-up, each of which includes:

o Trophy o $100 gift card

 SPECIAL: 1 team will be voted the People’s Choice trophy by attendees on February 27.

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Honorable Mention certificates may be awarded at the discretion of the judges.

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All entries are eligible for MassDiGI Summer Innovation Program consideration, a $20,000 value.***

* No cash value. Mentorship packages potentially include local studio tours and arranged meetings with industry executives. Grand Prize winners must provide their own PAX East badge to participate at the MassDiGI booth.

** No cash value. And, (a) MBBP (Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton) or Greenberg Traurig will need to do a conflicts check, and if there is a conflict MBBP or Greenberg Trautig will not be able to represent (and therefore since there is no cash value, the prize will be forfeit) and (b) it covers legal fees only, not any third party disbursements. Grand prize winner only receives services from Greenberg Traurig.

*** No cash value. Expires, 8/7/16. All prizes subject to change, alteration or revision.

Notes

MassDiGI Annual Sponsors

Thank you to all our annual sponsors, speakers, mentors, judges and volunteers!