GDC Europe 2012 reveals major additions to main conference, Summit advisory boards

With GDC Europe quickly gaining steam, show organizers have added 14 leading European game developers to the event's main conference and Summit advisory boards, where they will help program the lectures, panels and roundtable sessions taking place at this August's conference in Cologne, Germany. The newest members to join the main conference advisory board for GDC Europe 2012 include former Battlefield Heroes developer Ben Cousins (now general manager of ngmoco Sweden, pictured), Playdead CEO Dino Patti (Limbo), DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson, and Christopher Schmitz, head of production at Ubisoft Blue Byte (The Settlers and Battle Isle). All of these new advisory board members come from notable and varied backgrounds in the European development community, and given their range of expertise, they will be able to ensure that GDC Europe 2012 offers even more insightful content targeted at developers all across the continent. Other new additions to GDC Euope's main conference advisory board include Crytek veteran and Yager Interactive design director Bernd Diemer, EA Phenomic VP Dirk Ringe, Kuju Entertainment COO Adrian Hawkins (Battalion Wars), Guerrilla Games technical director Michiel van der Leeuw (Killzone series), online game consultant Teut Weidemann, Secret Exit co-founder Jetro Lauha (Zen Bound series), and Sven Liebech, head of art at Bigpoint GmbH. These developers will join continuing board members such as Remedy Entertainment's Matias Myllyrinne (Alan Wake franchise), Avni Yerli of Crytek, and Harald Riegler of Sproing. Helping to program the increasingly vibrant GDC Europe submarket Summits will be Thomas Grip, one of the key creatives at Amnesia studio Frictional Games, who will join the advisory board for the Independent Games Summit, alongside Knap Nok’s Lau Korsgaard (who previously worked on Die Gute Fabrik's B.U.T.T.O.N.). Elsewhere, Jami Laes, general manager and co-founder of social game giant Playfish, and Henric Suuronen, head of studio at Non-Stop Games (and formerly at wooga) will both join the board of the Social & Online Games Summit. In addition, Ansu Lonnberg, chairman of the board at Secret Exit, and Semyon Voinov, co-founder of Cut the Rope creators ZeptoLab will join notables such as Fishlabs CEO and co-founder Michael Schade (Galaxy On Fire) on the advisory board of the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit. Now in its fourth year and happening alongside the European-leading gamescom trade fair, GDC Europe will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 13-15, 2012 at the Congress-Centrum Ost Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany. The event will once again serve the European game industry by gathering the world’s leading speakers in areas specific to current European game development trends across platforms and development disciplines. "With this incredible influx of new energy and ideas across the advisory boards for both the main conference and all three summits, I believe we can expect this year’s GDC Europe to continue to blossom into the most important event on the industry calendar for those who want to push the European development industry into new territory," said Meggan Scavio, general manager of all Game Developers Conference events. In 2011, GDC Europe hosted over 2,100 attendees, 170 speakers, 45 exhibitors and more than 300 media representatives. With a developer-focused Expo Floor area, and myriad day and evening networking events, GDC Europe 2012 will continue to offer business and networking opportunities to all attendees. For more information on GDC Europe -- run by Gamasutra parent UBM TechWeb -- please visit the event's official website.