GDC welcomes new board member Angie Smets, from Guerrilla Games!

Game Developers Conference organizers have some good news to share today about a new voice that's joining the GDC Advisory Board ahead of GDC 2018 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco next year, March 19th through the 23rd!

This will be the 32nd edition of GDC, the world's largest and longest-running event for game developers, and the call for submissions to present lectures, panels, roundtables, & posters is still open through Thursday, August 17 at 11:59 PM PT. 

So if you have an idea for a talk you think should be a part of GDC 2018, submit it now!

This is the initial call for submissions, which encompasses everything intended for the Main Conference Tracks on Wednesday-Friday, as well as day-long tutorials taking place Monday and Tuesday at GDC 2018. Thus, the GDC Advisory Board is curently seeking submissions from game developers with expertise in any of the following tracks: Advocacy; Audio; Business & Marketing; Design; Production & Team Management; Programming and Visual Arts.

With that in mind, the GDC Advisory Board is welcoming a new member who will help ensure GDC 2018 is the best it can be! 

The GDC Advisory Board is proud to add veteran game developer Angie Smets, who currently serves as executive producer at Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam. She is currently best known for her work as executive producer on this year's smash hit Horizon Zero Dawn, but her experience in game development stretches back to encompass Guerrilla's award-winning Killzone series of games.

This is valuable because members of the GDC Advisory Board (like Mark Cerny, Amy Hennig, Adam Saltsman, and Siobhan Reddy) volunteer their time every year to help construct the 500+ GDC conference sessions. They work to ensure that the quality of the content provided to attendees is high-level, relevant, and timely; their dedication is critical to the success of the conference. 

To get a better sense of who Angie is, how she came to work in games, and what values she brings to the mix at GDC, we reached out to to see if she'd be up for a little chat. She was kind enough to share her time, and we've published an excerpt of our conversation below: 

How did you get started in the game industry, and how did you come to work at Guerrilla?

I grew up with a mom who loved playing computer games. I have fond memories of rainy Sundays, where me, my mom and my little sister would play games together. It started with Pong, later we got a Philips Videopac g7000 — my favorite game was called SuperBee.

I have a degree in Industrial Design, and I specialised in Human Computer Interaction. I have always loved figuring out interaction between people and computer interfaces. Games are definitely one of the more complex forms of interactions so perhaps it's not that strange that I ended up in the games industry. I started my career working as a designer for various media (think CD-Rom and CDI) and operating systems, BeOS probably being the most obscure of all of them.

In 2003 Guerrilla asked me to help them out with Killzone 1, a first-person shooter for the PlayStation 2. At the time the prospect of designing for such a powerful machine was a no-brainer for me so I joined them. It was our first console game, and I still believe it’s a miracle we shipped that game. We've learned so much since then...

More Killzone games followed, and we recently switched from the FPS genre to the open-world action RPG genre with Horizon Zero Dawn, a massive undertaking, with so much cool stuff to learn and figure out. 

When I joined Guerrilla nearly 15 years ago I decided to stay until the day I wouldn’t learn new things anymore. That day still hasn’t come.

What are you working on right now, and why is it important to you?

In my role as member of the management team I help run the studio, and oversee production of all of our titles. We are always trying to improve our development processes. It’s part of Guerrilla’s DNA to keep innovating, discover better ways of doing things, and see where we can take our games next. I love these dynamics.

Why did you make the decision to join the GDC Advisory Board, and what do you hope to accomplish there?

I am very excited to join the board!

With the ever-changing industry it’s invaluable to maintain a vibrant developer community around learning & sharing. At GDC I have always met people that are passionate about game development, who are open to share their insights and their lessons learned. 

Seeing so many passionate people coming together from around the globe to share & learn has been – and still is —  very inspirational. I feel honored to contribute to that.

Thanks Angie!

For more details on the submission process and to view the complete list of GDC 2018 Advisory Board members, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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