PlayStation's Richard Marks, Funomena's Robin Hunicke join VRDC board

As the industry prepares for the first-ever standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference, organizers are excited to announce that more game industry veterans have joined the event's main advisory board to help program the lectures and panel sessions taking place at this year's conference in San Francisco.

The VRDC  advisory board, which includes virtual- and augmented-reality industry luminaries like Microsoft's Liv Erikson, Google's Noah Falstein and Chet Faliszek from Valve, is excited to welcome its newest members: Sony Interactive Entertainment's Richard Marks, Funomena's Robin Hunicke and Road to VR's Ben Lang.

Richard Marks is a Senior Research Engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment. He founded and currently leads the PlayStation Magic Lab, an R&D group that pushes the boundaries of play using technology to create new entertainment experiences.

Marks studied avionics at MIT then received his doctorate from Stanford in the field of underwater robotics. Marks joined PlayStation in 1999 to investigate the use of live video input for gaming and develop new interactive user experiences. He helped create the EyeToy and PlayStation Eye cameras and the PlayStation Move controller. Most recently, Marks and his team at Magic Lab have been involved with PlayStation VR.

Robin Hunicke is the cofounder of the independent game studio Funomena, where she is working on Luna and Wattam. A game designer and producer by training, she has a background in computer science, fine art and applied game studies. She has been designing, making and teaching about games for over 12 years (Journey, Boom Blox, MySims, TheSims 2).

Recognized as an influential Woman in Games, Robin is also an outspoken evangelist for diversity of thought and participation in game design and game culture. She co-organizes the annual Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC, and is also a Professor of Art, Games & Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. She believes game developers can create novel, experimental games by designing for feeling.

Ben Lang has held editorial positions across tech publications for some six years, following the bleeding edge of technology with each step. Ben's most recent project was the founding of RoadtoVR.com to explore the immense possibilities of virtual reality, augmented reality, and human-computer interaction.

Ben has spent the last several years actively documenting and promoting the industry as it experiences an explosive resurgence, leading Road to VR to become the leading publication in the virtual reality industry. He has been recognized among the most influential voices in the VR landscape.

Conference organizers are proud to welcome these professionals to the team in advance of the first standalone VRDC, which will take place November 2-3 at the Park Central Hotel in San Francisco. For more information on VRDC 2016, visit the show's official website and subscribe to regular updates via Twitter and Facebook.

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