GDC 2006 Gets Serious With Rosedale, Juul

The organizers of the 2006 Game Developers Conference have announced that founder & CEO of Second Life creator Linden Lab, Philip Rosedale, and Jesper Juul, author of important new game theory-related book Half Real, will headline the Serious Games Summit at this year's GDC. The summit itself will take place Monday, March 20 through Tuesday, March 21 at the Marriott Hotel in San Jose, Calif, and the GDC is dedicating two full days to the Serious Games Summit (SGS), in an effort to further advance and promote the use of video game technology in non-entertainment industries. A separate, standalone Serious Games Summit will be held later in 2006. Rosedale and Juul possess extensive backgrounds in software technology and game-based theory respectively. Rosedale has been referred to as a pioneer in streaming technology and was responsible for developing tools such as RealVideo, RealSystem 5.0 and RealSystem G2. He is the founder and CEO of Linden Lab, the 3D virtual world design company behind Second Life, based in San Francisco. Juul is highly regarded for his game theories, and has published numerous literatures. He is the editor of the Game Studies journal and author of Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (MIT Press, 2005). His personal weblog, The Ludologist, is a well-respected site for game developers. Other notable Serious Games Summit at GDC lectures and panels include 'Advergaming, Game-Based Messaging, and Marketing' from Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games; 'Business Model Blasts' from Doug Whatley, BreakAway Games, Ltd, Eric Marcoullier, Cyberlore Studio, Ntiedo Etuk, Tabula Digita, Inc; 'Human to Virtual Human', from Nigel Papworth, Luleå University of Technology; 'Serious Games Tutorial: Core Approaches for Serious Game Project Success' from Ben Sawyer, Cofounder, Digitalmill; and 'Mass Audience Issues for Serious Games' from Suzanne Seggerman, Games for Change, Carl Goodman, Digital Media at the Museum of Moving Image, Katie Salen, Parsons School of Design, Connie Yowell, MacArthur Foundation, and Karen Sideman. [GDC 2006 is presented by the CMP Game Group, organizers of the Game Developers Conference Europe and standalone Serious Games Summit, and publishers of Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra.com.]