Ever-increasing penetration of ever-more powerful, high-speed networked devices (desktop/laptop/mobile/tablet/etc.) and related network infrastructure into our lives has enabled an expanding playing field for gaming. No matter the game, there's now a robust digital space to play it. While the increasing complexity of games has forced a new economic model leading to consolidation among the largest developers, new developers are springing up to serve and test the limits of new desktop and wireless platforms that launch into the market every few weeks. The industry growth and expectations are real. One market research firm estimates that the worldwide interactive entertainment market is expected to have grown form $25BN in 2005 to approximately $42BN in 2010. More locally, the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council reported in 3Q2009 that the video game business in Massachusetts alone pulls in $2BN in annual revenue, employing 1,200 people.

To help budding digital gaming industry entrepreneurs get a better grasp of the competitive landscape, opportunities, trends and pitfalls, the November 16th EntreTech Forum will be bringing together some of the leading lights of the local gaming cluster to discuss the state of the art in this emerging powerhouse industry.

Moderator:

Terrence Masson - Director of Creative Industries - Northeastern University; ACM/SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair

Panelists:

Scott MacMillan - Founder - Macguffin Games; Co-founder - Boston Game Loop
Brian Sullivan - Founder - Iron Lore Entertainment
Seth Sivak - Product Manager - Zynga
Ichiro Lambe - Founder & President - Dejobaan Games

Moderator: Terrence Masson - Director of Creative Industries - Northeastern University; ACM/SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair

Over the past 20 years, Terrence Masson has served the film and computer graphics community with inspiring production leadership, innovative creative techniques and technical problem solving. After earning his BFA (Graphic Design and Art History) and MFA (Computer Animation) Terrence spent his early years in New York and Boston in graphic design, commercial flying logos, large format and interactive projects; specializing in camera and lighting.

Since founding his own consulting company Digital Fauxtography Inc. in 1994 Terrence has built and led teams ranging in size from six to sixty. Major studio collaborations have included founding positions at The Trumbull Company (1992), Digital Domain (1993) and Warner Brothers (1994), consulting to Sony Pictures Imageworks (1995) and Dreamworks (2003) and two tours at Industrial Light + Magic (1991 and 1996-2000). Terrence also single-handily created the original CG animation and rendering techniques to launch South Park the television series in 1996.

As an independent VFX Supervisor and Senior Technical Director he has contributed to over 20 major film projects including Fantastic Four, Hook, True Lies, The Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition, Spawn, Batman Forever, Small Soldiers and Star Wars Episode I: Phantom Menace. Large format projects include Luxor for Doug Trumbull and Mars Odyssey for Simex. His many national commercial projects include the original Bud Frogs (1995) for Digital Domain and the award winning Dodge Molecule for ILM-Commercials. Terrence has also produced and directed real-time hardware graphics for major titles such as Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon for Universal Interactive, SimCity4 for Maxis/EA and Batman: Dark Tomorrow for Kemco/Japan.

As an award winning Animation Director his short animated films (including Bunkie & Booboo) have been featured in festivals worldwide. Terrence is a much sought after lecturer and has spoken at dozens of animation festivals, conferences and universities around the world on a wide range of topics. In addition to being inducted into the Producers Guild of America, he is a long time member and supporter of both the Visual Effects Society and ACM SIGGRAPH. He was the Computer Animation Festival Chair for SIGGRAPH 2006 and is now serving as SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair.

Scott MacMillan - Founder - Macguffin Games; Co-founder - Boston Game Loop

Scott MacMillan has been making games since 2002 as an independent developer/contractor and for his own account, and started Macguffin Games in 2008. Scott has been actively working on Macguffin's first Social Media game Mustache Mercenaries, which was recently launched in Beta form on Facebook.

Scott is also very involved with the Boston developer community. With Darius Kazemi, Scott co-founded Boston GameLoop in 2008, an annual game development unConference in Cambridge. Scott is also one of the founders of Boston Indies, a Boston-based user group for independent game developers, and one of the board members for Boston Post Mortem, the local International Game Developers Association (IGDA) chapter.

Brian Sullivan - Independent Game Developer

Brian has a proven track record in game design, having created and co-created, respectively, the Titan Quest and Age of Empires (AoE) series of computer games. Both are highly polished and original IP franchises.

As a founding partner of both Iron Lore Entertainment and Ensemble Studios, the developer of the AoE series, Brian helped build the company into the premier game development powerhouse it is today. Among his many executive roles while at Ensemble, Brian was the co-designer and project manager on Age of Empires, and executive producer of the other games in the series. The AoE games have been a huge commercial and critical success, selling over 18 million copies worldwide and winning almost every award possible.

In 1998, Brian won the 1998 Computer Game Developers Association (GDC) Spotlight Award for Achievement in Game Design for his work on Age of Empires.

In 2000, Brian co-founded Iron Lore Entertainment. He was the Executive Producer and Lead Designer on the hit title Titan Quest, and Executive Producer and Creative Director on the highly regarded sequel, Titan Quest: Immortal Throne. Brian continues to lead product development at Iron Lore, in addition to being the spokesperson for the company.

Previous to his work in the game industry, Brian managed the successful design and development of many multi-million dollar software systems for organizations including Harvard, MIT, Fidelity Investments, EDS, and the states of New York and Massachusetts. Brian graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Seth Sivak - Product Manager - Zynga/Conduit Labs

Seth currently works in Cambridge, MA as a gameplay engineer at Zynga (formerly Conduit Labs). Prior to its acquisition, venture-backed Conduit Labs was the largest provider of music games on the web, creating a new model for monetizing music and other media through fun social games. Seth's responsibilities there included designing, prototyping and implementing new games and gameplay concepts.

Seth earned his BS (magna cum laude) from Northeastern University and his Master's of Entertainment Technology from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University

Ichiro Lambe - Founder & President - Dejobaan Games

Ichiro Lambe is Founder and President of Dejobaan Games, LLC, a Boston-area indie game development studio. He has worked in the industry since 1993, co-founding Worlds Apart Productions (now Sony Online Entertainment Denver) in 1995 and Dejobaan Games (still Dejobaan Games) in 1999. Since Dejobaan's founding, he's led development on the studio's 13 titles, working on titles for mobile and desktop PCs. He doesn't take himself too seriously, but takes game development very seriously.