MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Ben Cousins, executive producer of EA’s Battlefield franchise and senior producer of its latest game Battlefield Heroes, is set to deliver a keynote at Paris GDC.
In his talk entitled Scenes from the Battlefield: The Present and Future of Core and Casual, EA DICE’s Cousins will address the business and consumer trends that have led to the creation of Battlefield Heroes and ‘will share his thoughts on the future crossover of core and casual gamers and the supposed death of the PC as a gaming platform’. Heroes is EA’s first ‘Play 4 Free’ game; Cousins previously worked at Sony where he was creative director on PlayStation Home and worked on a number of key projects including Beats and EyeToy.
“The game industry is in a state of rapid and exciting change today, as developers grapple with adapting to free to play models and bringing gameplay to universal audiences,” said Jamil Moledina, Executive Director, GDC Events. “Ben has a successful history of coaxing our industry into the 21st Century, and we expect that his experiences fomenting evolution with Battlefield Heroes will prove highly illuminating to our audience.”
Paris GDC, the second French version of the Game Developers Conference, takes place on June 23rd and 24th at the Coeur Défense Convention Centre in Paris. Over 50 sessions are promised for the event.
Joining already announced sessions, a number of new talks have been added, including: From DOOM to RAGE: Megatextures, Pushing Artistic Boundaries (Matt Hooper, id Software), Nicolas Thibieroz, "Ultimate Graphics Performance for DirectX 10 Hardware," (Nicolas Thibieroz, AMD), SingStar: The Game Factory (Tamsin Lucas, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), A Family Affair: Adapting EA SPORTS to the Wii (David McCarthy, EA Sports), and How to Create an Industry: The Making of the Brown Box and Pong (Ralph H. Baer & David Winter).
More info can be found at the official site – a super early bird rate is available for those looking to buy passes, with the deadline on April 23rd.
