Festival of Games 2010

Music games are big business nowadays, thanks to popular US titles such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band and DJ Hero. Surprisingly this genre has Japanese roots. Masaya Matsuura started the revolution in 1996 by creating the first rhythm video game. The PlayStation game PaRappa the Rapper is still regarded as one of the best of its kind.

During the Festival of Games 2010, Matsuura-san will talk about his work as a musician and game producer. For years, he was a famous Japanese pop star with his band PSY?S until he moved his focus on games. Parappa the Rapper is not t he only music games that he and his gamestudio NanaOn-Sha developed: they worked on hit titles like UmJammer Lammy and Vib Ribbon. At this moment he supports the Dutch Game Studio Triangle Studios in developing a game for the charity OneBigGame.

Matthijs Dierckx Kuijper, publisher of the game developers magazine Control and responsible for the Conference program is excited to have Matsuura here. "The Festival of Games offers a varied program with famous national and international thought leaders. Matsuura-san is an artist and his speech is definitely going to be something special!"

The chairman of the NLGD Foundation, responsible for organizing the entire Festival of Games, Seth van der Meer: “Matsuura-san is a worthy addition to the program. Music is both a very creative and business-like aspect of games; therefore we are honored to have the inventor of modern music games sharing his vision with us. "

SPEAKERS

The Festival of Games Conference shows a broad spectrum of speakers. Previously, the appearance of international thought leaders like David Perry (GAIKAI), Ian Livingstone (Eidos/Square-Enix), Kellee Santiago (thatgamecompany) en Alan Yu (ngmoco) were announced. Alongside, the best of the Dutch games industry they will present several varied, exciting sessions. The Conference will be opened this year by a very special guest from Japan: Professor Toru Iwatani, the inventor of one of the most famous games of all times: Pac-man.

The Festival of Games is a combination of several game-related events, aimed at developers, publishers and investors in and around the gaming industry. The conference will go alongside an international matchmaking event, an exposition, a career fair and a section where up and coming talents can show their skills.

The program for this year has been created in cooperation with Control, the magazine for the games industry in the Netherlands. Publisher Matthijs Dierckx-Kuijper and editor-in-chief Eric Bartelson are responsible for the impressive list of speakers.

The Festival of Games takes place on June 3 and 4, at the Jaarbeurs in Utrecht.

The Festival of Games is organized by the Stichting Nederlandse Gamedagen and is made possible by the ministery of Economics, the province of Utrecht and the city of Utrecht.

See www.festivalofgames.org for details.

Note to the Editor:

For more information please contact:

Mr. Fedor van Herpen

Tel: +31 (0)6 - 33 22 33 60

E-mail: fedor@nlgd.nl

Website: http://www.festivalofgames.nl