Festival of Games 2010

Massively Multiplayer Online games, in short MMOs, are among the most profitable genres of games and their publishers know how to attract Millions of players with solid games –and generate revenues from them.

The Festival of Games Conference focuses on the business of games. Innovative and profitable business models are found in these MMO’s and therefore we have invited several key executives from the world of MMOs to tell their stories. One of Europe's leading publishers of Massively Multiplayer Online Games is the German company Gamigo. Ralph Frefat will go into details why they chose to fully localize one of their games for the Dutch market. Is the small country worth all the trouble?

Not only is the games industry becoming as huge as the film industry, but Hollywood is starring in a new MMO from BigPoint. Nils-Holger Henning, one of BigPoint’s top executives, will tell about their upcoming MMO that is based on the Science Fiction series of Battlestar Galactica.

With a similar name, Galactik Football, but from a completely different perspective, Maarten Brands from games studio Virtual Fairground tells his adventures of persuading investors to make an MMO game for youngsters based on the animation series Galactik Football.

Among the 30-plus other speakers there will be talks about the different possibilities of online payments, the search for investors, and the technology that enables a simultaneous play of hundreds of thousands of players.

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 Santiag o (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 i n 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