Cynthia Freese
Executive Director, LOGIN Conference
Co-founder, Evergreen Events

Prior to her founding of Evergreen Events, Cynthia was the Event Director at The Game Initiative where she grew the Game Initiative’s conferences to include small, focused events with a unique focus. Cynthia was the creator and manager of the 2005 Casual Games Conference in Seattle. This successful conference allowed the games industry to focus on a new perspective in the industry. She was also the Conference Director of the 2005 Austin Game Conference, Women’s Game Conference and Writers Game Conference in Austin, TX, all of which had record attendance in 2005 and were well covered in the media. In addition to her work on innovative conferences Cynthia also focused on the Breaking In To the Game Industry events as well as helping to organize and attain industry speakers for middle school Career Days around the country.

Cynthia likes to be thought of as a bridge between groups and believes that by working together we will all be better off in the long run.

Peter Freese
Conference Director, LOGIN Conference
Lead Programmer, Hidden Path Entertainment

Peter Freese is an entrepreneur, programmer, and visionary/co-creator of the LOGIN Conference with his wife, Cynthia.

Peter has been programming for over 30 years and making games professionally since the early 1990’s. After developing several award-winning educational games for Edmark, Peter co-founded Q Studios in 1994 and led development on the campy breakout 3D shooter title, Blood. He was the graphics engine lead on Sierra Studio’s fully 3D adventure game, Gabriel Knight 3. At Origin Systems, Peter learned of the joys and trials of MMO game development as client lead on the Ultima Online 2 team. In 2001, Peter established and directed the Core Technology & Tools team at NCsoft North America, contributing to development on all shared technology for  numerous MMO game titles. In 2005, Peter co-founded MMO development company Secret Lair Studios which was acquired by Vivendi in 2006. Peter is currently lead programmer on an unannounced project for Hidden Path Entertainment in Bellevue, Washington.

Erik Bethke
Founder & CEO, GoPets Ltd.

Erik Bethke is the founder of GoPets and currently resides in Seoul. He has been developing games for over 12 years. Previously, Erik was responsible for overall corporate operations at Taldren, Inc., leading design and business development. Projects managed at Taldren include the Starfleet Command real-time tactical starship simulator. He acted as the lead designer and producer/executive producer throughout the series, including SFC 1, SCF: Neutral Zone, SFC II: Empires at War, SFC: Orion Pirates and Starfleet Command 3. Prior to founding Taldren, Erik worked for both large publishers and small developers. Projects include I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream for Cyberdreams, PlanetNET for MPGNet and Caesars Palace Windows 95 for Interplay. Erik is the author of the book Game Development and Production. The book is currently used by the game design departments of at least half a dozen universities and colleges.

Alan Crosby
Director, Global Community Relations, Sony Online Entertainment

Alan is the Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment and works with the development, marketing, and public relations teams to implement projects that harness the power of the SOE community. Alan spearheads internal and external projects that aim to push community relations to new heights within the industry. An avid MMOG player, Alan has played most every MMO that has come to the US market.

John De Margheriti
CEO, BigWorld Pty Ltd

John is a true entrepreneur, visionary and one of the most motivated and passionate people in the Australian Game Development Industry. In 1985 John co-founded Micro Forté, an Australian Game Development Studio that has just recently celebrated its 20th birthday. Towards the end of 1999 he saw an opportunity within the online game market for a definitive MMOG middleware solution which was successfully developed and spun out as BigWorld.  This well-known company now has a world wide game developer base and a global focus with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, USA, Sydney and Canberra. The BigWorld Technology solution will be seen in such titles as Netease’s ‘Tian Xia 2’, with many more titles in development in the US, Europe and Asia.  John is also the founder and Chairman of the Academy of Interactive Entertainment Ltd (AIE), Canberra Technology Park (CTP), Canberra Business Parks (CBP) and the Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC). The AIE has gained much recognition for being Australia’s premier Registered Training Organisation for the Computer Game Development and 3D Digital industries.  In December 2005, John announced the closing of Australia’s most successful and well known Game Developers Conference to provide the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) an opportunity to run an industry conference. John founded the GDAA in 1999 at the inaugural AGDC and acted as one of its main financial backers and treasurer until late 2005 when he resigned from the board to focus his energies on expanding BigWorld Pty Ltd.

James Hursthouse
Business Development Director, Japan / Korea BigWorld Technology PTY

James Hursthouse is an experienced global online game business developer and entrepreneur. His introduction to the industry came through work with an early incarnation of Nexon Japan. He moved to the US in June of 2004 to set up Online Game Services Inc (OGSi), which rapidly established itself as a leading infrastructure provider to the online games industry, offering a broad spectrum of solutions including hosting, billing, customer support and market development consultancy. Moving back to Tokyo in October 2007, James is once again focusing his efforts on Asian business development activities in the online games sector with BigWorld Technology, industry-leading client/server middleware technology that helps games companies offset technical risk and cost as they move into the massively multiplayer space. James has served as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the ION 2008 Game Conference and the International Game Developers Association's Online Games Group. He holds advisory board positions with a number of game studios and companies.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshursthouse

Steve Klebe
SVP, Business Development at Vindicia, Inc

As Sr. Vice President of Business Development for Vindicia, Steve is responsible for building and managing the relationships to drive the adoption of Vindicia’s services by merchants through various reseller and infrastructure partnerships.

Steve has over 30 years of experience in sales, business development, strategic alliances and product marketing in electronic payments, authentication and fraud prevention including the last 15 years specifically in ecommerce.  He has worked in a variety of senior management roles at companies such as; VeriFone, CyberCash, CyberSource, and PassMark Security (acquired by RSA/EMC).  Steve has driven numerous innovative solutions from infancy through their mainstream stage. He was responsible for a wide variety of partnerships with companies such as First Data and Visa including the equity investment by Visa in CyberSource and the co-branded product – the CyberSource Advanced Fraud Screen enhanced by Visa.  He has taught classes at the NACHA Payments Institute, was on the board of directors of the Electronic Transactions Association (www.electran.org) and on the advisory boards of the DRF (www.directresponse.org) and the EFTA (www.efta.org). Steve has spoken at over 50 banking and technology conferences during his career.

Steve received a Bachelor of Science with honors in Business Administration from Northeastern University, Boston, MA.

Thomas Lee
Senior Director, Marketing and Business Development

Thomas Lee is a video game executive and entrepreneur with a deep understanding of game development, social networks, and virtual item sales. Game developer by trade, Thomas has over 15 years of experience at leading game publishers including Origin/EA [Wing Commander], Square Enix [Final Fantasy], and Nexon [MapleStory] where he contributed to the explosive growth of the Free to Play Online Games Market in the US as the Business Development Manager. He was in charge of payment gateways and managing relations with major retailers, like Target, Duane Reade, 7-Eleven, Rite Aid, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, CVS and drove adoption and sales of Nexon Prepaid Cards.

Joe Ludwig
Chief Technical Officer, Divide By Zero Games

Joe Ludwig is a ten year veteran of the game industry. Before joining Divide by Zero in summer of 2008, Joe worked on the PC MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea at Flying Lab Software from the project's inception past its launch. He served as Lead Programmer, then Director of Development, and finally as Producer on Pirates. Prior to Flying Lab, Joe spent a year working on the Middle-Earth Online project at Sierra.

Joe is a frequent speaker and occasional writer on MMOs and their challenges. He has spoken at the Online Game Development Conference, the Austin Game Development Conference, and the ION Game Conference. You can find his writing on MMOs and technology in general at http://programmerjoe.com.

Paul Philleo
Writer/Consultant

Paul Philleo has taken root in the interactive entertainment world since 2001. As Marketing Manager for almost three and a half years at the North American outpost for Korean online game developer giant, Nexon Corp., he guided the marketing and PR programs for three MMO game titles. Most notably, he played a key role in guiding their flagship MMO PC game title Shattered Galaxy toward critical acclaim, with awards from Computer Games magazine, GamePen, FiringSquad, GameSpot and other editorial venues.

Since departing the Nexon fold in 2004, Paul has written for MPOGD.com, a respected and veteran online multiplayer gaming-focused website, particularly in covering numerous game industry events across the US. Additionally, Paul had co-founded and independently worked with the mar-com agency Levelup Communications in crafting press releases and marketing strategies for independent studios and Korean-originated game titles.

Currently, he is involved in a new website editorial project and pursuing other business ventures.

Katie Postma
Senior Community Manager

Katie Postma has worked in online community management for more than 9 years and has worked with Myst, Uru, Prince of Persia, Serenity, Stargate Worlds and Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall communities. She is currently the North American Community Manager for Jumpgate Evolution.

Katie co-authored Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming II as well as Myst V: End of Ages Prima Official Game Guide. She has consulted for MMORPG development teams in Asia, India and North America doing online PR, Marketing and Community work. She also produced and directed the creation of the Children’s Gaming Community Portal, TenTonHamster.com. She has participated in Community Panels at several conferences including OGDC 2007, and ION 2008.

John W. Ratcliff
Most Worshipful Senior Programmer, Simutronics Corporation

John W. Ratcliff has been a developer in the game industry since the early 1980’s. John’s early projects included 688 Attack Sub, SSN-21 Seawolf, and S.C.A.R.A.B. for Electronic Arts. More recently John was the lead engine developer for Planetside from Sony Online Entertainment. John spent several years with Ageia Technologies working with the PhysX SDK. Currently John works at Simutronics Corporation on collision, physics, and AI for Hero Engine a MMO game engine.

Throughout his career John has been an active member of the development community, having published in Dr. Dobbs Journal and written chapters for a number of game development books as well as speaking at conferences and mentoring youth. As much as he can John likes to release source code for free in ‘snippet form’ on his coding website The Code Suppository.

Brandon Reinhart
Programmer, Valve Software

Brandon Reinhart has worked in games development since 1998. At Epic Games he developed gameplay for Unreal and Unreal Tournament as well as many Unreal engine features. At 3D Realms he served as a core gameplay programmer on Duke Nukem Forever. At Sony Online Entertainment he switched from programming to game design and became a technical systems designer on Star Wars Galaxies and the Jump to Lightspeed expansion. Brandon was the Lead Designer at Spacetime Studios in Austin, TX. At STS, Brandon was involved in developing a science fiction IP/MMO. Currently, Brandon is employed as a gameplay and multiplayer programmer at Valve Software in Bellevue, WA.

George Sarhanis
Management Consultant

George is a business management executive having worked across different sectors of the technology industry in business development, operations, and strategy functions. He has a proven ability to identify valuable opportunities, motivate interests from stakeholders, develop profitable client-partner relationships, and manage internal growth. George has worked with people and organizations of a diverse background and broad framework. George currently works with Seattle-based video game quality assurance company GameInstinct as Managing Director to advance the business. His career began in the late 1990’s with Echospace Technologies as Marketing Director, an early Web2.0 technology service provider based in Seattle that secured $2M in capital funding.

George is involved with multiple community efforts and enjoys working with both entrepreneurs and seasoned executives. In addition to LOGIN, he also is a member of WTIA’s Tech Trends Advisory Board. He holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the University of Washington.

Damion Schubert
Lead Combat Designer, BioWare Corp.

Damion is a game designer for BioWare, where he is lead combat designer on an unannounced MMO. Previously, he worked at Wolfpack, a Ubisoft Company, where he worked on SHADOWBANE, a massively multiplayer title, and its two expansion packs. Damion has been working on massively multiplayer games for almost a decade, since he cut his teeth as the live lead designer for MERIDIAN 59. Damion also runs the occasionally interesting blog Zen of Design, which tends to focus on game design and industry concerns.

Won-il Suh
Vice President, Neowiz

Won Il Suh oversees all international operations within Neowiz, ranging from co-development to investment to operations. He has witnessed and contributed first-hand to the explosive growth of the online game market space (diverse game genres, business models, etc.) in Korea for the past several years. Prior to Neowiz, Mr. Suh was CEO of Nexon and SmartPlay.

Scott Warner
Owner, Garvey Schubert Barer

Scott has worked with game companies for more than 12 years, covering all aspects of game development and distribution for game companies in the pc, console, casual, downloadable, and mmog space. During this period he has worked on deals to develop and distribute games domestically and internationally, including in Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, and France with companies ranging from EA, Sony, Disney, Real, Microsoft, Fox, Valve, Big Fish, Warner, T-Mobile, Sprint, Motorola, Qualcomm, Simon, Schuster, Scholastic, and many many others. Scott has been recognized as a “Super Lawyer” in Washington and as one of Washington’s Most Amazing Lawyers by Washington CEO Magazine in 2006. You can view Scott’s resume (click on narrative bio) at: http://www.gsblaw.com/people/bio.asp?EmployeeID=W617305935

Rich Weil
Community Director, Cartoon Network

Prior to officially joining the game industry in 2004, Rich worked in Human Resources and Management for many years, including as HR Director for a software development consultancy in Austin, TX. An MMO enthusiast since 1996, Rich is a consistent advocate of new and creative ways to engage and support the online gaming community, as well as being a proponent of Community Relations as a distinct discipline within the gaming industry.

At NCsoft, Rich managed the Community Relations teams for City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lineage, Lineage II, Tabula Rasa, PlayNC and Auto Assault. Rich has also served as Director of Community Relations and Support at Kaneva, a virtual world and social networking company in Atlanta, Georgia.

Currently, Rich is the Community Director for Cartoon Network, with their upcoming MMO FusionFall, expected in 2008.