October 10 - 11, 2005		IBM TJ Watson Research Center		Hawthorne, NY
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"Toward the True Mobile Game"

Greg Costikyan
CEO, Manifesto Games

About the speaker:

Since his first game was published in 1976, Greg Costikyan has designed more than 30 commercially published board, roleplaying, computer, online, and mobile games. His games have won the Origins Award five times and the Gamers' Choice Award once; he is an inductee into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame for a lifetime of accomplishment in the field; and his games have been selected for the Games 100, Games magazine's annual round-up of the best 100 games in print, on more than a dozen occasions. He began as a staff designer for Simulations Publications, Inc.; during the mid-80s was Director of Research & Design for West End Games; in the late 80s he developed a number of projects for Prodigy (including MadMaze, the first online game to attract more than 1 million players); in the 90s was senior designer and producer for Crossover Technologies, a NY-area game developer; and in 2000, he founded Unplugged Games, one of the first North American mobile game start ups. In 2004, he joined Nokia as a games researcher for Nokia's research arm. Greg recently left Nokia to found Manifesto Games, a new venture to build a strong and viable independent game industry. He also serves as coordinator of the New York City chapter of the International Game Developers Association.

Greg has written on games, game design, and game industry business issues for numerous publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Interactive, Salon, Game Developer magazine, and The Escapist. He speaks frequently at industry conferences, including GDC, E3, and the Digital Games Research Association, and was recently the keynote speaker at Free Play, a conference for independent developers in Melbourne, Australia, as well as at Nokia Games Day, Nokia's internal game event. He has lectured at a number of universities, including NYU, SUNY/Stony Brook, the Copenhagen Interactive Technologies University, and the University of Tampere. His seminal essay, "I Have No Words and I Must Design" is used in game studies courses worldwide.

Greg is also the author of four science fiction novels (the most recent being FIRST CONTRACT, billed as "a novel of big business and alien invasion") and a clutch of short stories.