D.I.C.E., GDC line up keynote speakers

Industry conferences and tradeshows are traditionally commenced by a gaming luminary du jour offering insights on the field as they see it. However, for two of the biggest industry convocations this year, such will not be the case.

Delivering the keynote address at this year's D.I.C.E. (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain) Summit will be Gore Verbinski, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has announced. Verbinski is best known as the director of Jerry Bruckheimer's box-office busting Pirates of the Caribbean films and the Budweiser croaking frogs commercials. His keynote address will focus on what lessons game makers can learn from the film industry to entertain audiences.

"As the collision between film, gaming, Internet, and animation occurs, we're witnessing the birth of new forms of narrative," said Verbinski in a statement. "Sharing ideas and experiences at the point of impact is the only way to ensure that the new opportunities remain fluid. With initial success, the arteries harden. The business model forces the creative landscape into a narrowing perspective where we tend to create followers instead of innovators. I'm interested in developing a collaboration that will widen that field of view."

The D.I.C.E. Summit 2008 will run from February 6 to 8 at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. Other announced speakers for the event included EA's John Riccitiello, Microsoft Game Studio's Shane Kim, Blizzard Entertainment's Mike Morhaime, and Oddworld Inhabitants Lorne Lanning, among others.

The CMP Group has also invited an outside-the-box keynote speaker for this year's Game Developers Conference 2008. Award-winning inventor, author, and visionary Ray Kurzweil has been tapped to deliver a keynote address titled "The Next 20 Years of Gaming."

Kurzweil has earned widespread acclaim from many publications and organizations, as well as having received 15 honorary doctorates and honors from three US presidents and being inducted into the U.S. Patent Office's National Inventor's Hall of Fame. In addition to five books, Kurzweil has been responsible for the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, among other inventions.

This year's Game Developers Conference will take place at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from February 18 to 22. As in past years, GDC will feature several tracks, including the Serious Games Summit, the Independent Games Summit, the Casual Games Summit, GDC Mobile, as well as two new tracks: the Game Outsourcing Summit and the Worlds in Motion Summit.