First speakers for DICE Europe’s World Builders event include CCP’s Hilmar Veigar Petursson

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences has posted its first speakers for its fourth-annual DICE Europe event. Among the speakers at conference include CCP chief executive Hilmar Veigar Pétursson.

The AIAS is a professional game industry group that puts on the annual DICE Summit in Las Vegas. The event in Barcelona, Spain, will focus on the theme of “world builders” and runs September 11 to September 13. It will focus on gamemakers, communities, and players and how they create explore new worlds. Pétursson’s CCP has come up with one of the most fascinating worlds in gaming with Eve Online, giving players the freedom to craft their own stories and massive battles and factions while providing a connected world for them to do so.

The speakers include Clive Downie, the chief marketing officer at Unity; James Mitchell, the chief strategy officer and senior executive vice president at Tencent; Alex Nichiporchik, the CEO of TinyBuild and acting producer on games like Punch Club and SpeedRunners; and Pétursson of CCP Games, the maker of games such as Eve: Valkyrie and Eve Online.

“In the past of couple years, DICE Europe has truly evolved into its own unique brand of conference experience – an unparalleled setting with the right number of attendees, intelligent conversations, and relaxed networking,” said Martin Rae, the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, in a statement. “We are excited to see how speakers and attendees rally around the theme world builders and all it encompasses.”

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.