GamesBeat 2017 will take place at San Francisco’s beautiful Fort Mason on October 5-6, and we’re delighted to announce our next two legendary speakers, who can teach us a lot about making big decisions in the game business.
They are Robyn Miller and Rand Miller, the brothers and co-creators of Myst, the 1993 computer game that created a new genre of story-based adventure games with beautiful graphics. They followed that up with Riven, a sequel that debuted in 1997. Both were among the best-selling computers games of all time.
If you’d like to go, you can save 20 percent on registration with our Save20 discount code. The Millers will speak about Remembering Myst and what it means for today.
Myst was an instant hit when it debuted as the first game that took advantage of the pioneering CD-ROM technology to deliver immersive videos and animations. Two brothers created an adventure puzzle game that sold millions of copies and inspired game designers for generations. The Myst franchise is still alive today, and the Miller brothers have their own separate efforts in the pioneering medium of today, virtual reality. We’ll talk with them about where their inspiration came from, what was critical to success, and the most important lessons that apply for today’s game makers.
GamesBeat 2017 is delving into the lessons of the past with a retro theme. We’ll also have speakers from the past from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and Sega. The event targets CEOs, executives at big companies, international leaders, investors, venture capitalists, marketers, business development people, platform leaders, and developers. It will be an intimate event with a few hundred people. Our speakers will be top people, like the bosses of the people you see speaking at other events. A single main stage will feature very focused, curated talks, and we’ll be having social events and meeting spaces so you can actually meet these people.
Rand Miller is a trailblazer in the video game industry, and he has the gray hair to prove it. He co-founded Cyan about 30 years ago and has developed everything including MMOs and mobile apps, including the blockbusters Myst and Riven. His passion is discovery, and when he’s not exploring the real world with his wife, he concocts ideas of strange places that can only be explored virtually. Even though Myst is now officially a museum-piece, he optimistically feels that the best years lie ahead. At Cyan, his most recent game is Obduction.
Robyn Miller is the cofounder of Cyan Worlds (originally Cyan) with brother Rand Miller. He served as co-designer of the popular computer game Myst, which held the title of best-selling computer game from 1993 until the release of The Sims nine years later. He also co-directed and co-led the design of the sequel to Myst, Riven, which was the best-selling computer game of its year of release. Miller composed and performed the soundtracks to both games. He also acted in Myst, portraying one of the antagonists, Sirrus (with brother and Cyan-cofounder Rand appearing as Achenar and Atrus). He co-wrote the first Myst novel, The Book of Atrus. After the release of Riven, Miller left Cyan to pursue non-game interests, including films.
Robyn’s work has been featured in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, The Smithsonian, and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). In 2010, he cofounded Zoo Break Productions with producer/filmmaker Mischa Jakupcak. Zoo Break Productions has produced a number of films, including Robyn’s own award-winning feature, The Immortal Augustus Gladstone. This year he executive produced and wrote the score for the short documentary Little Potato, which won the Grand Jury Award at SXSW 2017. Robyn continues to compose, write, develop and produce projects for film, television and virtual reality with his company Zoo Break Productions.
Our speakers will address our theme of the Time Machine. If you could see the future of games before it happens, that would give your business a competitive advantage. It’s like having a time machine where you can see the future and return to the present. You could also go back to the past to the retro days of gaming to get the lessons that matter. This is the idea driving the theme for our GamesBeat 2017 conference.
We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in games, and that’s what makes it fun and unpredictable. But we’ll make sure that we get the most interesting leaders of the industry to speak. And we won’t just talk about old times. Rather, we’ll pair the speakers from the past with the leaders of today so they can talk about the relevant strategies for the future.
We’ll touch on the parts of gaming that are driving excitement, growth, and new startups. That includes augmented reality, virtual reality, esports, influencers, mobile games, core games, indies, new game technologies, and the connection between games, tech, and science fiction. We want to show you the edge and the strategies that will succeed in the future.
The past can be prologue. But games have changed as they’ve reached a billion people and $100 billion in yearly revenues, reaching the mainstream like they never have before. Can we still apply the lessons from the past to the current and future marketplace? And what type of innovations and companies will draw the blueprint of what’s to come? So much of the industry’s internal narrative has been about it being cutting-edge. How can we imagine a broader set of drivers other than technology that will shape the industry?
GamesBeat 2017 is the destination conference for networking, inspiring talks, intelligent interaction, and getting all the right people in the room to make great deals happen. It targets game and tech industry CEOs, executives, marketers, investors, venture capitalists, and developers.
Our previously announced speakers include Ed Fries, former head of Microsoft Game Studios; Josh Yguado, president and chief operating officer of Jam City; Chris Heatherly, head of NBCUniversal’s new game business; Debbie Bestwick, CEO of Team17; Perrin Kaplan, principal at Zebra Partners; Stephanie Chan, writer at GamesBeat; Tim Chang, managing director at Mayfield Fund; Ramez Naam, science fiction author and writer of the Nexus series; Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable; Bill Roper, chief creative officer at Improbable; Paul Bettner, CEO of Playful, the creator of the VR titles Lucky’s Tale and Steven Roberts, chairman of ESL, the biggest independent esports tournament company; Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games, creator of Eve Online and VR games such as Eve Valkyrie; and Bernie Stolar, CEO of The Stolar Group and former head at Sony’s U.S. PlayStation business and Sega of America.
Advisory board
- Nicole Lazzaro, CEO of XEO Design
- Nick Beliaeff, senior vice president at Spin Master
- Noah Falstein, chief game designer at Google
- James Zhang, CEO of Concept Art House
- Joost van Dreunen, CEO of SuperData Research
- Nathan Stewart, Dungeons & Dragons senior director, Wizards of the Coast
- Peter Levin, president of Lionsgate Interactive
- Ravi Belwal, Facebook Games
- Jamil Moledina, Google Play
- Sunny Dhillon, partner at Signia Venture Partners
- Michael Metzger, senior vice president at Houlihan Lokey
- Mihir Shah, CEO of Immersv
- Zvi Greenstein, general manager at Nvidia
- Gordon Bellamy, visiting scholar at USC
- Tadgh Kelly, Vreal
- Kate Edwards, former executive director at IGDA
- Tom Sanocki, CEO of Limitless
- Phil Sanderson, managing director at IDG Ventures
- Walter Driver, CEO of Scopely
- David Pokress, senior vice president at AdColony
- Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors
Topics will include:
- Intersection of sci-fi, games and tech
- Platforms:Where to place your bets? AR,VR, & more
- Creating a culture of inspiration and creativity
- Emerging markets for games
- Monetization: How to acquire and retain users
- Esports and building the community
- Deals: Follow the money
- Diversity and the expanding ecosystem
- Early Access as a business model
- How mods can launch new game genres
- What game engine should you use?