Tandem Events recently announced that NCSoft's Richard Garriott and Microsoft XNA Group's Chris Satchell will be keynoting the event at the second Develop Conference & Expo to be held in Brighton, UK this July 24-26. With speakers such as game legends Peter Molyneux to also appear as speakers at the event, the two will tackle issues with creativity and community and the future of the MMO game.

Satchell's main speech will dive into Web 2.0 keeping two of the four key themes of the conference in mind: creativity and community. Using online social phenomena such as YouTube and MySpace as examples, Satchell will expound on how the gaming community drives Web 2.0 direction and development and how it will effect the online gaming scene.

"Lord British" Garriott will share his vision of the future massively multiplayer online game and the possibilities that can be achieved by developing for the medium. Garriott will also share his experiences in developing games and share it with the budding developers of the European community.

The organizers of the event, Tandem Events, have also announced that the conference already has an amazing line up of speakers slated, stating in the official press release that "the speaker line up is already reading like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the video game industry." Event director Andy Lane concluded the announcement, saying:

Develop is still three months away, but already we have a fantastic line up in place – of both speakers and sessions – for conference delegates, who will be travelling to Brighton this summer from all over the world. It goes without saying that we’re delighted to confirm Chris Satchell and Richard Garriott as two of our keynote speakers.

Enterprising Games Week is an event set to take place on June 27 and 28 in London and is set to focus on how companies can use AI, virtual worlds, Web 2.0 functions and video games to create learning and brand extension experiences. DevelopMag reports that what makes this event noteworthy is that they're set to feature a keynote from Lionhead studio boss Peter Molyneux.

The event is also set to feature Nader Nanjiani of Cisco, and both Peter Molyneux and Nanjiani will be speaking during the serious games portion of the event.

The event is made possible by the folks of Apply group and the serious games association, Anglish. Martine Parry founding director of ANGILS and production director of Apply Group comments: "With two conferences and two masterclasses across two days, focused on the key issues, coupled with the quality of our speakers, Enterprising Games Week is the right one-stop forum to learn about what can be achieved whilst networking for business."

 

After having recently announced his community-driven MMO, Dave Perry, the former Shiny Entertainment boss, has announced that he has another project for the developer community. Develop Magazine reports that over at the Game Developers Conference 2007 Dave Perry has invited everyone in the games industry to submit markers to the Google Maps powered Gameindustrymap.com.

Just so you aren't left clueless, Game Industry Map is a wiki-style Map of  of the videogame industry. The map is set to include studios, colleges, outsourcing companies, freelancers, publishers, and even the gaming press. Perry calls this self-funded project a "gift to the industry." Perry had this to say about the community-powered endeavor:

This site picks up on two fast-growing trends – community and user generated content – the videogame industry is still relatively young and we already have a great community spirit which we hope to nurture for the benefit of industry as a whole. Plus we get to show the rest of the world just how widespread we are, employing creative talent all over the planet.

The result is that it immediately becomes the most accurate information available in the world, it will grow daily, and it’s shared to all. We expect to see everyone using it, job hunters, press, gamers, college students, investors, even agencies that would like to see just how prolific this industry is.

...As the Internet has proved, businesses grow when you connect people, and my goal is to simply help drive that growth. I’m not looking for any donations, not looking for any sponsorship, I am looking for teams (especially new ones) to just put themselves on the map.

The project currently has a team that has put up the first 1,000 markers. It is expected that the community itself will eventually fill in the blanks.

Ah, if only the user-generated, homebrew-ed world of those entrenched in web 2.0 could spread to the rest of the world. If only.

Anyhow, feel free to fill Perry's map in yourself if you wish. Our read-link below should lead to the the map. It's important to note that the thing is free and it's still in beta.

Some of us really prefer that the old school "choose your own adventure" style of entertainment just stay in the form of thin easily purchasable pocket books. However, one can't stop the march of the machines, everything's getting a Web 2.0 make over now, and that includes the "Choose your own" format.

From the folks responsible for Massively Online Gamer (MOG) we now have "Jethro Thule: Zombie Killer", the first ever choose your own adventure podcast.  Each week the audience gets to decide the next step of the story by making their opinions heard at their MOG Army site.

Originally part of the MOG podcast, "Jethro Thule: Zombie killer" was one of the most popular portions of the show. Well, it seems that all that popularity warranted a spin-off. Producer Todd Zelin had this to say:

We all agreed that Jethro needed an upgrade ...Initially Ryan Verniere, co-host of MOG, would read that week’s installment during the taping of the weekly show. On part 5 of Jethro, we started to pre-record and sound-designing the segment. After an awesome response from the fan-base we commissioned artist and MOG fan, Jake Harold, to draw story-boards and comic book like panels to illustrate the story each week.

For more information on the podcast adventure feel free to use our read-link below, it leads to the MOG Army site.