Programme:

09:00 am: Registration, coffee and croissants in the Lobby

09.30 am: Welcome by Kristine Ploug (DADIU) and Ene Katrine Rasmussen (MEDIA Desk)
Ene Katrine Rasmussen also gives an introduction to MEDIA's support for interactive content.

09.45 am: Simon Jon Andreasen and Morten Skovgaard (Denmark): Setting the scene: what is going on in games right now
Will free-to-play and self-publishing become the future of games, or will Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo continue to be in control? Game developer Simon Jon Andreasen and editor-in-chief of >pcplayer Morten Skovgaard will kickstart the seminar with a duel on opinions.

10.30 am: Teut Weidemann (Germany): The F2P Fundamentals
Teut will talk about the fundamentals about the free-to-play (F2P) model of games which grew substantially in the last two years. The western world was critical about the F2P model at first which came from Asia but it was developed and adapted to the western markets and grew totally independent of the large, classic publishers. Teut shows how and why it works and what prerequisites you need to compete in a market where the games seem to be free and advertising plays no role whatsoever.

11.15 am: Coffee Break

11.30 am: Ben Cousins (DICE/EA, Sweden): Battlefield Heroes
Ben Cousins presents the making of Battlefields Heroes - DICE's free-two-play adaptation of the Battlefield series.
Thanks to MEDIA Desk Sweden

12.15 pm: Lunch

01.00 pm: Peter Espersen (Sulake, Finland/Denmark): Habbo - 'Show me the money!'
Communities often have a lot of traffic, and a lot of interaction, but no money. Habbo is a community that started in 1999 –  and has a solid business model. Peter Espersen looks into how Habbo has be able to continuously improve the product and capitalize on the traffic and the users.

01.30 pm: Margaret Wallace (Rebel Monkey, US): Brave New Virtual World - Making Free-to-Play Games Work for You
The global online games market is expected to reach $13 Billion in revenues by 2011 but the market is very crowded. For example, in January 2009, there were a reported 200 virtual worlds in development targeting younger people alone.  Looking at Rebel Monkey’s own work on building a F2P game and platform and taking a look at other examples in the online world, discussion will focus on real-world lessons learned in deploying a large-scale online game. We’ll look at how engagement can drive monetization and managing risk throughout.

02.15 pm: Coffee Break

02.30 pm: Anders Bredmose (The Danish Producers Association, Denmark)
As advertising, including micropayments, in computer games, is a relentless growth industry, it continuously raises a variety of legal questions. Anders will talk about the legal considerations as regard to consumer protection in Denmark and subsequently how national Danish law applies to online games.

03.00 pm: Catherine Warren (FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, Canada): Free the Fans
When 'Fans' meet 'Free' all kinds of crazy stuff happens. Join FanTrust Entertainment Strategies President Catherine Warren on a whirlwind tour at the crossroads of Fandom and Freedom, where virtual economics and real-world markets merge, where social networks are the new digital playgrounds and where underground sweatshops with child labor mirror the activities of kids with unlimited cash to play. Hear the ways in which game Fans both spend and avoid spending online -- and how, for winning companies, “free-to-play” actually means billions in cash. At a time when global economies are collapsing, online game economies are exploding. Will a future Nobel Prize go to a virtual economist? Will the next notorious white collar criminal be an in-game Bernie Madoff? Come along with Catherine as she probes the fun-house relationship between our real game-of-life and the casual online game.

03.45 pm: Søren E. Jakobsen: Game Makers Unite!

04.00 pm: Simon Løvind and Jakob Kirstein Høgel: New Danish Screen
'New Danish Screen – Game Support' announces the support of prototypes and demos of new computer games in development. The game concepts will be presented by game consultant Simon Løvind and the companies receiving grants will be celebrated.

04.30 pm: Refreshments in the Lobby



About the Speakers:

Ene Katrine Rasmussen

Ene Katrine Rasmussen is the head of MEDIA Desk Denmark and one of the organizers of seminar.

Kristine Ploug

Kristine Ploug is the coordinator at The National Academy of Digital, Interactive Entertainment and one of the organizers of seminar.

Simon Jon Andreasen

Simon Jon Andreasen is an autodidact game-, radio-, tv- and film-director. His specialties are concept development, pitch writing, storytelling, and team and content direction.
He was the Game Director and Creative Director at Deadline Games until 2008 and is behind titles as Total Overdose, Watchmen, Chili Con Carnage, Klik (1&2), Globetrotter/Le guide du routard (1&2), Crosstown (Giften&Englen) and Blackout. The games have been distributed by EA, Ubi-Soft, THQ, Take2, Eidos, Atari, Living Books, Pan Vision, Tivola, and Warner.
Simon is currently working as a creative director on GoTravel, Klub Cirkeline and a a series of other on-line games to be announced.

Morten Skovgaard

Morten Skovgaard has a Bachelor in English and Philosophy from Roskilde University. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Mazafaka Media ApS, where he is in charge of publishing the games magazine >pcplayer as well as delivering articles to various magazines and newspapers, among others M!, Den Blaa Avis, 24 Timer and Cover and reviewing games on TV2's show Go' Morgen Danmark (2006-2007). Morten also hosted a series of seminars on games and gamers at various libraries and The Royal School of Library and Information Science. Furthermore Morten owns the company Character ApS , specialized in localizing and translating major gaming franchises into Danish, among others The Sims 2 and 3 (2003-), Assassin's Creed 2 (2009), Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (2007), SOCOM: Confrontation (2008), and Rabbids Go Home (2009). In addition to that Morten also works as a freelance photographer covering industry events for various companies, such as Blizzcon, Warcraft Regional Finals, Nordic Game and the FIFA World Cup Qualifiers.

Catherine Warren

Founder and president of FanTrust Entertainment Strategies, Catherine Warren is an executive management consultant to the distribution and digital media industries. A digital media veteran celebrating 25 years, Catherine leads due diligence on M&A for major game and animation companies, creates fan strategies for blockbuster television franchises such as CSI and advises mobile leaders including Nokia and Orange Telecom on premium game models. Working in North America, the UK and Europe, Catherine has served as a senior manager for both publicly traded and privately held media companies. She has published more than 25 books and magazine series for adults and children on science and computing as well as produced numerous award-winning Web sites and interactive broadcasts, including the Gemini Award-winning CTVNews.com. Catherine serves on various digital media boards, including the Bell Broadcast & New Media Fund, which has contributed more than $70M to convergence production, including two recent interactive Emmy-award winners. A member of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, she has also served as a judge for the Digital Emmys. Catherine has a degree in physics from Reed College and a masters from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York, where she broke the original story of new media on location at MIT.
Catherine’s business FanTrust provides media & entertainment brands with technologies and tactics for building Fan relationships & revenues, with new ways to captivate audiences, secure funding, grow through mergers & acquisitions and capitalize on innovation.  www.FanTrust.com

Teut Weidemann

Teut Weidemann has been working in the games industry since 1987 and went through several careers and positions. He was the development director of Softgold and Rainbow Arts in Germany from 1987 to 1991, thus being one of the first game producers in Germany. He shipped over 50 titles during that time on the classic home computer formast back then, the Amiga, Commodore C64, Atari ST, Amstrad, Sprectrum and PC.
After working for an advertising agency which invented Advertainment games and consulting Microsoft Seattle on the European games market, he founded his own development studio and led it for 10 years, shipping the award winning and best selling title Panzer Elite. After shipping Söldner – Secret Wars he went to CDV in 2005 as CTO, one of the eldest publishers in Germany. He oversaw the development, technology and marketing during that time and accompanied titles like Panzers Phase 2, Blitzkrieg II, Warfront, Übersoldier, Cossacks 2, Panzer Tactics DS and many more.
Since 2007 he has been consulting various industries, publishers, developers, and TV and Film producers on the games market with a focus on online games and communities.

Margaret Wallace

Named by Next Generation as one of the Game Industry’s 100 Most Influential Women in 2006, Margaret Wallace is an entrepreneur and video game professional from the United States. She is most recently a founder of Playmatics in New York City, New York. Since 2007, Margaret was CEO of Rebel Monkey, a company focused on creating a massive free-to-play online game and platform. Prior to Rebel Monkey,  Margaret was CEO of Skunk Studios, one of the first-ever casual game companies, based in San Francisco, California. Margaret has also designed and contributed to scores of online games and “creativity” applications while at Shockwave.com and at several other prominent companies during her 12-year career.

Ben Cousins

Ben Cousins is the General Manager of a new EA business unit based in Stockholm. This group operates EA's first Western World Play4Free titles – Battlefield Heroes and Battleforge.
Ben has focused on pioneering projects in digital distribution during his ten years in the business. While at Sony he worked on the first handheld game with downloadable content, the first downloadable game for a handheld and was one of the early architects of PlayStation Home. Since Joining EA in 2007 he has worked on a Play4Free title for the Korean market (Battlefield Online), the most successful downloadable game of all time for consoles (Battlefield 1943) and Battlefield Heroes, among others.

Peter Espersen


Peter Espersen is the Country Manager for Sulake in Danmark and Norway. Sulake runs Habbo that has almost 12 million users worldwide and with almost 300.000 users in Denmark it is among the biggest social site for young people in Denmark.
In the Past, Peter has been the development manager at TV2 NET where he was responsible for developing the commercial possibilities in all of TV2s digital platforms (i.e. TV2.dk, Momondo, Go Supermodel, Sputnik and TV2’s mobile portal). Before joining he was a digital planner and emerging media specialist at OMD Denmark. Here his role was to be the company’s frontrunner and trend spotter within the field of new media such as viral, social media, gaming, etc.

Anders Bredmose

Anders Bredmose graduated with a law degree from the University of Copenhagen in 2004.
In October 2008 he joined the Danish Producers Association negotiating contracts covering all aspects of the film, TV and computer games industry.
Danish Producers Association (DPA) is an association of Danish film, TV and computer game producers. Our members produce short film and documentaries, feature films, TV programmes, film and TV commercials, educational films, multimedia productions corporate profile videos, and computer games.

Simon Løvind

Simon Løvind is the project editor for New Danish Screen's game support.

Jakob Høgel

Jakob Kirstein Høgel is the artistic director of New Danish Screen.