Digital Nationz unveils speakers and plans

Digital Nationz unveils speakers and plans

Some good news for gamers in New Zealand, who'll get a chance to have an early peek and play on the PlayStation 4 and XBox One.

Thanks to Digital Nationz, that opportunity could come earlier than the rumoured December release for those consoles.

Full details follow:

Brace yourselves gamers, tech-heads and fans of great entertainment across all things digital. You’re about to launch into the future as DIGITAL NATIONZ, New Zealand’s first Digital Entertainment Expo, debuts in Auckland this September.  

DIGITAL NATIONZ is a 2 day expo held at Auckland’s Vector Arena, across the weekend of 28-29th September 2013.

DIGITAL NATIONZ will provide the first public opportunity for Kiwis to experience the next generation of consoles, Sony’s PlayStation®4 (PS4) and Microsoft’s Xbox One, due for release later this year. These industry giants will each have large stands at the event, not only showing off their latest consoles loaded with the newest titles for gamers to try, but also upcoming titles for PS3, PS VITA and XBOX 360.

The past, present and future of digital entertainment, from gaming to movies and music will be well represented; the expo features a History of Video Games Museum, a Digital Artz Gallery and sneak peeks into cutting edge technologies such as 3D printers, The Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset and other exciting innovations.

Exhibits and events such as Robot wars, speaker sessions featuring international game development experts, panel discussions, movie and games previews, and creative technology workshops mean plenty of opportunities for hands-on involvement.

DIGITAL NATIONZ also features a LAN gaming event for 200 participants playing simultaneously throughout the weekend.

The founding partners of the event include heavy hitting industry leaders ensuring a broad range of experiences and content at the event. (see further down for list of confirmed partners)

DIGITAL NATIONZ has been created by Vector Arena’s Business Development Manager, Peter Hall, who’s been an avid gamer and gadget guy since he fired up his Commodore 64 for the first time at the age of 6. He had the idea to launch DIGITAL NATIONZ when he saw a gap in the NZ creative/entertainment digital space.  “New Zealand is one of the few countries where a major electronic/digital expo doesn’t exist, the “extremes” are covered for the hard core fans of comic books and TV-series and for those who are developers and programmers, but mainstream New Zealand has nothing. I wanted to create an event heavy on content both international and Kiwi made.”

He continues,

“In short our goal is to let you engage, discuss and explore the digital world, by putting future products, prototypes and concepts in your hands right now.”

A promise DIGITAL NATIONZ is sure to deliver.

As part of our speaker sessions, panels and Q&A sessions we are bringing several local and international speakers to DIGITAL NATIONZ. Confirmed speakers include:

-         Benson Russell, Senior Designer at NAUGHTY DOG. Benson’s most recent title is critically acclaimed The Last Of Us (he also designed the well-known Uncharted series), and his original claim to fame was as the designer of the D-Day level in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for PC, a genre defining moment for game fans everywhere.

Dr Mark Sagar

-         Dr Mark Sagar, a two time Academy Award Winner, who won academy awards for his technical work on Avatar and for his early and continuing development of influential facial motion retargeting solutions. For the last 15 years has specialized in bringing computer generated faces to life in some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters including “Avatar”, “King Kong”, “Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes” and "Spiderman-2". Dr Sagar is the director of The Laboratory for Animate Technologies based at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute.

-         Tara Brannigan, Customer Relationship Manager at PikPok. Tara’s credits include Microsoft XBOX US, including a brief stint on the recently announced XBOX ONE title: Project Spark, and PopCap Games (responsible for the wildly popular casual titles Plants vs Zombies and Bejewelled).

Greg Broadmore

-         Dr Melanie Swalwell, Associate Professor of Screen and Media at Flinders University in Australia. Melanie has published a suite of projects on New Zealand’s unique games history, and was keynote speaker at the 1st International History of Games conference, held in June in Montreal.

Dr Melanie Swalwell

-         Jonathan Rogers, Technical Director of New Zealand company Grinding Gear Games, which is independently developing Online Action RPG game Path of Exile, one of the most anticpated games in New Zealand game development history with a global beta player base of over 2.9 million people and counting.

-         Greg Broadmore, Conceptual Designer & Artist for Weta Workshop. Greg was the lead concept designer on District 9 as well as being a designer on The Adventures of Tintin, Avatar, King Kong, and has through is own Dr. Grordbort series created a fantastical steampunk inspired world that has captured the creative communities imagination.