Dr. Richard Bartle
Advisor on Game Design and Play Theory

Dr. Richard Bartle co-wrote the first virtual world,  MUD ("Multi-User Dungeon") in 1978, and has thus been at the forefront of the online games industry from its very inception. A former lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and current Visiting Professor in Computer Game Design (both at the University of Essex, U.K.), he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design, development, and management. As an independent consultant, he has worked with most of the major online game companies in the U.K. and the U.S. over the past 20 years. His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds, has already established itself as a foundation text for researchers and developers of virtual worlds alike.

Dean Margerison
Advisor on Project Management, Process Control, and Quality of Life

Born 18/01/1966 in Leeds United Kingdom. Bsc (Hons) Combined Studies Majoring in Computing

Worked for the last 15 years in IT related projects mainly software development and has held numerous roles managing development teams from 4 to 100+. Was Head Producer at Psygnosis for 2 Years in the Chester and Manchester Studios working on the Disney's 'Bugs Life'.

Over the last 5 Years Dean has been actively involved in process improvement initiatives using Iterative and Agile development techniques and has been a frequent speaker at conferences such as the UK Software Metrics Association, British Computer Society and the Game Developer Conference 2005.

Sean "Dragons" Stalzer

Advisor on Social Interaction and Social Networking Tools and Services

Sean has been involved in online gaming since the early days of 300-baud modems dialing into a BBS.  He has been a part of the online gaming community as it has grown and matured over the years and has been heavily involved in the MMO world since the beginning.

Since 1996, Sean has been the Guildmaster of The Syndicate, which is one of the oldest guilds with hundreds of long-term members.  This has given him a great deal of first hand knowledge about what it takes to run a successful guild, what tools are needed within the game to support players and guilds and also what attracts guilds to games and what causes them to remain playing.  The experience of participating in a number of MMOs along with beta testing most new MMOs has uniquely positioned The Syndicate and Sean to understand what does and doesn't work, from a player's point of view, in the MMO world.

Sean has written a number of articles, with the most recent being chapters in the Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 book dealing with the tools a MMO needs to include in order to facilitate successful guilds and how to attract and retain guilds to the game.