Rare Studio Head Craig Duncan to keynote GI Live: London

The head of UK games studio Rare will be one of the big speakers at next month's GI Live: London.

In an on-stage interview, Craig Duncan will discuss the developer's transformation from making traditional single-player and multiplayer games, into creating and managing the ever-evolving, live-service hit Xbox title: Sea of Thieves. He'll share lessons that the team have learned, plus its experience as being the first major game to launch day and date in Xbox Game Pass.

Duncan is a 20-year video game development veteran, and has held leadership roles at Codemasters, Midway and Sumo before joining Rare in 2011.

GI Live: London is an event designed for independent developers, publishers and investors, and tickets are on sale now. It runs from Wednesday, September 21st - 22nd at London Excel, with a digital-only meeting day set for Tuesday, September 20th. Alongside talks, tickets include access to a series of roundtables, 1-to-1 meetings, food and drink, various networking opportunities, plus complete access to the EGX consumer show, which takes place September 22nd - 25th at the same venue.

Joining Duncan on the speaker roster is Gina Jackson OBE. Jackson will be delivering a talk title: 'Everyone hates us and we don’t care – but we should'. The session will discuss the games industry's perception in the wider media and amongst the general public, and why that matters. Jackson is another games veteran, with a career spanning 30 years and includes roles at Ocean, Nokia, Kuju, Eidos, The Imaginarium and Nextgen Skills Academy.

Also speaking at the show is Caroline Marchal, CEO and Creative Director of Interior Night, the indie developer responsible for the acclaimed narrative adventure game: As Dusk Falls. In her session 'The Long Road To As Dusk Falls', Marchal will cover the game's challenging journey to release, plus her experience working with xCloud, Twitch and Game Pass. Before setting up Interior Nights, Marchal held lead roles at Quantic Dream and PlayStation, working on narrative-based video games.

The three speakers join a line-up that already included ID@XBox's Ben Robinson discussing Microsoft's indie programme, and Valve, who will be conducting a live Q&A with developers.

More speakers will be announced in the coming days.

Alongside the talks, there are meetings that will take place across all of the days (including the digital day). Companies looking to meet developers include the likes of Valve, ID@Xbox, Square Enix Collective, Sega, Curve and Bandai Namco (digital day only), with many more to be announced.

A digital ticket is also available and includes access to the digital meeting system for Tuesday, September 20th, plus links to watch the talks online.

Companies can also book a permanent meeting table, which they can use across the entire two days of the event to host meetings.

Interested in sponsoring the event? Contact George Corner.