The International Game Developers Association has voted Scotland’s Luke Dicken to the board of directors, the first director of the organisation from outside the USA.
Already a director of IGDA Scotland, Luke now joins the global board, helping the organisation to grow and evolve to keep pace with the ever more diverse interactive industry.
If you’ve not run into Luke at an event in Scotland, you’re clearly not getting out enough. Â For those people, here’s the official bio from the IGDA Board page:
Luke Dicken is the founder of Robot Overlord Games, a researcher with the Strathclyde Artificial Intelligence and Games group at the University of Strathclyde in the UK and is one of the organisers for the web-based AltDev Conference series. Luke has been passionate about artificial intelligence since playing “Creatures” as a teenager, and pursued it at university, first through several degrees in traditional AI before specialising in AI for games as part of a PhD he is still (occasionally) pursuing.
After winning one of the IGDA Scholarships to attend E3, Luke began volunteering for IGDA Scotland, rising to a leadership position in the chapter. He also went on to win a further two scholarships, making him one of the first ever three-time IGDA Scholars. He now works to coordinate the Scholarships program worldwide, as well as acting as Chair for the IGDA’s Artificial Intelligence Special Interest Group. At the end of 2012, Luke was named as one of Develop magazine’s “30 Under 30” list of young developers to watch, but hasn’t yet found a subtle way to work that into a bio.
Luke can be reached via luke@igda.org.
The IGDA is one of the few organisations with regular events in Scotland and a presence at the majority of the events which take over the course of the year.
Congratulations to Luke. Â We look forward to shameless favouritism, GDC moving from San Francisco to Scotland and a ceaseless embiggening of Scotland’s development talent as ahead of the curve.
You can keep up-to-date with the latest news, updates and events from IGDA Scotland here on the Scottish Games Network, or following the organisation on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.
Important to note that I’m not the first outside the US – there have been a couple from Canada. I’m the first outwith North America though, and that’s still a major milestone for getting some better International-ness into the IGDA
Duly noted, Luke. Thank you.