Game industry heavyweights highlight the exclusive GamesBeat Summit May 5-May 6 (earlybird deadline today)

Small, intimate, and peer-to-peer: For the first time, GamesBeat is hosting the GamesBeat Summit. It’s May 5 and May 6 at the scenic Cavallo Resort just north of San Francisco. Earlybird pricing ends today at 5 pm PST.

This is not your typical conference.

Distinct from our hugely popular annual GamesBeat conference, the Summit is an invite-only event limited to 180 gaming execs. It’s a chance for senior-level players to gather and open up about the most pressing business challenges in gaming facing them today — and push the debate forward by sharing what’s working and what’s not.

The event combines closed-door working sessions, main stage discussions with gaming visionaries, and casual social gatherings to create the kind of collaboration and learning essential to leaders.

Last week, we shared that David Haddad, executive vice president and general manager of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment; and Peter Levin, the president of interactive media and games at Lionsgate, will be on hand for a couple of those main stage discussions.

We’re excited to announce now that Unity Technologies CEO John Riccitiello will be heading to the Summit. Unity is one of the most important companies in game development thanks to its Unity game engine, a cross-platform technology that enables developers to make works for just about any device that plays games. The company recently announced its Unity 5 tools at the Game Developers Conference 2015 in San Francisco.

Few people have had as much influence on the game industry over the last 20 years as Riccitiello. He served as the chief operating officer for gaming giant EA in his first stint at the company and returned to be its CEO, helping the publisher as it became a major player in the mobile and online gaming sectors.

Also speaking at the Summit is Thomas Hartwig, cofounder and chief technical officer of King, one of the biggest publishers of mobile games. King was the No. 2 mobile game publisher in the world for 2014, thanks in part to its major hit Candy Crush Saga. If you play games on your phone or tablet, chances are good that you’ve crushed some candy on it since its 2012 release. And Hartwig’s role at King has helped change how we play games — and pay for them — on our mobile devices.

While we’ll explore a number of topics, the overarching theme for the Summit is globalization — and the challenge game makers face to appeal to and engage audiences around the world.

Early bird tickets are available for $1,250; prices go up after today.

Request an invite now and see if you qualify.