Speakers 2025

Adam Boyes

Vivrato
CEO

At Vivrato, Adam Boyes leverages his passion for gaming to inspire teams and drive innovative solutions. Formerly co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios, he set strategy and forged key partnerships while championing a people-first culture. As VP at Sony Interactive Entertainment America, he spurred collaborations that boosted PlayStation’s revenue. Earlier, at Midway Games, Capcom, and Beefy Media, Boyes promoted open communication and premium gaming experiences.

 

 

Elena Lobova

Burny Games
Head of Strategic Partnerships

Elena Lobova is Head of Strategic Partnerships at Burny Games and a seasoned games industry professional with 14+ years of experience. She previously served as COO and CEO of iLogos, leading the company’s growth from 40 to over 300 employees. Elena is also the founder of ACHIEVERS HUB and co-founder of GDBAY and Global Games Pitch, platforms dedicated to connecting game developers, publishers, and investors.
In addition, Elena is a frequent speaker at global industry events, a co-organizer of the Ukrainian booth at gamescom, and an organizer of Ukrainian charity auctions worldwide.

 

Yacine Salmi

Salmi Games
Founder

Yacine Salmi is the founder and CEO of Salmi Games, a Munich-based studio known for VR and indie titles like Sweet Surrender, GrowRilla, and Late For Work. With a background in physics simulation and game development, he has worked on both entertainment and industrial applications. Passionate about VR design, performance, and sustainable studios, Yacine is always exploring new ideas and the evolving landscape of immersive gaming.

 

Huei Chan

RapidEyeMovers
Producer

Huei is the producer of RapidEyeMovers, a new kind of game production company, building big dreams in a sustainable way. Their award winning debut C-smash VRS, a collaboration with SEGA, earned a Golden Joystick nomination and offers hybrid multiplayer between VR and PS5.

Huei’s work spans marketing, product design, production, launches and fundraising across gaming, culture and education fields. Her past work includes the collaboration with Universal Music on their first VR game soundtrack release (Quantaar) and co-developing The Last Worker with Jörg Tittel, earning them a Venice Film Festival nomination.

She was a co-founder, founding partner at VR and mobile gaming companies in Taiwan and Singapore, where she led marketing, business and partnerships.

Jake Birkett

Grey Alien Games
Co-Owner

Veteran Indie developer since 2005. Creator of Regency Solitaire, Ancient Enemy, Shadowhand and more!

 

 

 

Chelsea Blasko

Iron Galaxy Studios
CEO

Chelsea strives to create a welcoming environment where talented people can do their best work. As CEO of Iron Galaxy studios, her innovative leadership has produced a strong values-based culture that nurtures creative excellence as much as the creators. Her personal accomplishments as a developer have equipped her to improve the production methodologies that enable efficient work and quality products. She keeps her teammates on the evolving edge of continuous improvement by investing in the growth of their skills and careers. As a strong believer that diversity builds better teams, Chelsea has guided the formalization of new policies to take uncompromising care of every employee. The result is a company that delivers industry-leading work coexisting in balance with a healthy lifestyle for the people who do it.

 

 

 

Mehdi Benkirane

i3D.net
VP of Business Development

Mehdi’s professional career started in the music industry as a sound engineer which then evolved into film making and video game design development through academia where he oversaw research theses for undergraduate students to eventually represent the educational groups industry relations. After a short stint as an independent consultant for various music and gaming organizations, Mehdi became a video games agent whose mission was to bring in revenue for 12 studios around the world deriving from work for hire, co-development opportunities, as well as publishing and funding of projects. For the past 3.5 years he has been heading gaming business development at i3D.net, a game hosting company part of the Ubisoft group actively working with developers and publishers alike as well as Cloud Gaming companies.

 

 

 

Brad Hendricks

Blind Squirrel Entertainment Inc.
CEO

CEO and Founder of Blind Squirrel Entertainment (aka Blind Squirrel Games), multinational AAA game studios that creates original content and provides full game development services to various publishers and developers. BSE has quickly become the top collaborator for industry leading titles such as Bioshock, God of War, Borderlands, Mafia III, Avowed, Delta Force: Blackhawk Down, Mass Effect, New World, SIMS, XCOM, Disney Infinity, Sonic, and Evolve and many more.​

 

 

Patrick Sweeney

Interactive Entertainment Law Group
Attorney

Patrick is one of the longest-tenured Game attorneys in the industry. Starting in the industry in 1999, he has been behind many of the major deals and franchises that drive our business over the last quarter century. He has negotiated approximately 2,500 publishing deals, hundreds of licenses for movies, talent, sports and comic books rights to be made into games as well as innumerable other industry-specific transactions. His firm, the Interactive Entertainment Law Group is a proud supporter of Reboot.

 

 

 

Grace Bruxner

Worm Club
Director

Grace Bruxner is the director of Worm Club and the creator of the Frog Detective series. She is an Australian living in Stockholm.

 

 

 

Tommy Palm

Resolution Games
CEO

While he’s known for shepherding Candy Crush Saga to mobile – and so helping to bankroll King’s $7 billion IPO in 2014 – Tommy Palm’s success story stretches back to the 1980s, when he began programming games for the Commodore 64. Between then and the dizzying success of King’s bestseller, Palm founded five companies including this latest venture, Resolution Games, a development studio with an eye on creating virtual reality and augmented reality game experiences everyone can enjoy. The studio’s concept is already proving successful, as its mobile VR fishing game, Bait!, is known as one of the most popular VR titles of all time. The team also ushered the Angry Birds into VR and mobile AR with the launches of Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs and Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs, and is set to bring adventures steeped in the world and lore of Dungeons & Dragons to PC, console and XR devices with its upcoming game Demeo x Dungeons & Dragons: Battlemarked.

Turning towards the embryonic potential of VR and AR rather than resting on his mobile gaming laurels might seem a bold bet for Tommy. But, this serial mover and shaker prefers to be ahead of the pack when it comes to new technology, saying it’s the only way to be in the sweet spot when the revolutionary is ready for the limelight.

 

 

Jazmin Cano

Owlchemy Labs
Senior UX Research Specialist

Jazmin Cano is a Senior UX Research Specialist at Owlchemy Labs, passionate about making VR accessible for everyone. With a decade of experience in the VR industry, Jazmin’s expertise guides the development of accessible solutions in cutting-edge VR games. She is currently focused on ensuring the accessibility of the studio’s latest title, Dimensional Double Shift.

 

 

Eric Laurent

Squido Studio
Marketing Director

With over 5 years of experience in the VR gaming landscape, Eric has successfully launched both premium and free-to-play GaaS titles. At Squido Studio, Eric is at the forefront of marketing innovation, adeptly navigating the fast-evolving VR space to connect players with transformative gaming experiences. Known for his ability to anticipate industry trends and lead impactful campaigns, Eric ensures that VR titles shine in an increasingly dynamic and competitive market.

 

Thomas Puha

Remedy Entertainment
Communications Director

Thomas Puha is the Communications Director at Remedy Entertainment, where he oversees all communication about Remedy’s games and looks after the studio brand. He has worked in the video game industry for over 25 years. He founded Finland’s leading gaming magazine, Pelaaja, in 2002 and has written for many of the world’s leading video game magazines and websites. Past work includes several years at Umbra Software in cutting-edge rendering, producing a documentary series on the demoscene for YLE, and gaming TV shows for Finland’s MoonTV and Nelonen TV channels. He most recently worked on Alan Wake 2’s global release.

 

 

 

Juliette Auverny-Bennetot

Raw Fury AB
General Counsel

Juliette is an entertainment lawyer who has spent the last twelve years working in the games industry, first at Paradox Interactive and now at Raw Fury. She loves chasing infringers, cooking & drinking wine – not necessarily in that order. Her favorite game will always be Kirby’s Dream Land.

 

 

 

Tomislav Gojević

Fury Studios
Head of Studio

Tomislav Gojevic is the head of Fury Studios in Zagreb, a subsidiary of Raw Fury, an indie video game publisher based in Sweden. He has over 8 years of experience in the games industry, working on various genres and platforms as a game producer and head of studio. Fury Studios focuses on creating games with passion and personality while maintaining a fine balance between work and personal life. He loves to explore new ideas and challenge conventions in his daily work.

 

 

 

Andrew Willans

Sumo Newcastle
Studio Design Director

Over the past 17 years Andrew has been part of developing a range of AAA titles while designing at companies such as 2K, Ubisoft, CCP, and Sumo Digital. With a proven career in delivering high quality games on consoles, PC, and VR, Andrew applies player-focused design methodologies to bring out the best in every project whether large or small. Andrew have worked on predominantly larger scale AAA projects (Driver San Francisco, Watch_Dogs, The Crew, Tom Clancy’s: The Division, EVE: Valkyrie, Hood: Outlaws and Legends, Deathsprint 66) with the exception of Grow Home which was Bafta Nominated for Game Design.

 

 

 

Jasmine Uniza

Impact Reality
CEO

Jasmine is the CEO & Co-Founder of Impact Reality Inc and Flat2VR Studios. Impact Reality is the leading PR & marketing agency in the VR industry having launched 100+ games. Flat2VR Studios is a specialty VR development team that focuses on turning beloved traditional gaming IPs into VR games. Their first game, Trombone Champ: Unflattened, has won several awards. Jasmine is also the founder of ‘VR with Jasmine’, a YouTube channel that educates and informs on AR & VR.

 

Teemu Haila

Metaplay
Co-Founder & CPO

Teemu has long been a familiar face in Finland’s gaming industry. As a teenager, he built some of the country’s first online gaming communities and established supporting charities. He joined Wooga in 2010 and co-founded Playraven in 2012. After Playraven’s 2019 acquisition by Rovio, Teemu co-founded Metaplay to address a common challenge for game developers – scalable and customizable backend tech. His 15+ years advancing the industry were recognized by IGDA with the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award.

 

 

 

Xavier Marot

Focus Entertainment
Chief Production Officer

Xavier has been working in the video game industry for over 15 years, in both development studios and publishing houses. His primary interests are production and game design. He also creates tools to improve gaming companies’ information systems. Xavier is currently working as Chief Production Officer at Focus, one of the world’s leading video game publishers, renowned for its premium production services, marketing, and communications support tailored to each project and audience. The company publishes international hits such as A Plague Tale, SnowRunner and the recently released Space Marine 2.

 

 

 

Alina Soltys

Quantum Tech Partners
Founder | Partner

Alina Soltys is the Founder of Quantum Tech Partners, a global gaming M&A advisory firm. Alina is focused on partnering with gaming founders on their most important transactions – working with teams to optimally position, market and close industry-leading transactions. Alina has completed 35+ M&A and fundraising transactions globally over the last 15 years representing founders in deals like Digital Extremes & Leyou, Growtopia & Ubisoft, Early Morning Studios & Thunderful Group, Polystream & Mythical and many others. Her insights deliver high value for company founders, shareholders and studio teams looking to grow their companies’ value.

Prior to founding Quantum, Alina was a Vice President at Pagemill Partners in Palo Alto, a subsidiary of Duff &Phelps. She is a frequent speaker at events including GamesBeat Summit, PocketGamer Connects, TechStars and Nordic Game Conference. In her spare time, Alina is an avid mobile gamer, keeping a close pulse on new releases and fun new game mechanics.

 

 

Ste Curran

Game Designer / Creative Director

Ste Curran is a game designer and creative director from London, England. As well as working on games that he probably can’t talk about right now he hosts the world’s longest-running gaming radio show, One Life Left, and runs Maraoke, a night of pop songs rewritten about videogames. His monologues about game design and culture have been variously described as “life-changing” and “an hour of nothing”. He is also well known as eloquent, humorous and entertaining part of opening and closing ceremonies of Reboot Develop that way being a perfect counterweight for overly emotional Damir, head of Reboot team.

 

 

 

 

 

Fawzi Mesmar

Ubisoft
Vice President, Global Creative

Fawzi Mesmar is an award-winning Game designer, leader, author, and public speaker who has been in the gaming industry for over two decades in a career that spanned the Middle East, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe working for companies such as Ubisoft, EA, Activision Blizzard, Gameloft and Atlus to name a few. He has worked on over 20 titles that have been enjoyed by millions of players worldwide including entries in franchises like Star Wars, Mario, Battlefield, Persona and Others. He is also the author of “Al-Khallab in the art of game design” the first Arabic language textbook on game design and 3rd guy on the Habibis podcast. 

 

 

 

 

 

Callum Underwood

Uwu Biz / IndieBI
Founder

Callum is a Co-Founder of IndieBI, CEO of Uwu Biz, and advisor to Netease and Kepler Interactive. Callum sold his last company, Robot Teddy, to Thunderful, after running the company for multiple years. Robot Teddy managed business related matters for Among Us, SUPERHOT, Gang Beasts, Vampire Survivors and more. Callum has experience in acquisitions, publishing, starting games companies, long-tail title management, and self publishing. Previously, Callum worked as a Scout for Raw Fury, Kowloon Nights, and Oculus. Alongside his current businesses, he is also an occasional angel investor.

 

 

 

Alexander Pankov

Owlcat Games
Publishing producer

With over 20 years of experience in the game industry, I’ve built a diverse career, progressing from Game Designer to roles like Creative Director, Principal Designer, Product Director, and now Publishing Producer. My work spans multiple genres and platforms, including Singleplayer story-driven games, MMORPGs, Mobile, GaaS, and indie games. Alongside expertise in narrative, art, and music, I bring a strong background in marketing. For a decade, I’ve also contributed to academia as a university lecturer and curator of the Game Design Faculty.

 

 

 

Noirin Carmody

Revolution Software
Co-Founder / COO

Noirin Carmody founder and COO at Revolution Software is responsible for strategic business affairs. Noirin is the Executive Producer of Revolution’s games including the Broken Sword Series and Beneath a Steel Sky Series. She was voted one of the top UK 100 women in Games in 2013. Noirin is an elected board member of the UK Interactive Entertainment Games Association (Ukie) and is a voting member of BAFTA. She also holds a number of pro bono appointments.

 

 

 

 

 

Tadej Gregorcic

Motiviti / coherence
CTO / Co-Founder

Tadej is a creative technologist with over 20 years in the industry.
In his native Slovenia, he co-founded the games and co-dev studio Motiviti, and helped grow the local developer ecosystem by co-running the Slovenia Games Conference for several years.
In his current home Sweden, he co-founded the multiplayer technology company coherence, where he’s been heading up tech and product, making solid multiplayer netcode accessible to any game developer or designer.
Originally a programmer with roots in the demoscene, he feels most comfortable at the intersection of code, design, narrative, music and art.
A huge fan of story-rich games, his latest project is Motiviti’s adventure game Elroy and the Aliens, which he wrote, designed and directed.
Tadej loves sauna, sci-fi, language and photography.

 

 

Dan Thomas

HeyDanThomas Ltd
Mess maker

Dan does lots of *stuff* in games. He is a games business advisor, fractional COO at Apparance Procedural Generation, co-director of Limit Break Mentorship CIC, supports growth at IMPRESS indie game marketing toolkit and previously founded and exited games-focused digital agency, Etch Play. He has worked with the likes of Supermassive Games, Hello Games, Media Molecule, Guerrilla, Sumo, Deep Silver and many others. His current mission is to help 100 people start or grow their games business, in the hopes of instilling a healthier and more stable growth mindset for themselves and their teams. He also lives in a van and is trying to convert an old barn in Wales into a home (with next to no relevant skills or experience…).

 

 

 

Tomislav Beber

Nanobit
Head of Product

A creative problem-solver at heart, Tomislav thrives on data, team collaboration, and process innovation. He began his journey at Nanobit in 2019, advancing through multiple production roles to become Head of Product. Along the way, he’s helped shape interactive story games and most recently led the launch of Nanobit’s first merge game. When he’s not talking about games, chances are he’s talking about the NBA.

 

 

Harald Riegler

Jumpgate
CEO

Harald is the CEO of Jumpgate, a Swedish development studio group currently working on a new Star Trek title (amongst other exciting things). He is also CEO of the freshly launched Games Industry Network, and an experienced strategy & business coach. His origins in our industry lie in programming, music, design and production. Before joining Jumpgate, Harald was a co-founder of Purple Lamp Studios (Spongebob, Epic Mickey, part of Embracer) and Neopica (Hunting Simulator Series, part of Nacon).

 

 

 

Dragan Jerosimović

Full-stack Game Developer

As one of the few ex-Yugoslav gamedev pioneers, Dragan participated in booting up the Serbian games industry in early 2000s. With 22 years of professional gamedev experience (and 15 more as a hobbyist developer before that), he touched almost every aspect of game production, including making his own tools and even programming languages for creating games. As Unreal Engine Developer, he worked on MetaHuman Creator and MetaHuman Animator at 3Lateral and later Epic Games, for which he got game credits on Marvel Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Spider-Man 2, Avengers, Horizon II: Forbidden West, Resident Evil: Village, Outriders, five games from The Dark Pictures anthology and Fortnite. Currently he is working on his own game as a full-stack game developer, while also designing an engine for narrative simulations.

 

 

 

Luka Dorotić

Law firm Čolić Dorotić Ltd.
Attorney

Luka is a partner at COLIC DOROTIC, a Zagreb based law firm that focuses on technology and IT industry.

With over a decade of expertise, Luka has been advising clients in the areas of corporate and commercial law, contributing to some of the most prominent transactions in the region.

Excited to discuss the legal side of gaming at the upcoming conference – let’s make law and tech the ultimate power couple!

 

 

 

Pavol Buday

Freelancer

After more than a decade playing games and spending way too much time reviewing them, Pavol started paying attention to individuals and teams helping them to connect and finding the correct audience and partners by organising meet-ups, public events and conferences in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Croatia and Canada (Reboot Develop, Fest Anca and Game Days to name a few). Pavol co-founded Slovak Game Developers Association, was instrumental in setting up a public fund in Slovakia, is creator and curator for Game Conference Guide, your events calendar. During Reboot he is going to host painting mini figures evening.

 

 

 

 

Martijn van Zwieten

Videogame Business Consultant
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Martijn is an independent game business coach and consultant. He has helped over 60 CEOs, founders and leaders to build better game companies, and to lead them with more confidence and less hassle. After 14+ years in the games industry, he’s seen what works and what doesn’t, and knows exactly what it takes to run and grow a game company. His talks may or may not include Pokemon.

 

 

 

 

 

Damir Durovic

Reboot
CEO

Through 25 years of combined experience in running huge games industry events, games media and working within marketing/PR in the industry Damir has seen empires rise and fall, and through all those years has finally grown an awesome beard. For last 11 years together with an incredible and small but super agile team has been running REBOOT brand consisting of both media and events sub-labels, featuring among others one of the biggest consumer game shows in Europe while also throughout a full decade of its existence building the world famous Reboot Develop Blue and Red, two games industry conferences that have redefined the worldwide games industry event landscape while conceptualizing the true meaning of the boutique games industry conferences. Damir also has vast experience in consulting on both marketing and PR matters within the industry as well as taking part in various M&A efforts worldwide. He is an avid extreme hiking challenges fanatic.