Speakers 2025

Yves LE YAOUANQ

Focus Entertainment
Chief Content Officer

Yves started his career over 30 years ago in the games industry, first on MUDs and MMORPGs, to then join Ubisoft for 11 years in strategic positions to help expanding the PC and Online expertise, while building bridges with external developers. In 2021, Yves joined Focus Entertainment as Chief Content Officer, to lead the Publishing and Acquisition Portfolio transformation, welcoming new games, talents and studios from across the world.

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.

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.

Catalin Butnariu

Amber
Chief Strategy Officer

Catalin Butnariu is Amber’s Chief Strategy Officer, managing M&A, investments, strategic communication and the company’s external partners network. A vocal supporter of the games sector in Romania, he was the President of the Romanian Game Developers Association (2016 – 2024), and founded industry events such as Dev.Play Conference and the Romanian Game Awards. His past roles include being General Manager at Carbon Incubator and Division Director at Gameloft.

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.

Dave Gilbert

Wadjet Eye Games
Founder / CEO

Dave has been interested in adventure games ever since 1986, when his mother made the mistake of buying him a copy of Infocom’s Wishbringer. Fifteen years later, he discovered the Adventure Game Studio engine and began making his own. In 2006, he decided that making games was too much fun to do anything else for a living, and formed Wadjet Eye Games to do just that. In the 19 years since, Wadjet Eye has developed and/or published over 20 games; some of which include the Blackwell series, Unavowed, and The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow.

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.

 

 

James Parker

Ground Shatter
Head of Studio

James Parker is Head of Studio and Game Director at Ground Shatter, the BAFTA nominated studio behind Fights in Tight Spaces and its audaciously named sequel Knights in Tight Spaces. He is co-director of the Bristol Games Hub, has 25 years experience making games, and if all goes to plan, by the time the conference rolls around he will have a 210 day streak on the LinkedIn game Queens.

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.

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…).

Xalavier Nelson Jr.

Strange Scaffold
Studio Head

Xalavier Nelson Jr. is a BAFTA-nominated studio head, narrative director, writer, and Forbes 30 under 30 luminary, with dozens of titles under his belt including Stranger Things VR, Magic: The Gathering, Hypnospace Outlaw, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, and El Paso, Elsewhere. He also makes strides in a storytelling career outside of games, with releases such as the cult hit comic Sherlock Holmes Hunts the Moth Man

 

 

Charles Cecil

Revolution Software
Founder / CEO

Charles Cecil, awarded ‘Industry Legend’ status by Develop, has been a key figure in video games development for 40 years. In 1990 he founded Revolution, today one of the world’s leading adventure game companies which created the Broken Sword and Beyond/Beneath a Steel Sky series. Charles has additionally designed titles as diverse as The Da Vinci Code for Sony Pictures and Doctor Who for the BBC for which he won a BAFTA award. In 2011 Charles was awarded an MBE for services to the computer games industry, and in 2019 was awarded an honorary Doctorate by the University of York.

 

 

Patrice Désilets

Panache Digital Games
President and Creative Director

Patrice now cumulates 25 years in the games industry and has been recognized over the years for his audacity and thinking outside the box. With a background in theater, improvisation and cinema, he gets his creative inspiration in all sorts of art forms as well as in history. Most known for his work on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and as the original creative director behind the global success franchise Assassin’s Creed, Patrice decided to found his own studio in 2014 in order to have complete creative freedom and create new and original IPs such as Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey.

 

 

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

PixelAnt Games
Business Development Manager

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 and currently he is developing business at PixelAnt Games a Sumo Digital Studio. 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.