Speakers
Fifth, huge, wave of speakers has just been revealed
While first wave of speaker announcements for Reboot Develop Blue 2024 is getting ready to be published during month of August please do check bellow the lineup of incredible speakers that we had honor to host at 2023 edition of the conference.
Ameya Khasnis
Nanobit
Game Designer
Having worked in 4 countries as a game designer since 2011., Ameya is motivated to find new ways to design, balance and monetize games. Applying data science to game design is useful even before releasing the game, so he specializes in building scalable models to balance games using Python and R (since Excel has its limitations ;). He is currently focusing on contemplating player behavior to optimize Tabou: Interactive stories at Nanobit. He likes to invest his after-office hours in being a dungeon master and concocting cocktails for his adventure part.
Raoul Barbet
Dontnod Entertainment / Capsule Animation Studio
Creative Director & Music Supervisor - Life is Strange / Film Director
Raoul is a videogame and animated film director living in France. After studying engineering, Raoul Barbet specialized himself in cultural and audiovisual fields, working in France, Canada and Cambodia. After several experiences in the industry (Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, Illumination Mac Guff’s The Lorax), he finally joined Dontnod Entertainment.
He’s the co-creator and creative director of Life is Strange 1 & 2 and The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. In parallel, he has cofounded in 2016 a new animation studio in Paris: Capsule Animation Studio. It is specialized in high quality CGI images, trailers, VFX, videoclips…
He’s now working on new projects in game and film industry, always interested in new partnerships and great stories to tell.
Jon Goldman
Greycroft / Skybound
Venture Partner / Managing Partner
Based in Los Angeles, Jon is Managing is a Board Partner at Greycroft and General Partner at GC Tracker, a seed fund focused on interactive Entertainment. Jon is also a Partner at Skybound, an entertainment company best known for The Walking Dead and other top IPs. Previously, Jon served as board member and CEO for two portfolio companies at Jerusalem Venture Partners in videogames and online video. Jon was a founder, Chairman and CEO of Foundation 9 Entertainment, the largest independent videogame developer in the world at the time. Foundation 9’s studios created hundreds of videogames based on top tier global brands such as Star Wars, The Matrix, The Simpsons and Lord of the Rings. Jon started his career at a boutique investment bank focused on US-Asia strategic deals.
Michael Schade
ROCKFISH Games
CEO & Co-Founder
Michael is a serial entrepreneur, marketing & PR expert, and seasoned speaker with more than 25 years of experience in the CGI and video games industry. Together with his long-term business partner Christian Lohr, he founded ROCKFISH Games, an independent PC and console games studio, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, in 2014. With their seasoned team behind the critically acclaimed Galaxy on Fire series onboard, the former mobile games veterans had a major surprise hit with their new studio debut EVERSPACE, which sold over one million copies so far. Funded through yet another successful Kickstarter, EVERSPACE 2 is already in the making.
Troy Baker
Actor / Director
Regarded as one of the most prolific actors in video games, the characters portrayed by Troy Baker have helped to define eras and genres. Having worked with countless developers and publishers for almost two decades, as both an actor and director, Troy is uniquely situated to discuss the industry from a rare perspective. It’s from this point of view that Troy hopes to continue the dialogue with developers at REBOOT. His keynote will focus on identifying and overcoming obstacles often involved with bringing actors into the creative process. He is well known for portraying some of the biggest lead characters in games, including Joel from Last of Us, Joker from Batman: Arkham Origins, Booker Dewitt in Bioshock: Infinite and many others.
Cy Wise
absurd:joy
Founder and Live Raccoon
Cy is the one and only “Founder and Live Raccoon” at absurd:joy and manages the collection of curious humans who are focused on XR and play. With 15+ years of games industry tenure, Cy has most recently helped to run and grow VR game studio Owlchemy Labs, creators of award winning Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: VR. Her expertise spans VR design, human-centric play, and building / maintaining culture within orgs and communities. When left unattended, she writes jokes and dialog for all of her projects. Before VR rocked her world, she survived AAA MMO game development mostly unscathed. Before that, Cy once started a scooter gang. Cy also was once hired to “tell the CEO when they’re doing things wrong”. She did just that and regrets nothing. Cy is also made 92% of knives, with the remaining 8% being a mix of raccoons and water.
Neil MacPherson
BioWare
Development Director
Neil MacPherson is a Development Director for BioWare, a Canadian gaming company celebrating its 25th year. Starting his career as an electrician, focused on programming industrial computers, Neil drove his career until his dream of working in the gaming industry came true. He came to BioWare from the energy industry as a Project Management Professional(PMP). This experience brought a different insight into project controls, process development, risk management and scope control and has allowed him to be accountable for projects in excess of $150MUSD. As a member of the production team, Neil is responsible for leading a team of 27 people including his talented staff of UX developers, Gameplay Designers and Programmers.
Justin Truman
Bungie
Production Director
Justin Truman is a multidisciplinary game developer and leader with 17 years of experience and 8 shipped titles across PC and Consoles. He has spent the last 10 years at Bungie working on the award-winning Destiny Franchise and contributing in a variety of roles – as an Engineering Lead, Design Director, and most recently as the Production Director of Destiny 2’s Live Services.
Elena Egorova
EG7
Corporate Development Director
Elena Egorova has worked as an international business and corporate development executive since 2012. She started her career in games with Dynamic Pixels where she led business development & publisher relations and managed the international expansion of the company. Elena later joined Mail.ru and established the international strategic business development group, focusing on bringing top console, PC and mobile games from around the world into the Russian market. She and her team secured major partnerships with some of the biggest global gaming brands. Most recently, Elena has taken over the role of Corporate Development Director for Toadman Interactive (NASDAQ First North), where she brings her expertise in strategy, product and deal making to help drive rapid growth for the company through partnerships, M&A and investments.
Brian Fargo
inXile Entertainment
CEO
Brian has been in the games business since its infancy having founded Interplay Entertainment in 1983. Interplay became a top 5 PC games publisher in the mid 90’s having produced some of the biggest franchises of all time including Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, and Fallout. Interplay also helped to launch the careers of some of the biggest developers such as Blizzard, Bioware, and Treyarch. Mr. Fargo formed inXile entertainment in 2002 and has released Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera and Bard’s Tale 4 since then. His most recent project, Wasteland 3, is just being completed and to be shipped out in May of 2020. inXile was recently acquired by Microsoft Games and is now part of their first party studios.
Wladia Summers
Red Cerberus
Head of Global Operations
Wladia Summers has forged a successful and distinguished career in video game development and production, with more than 20 years of experience working on a multitude of games launched globally on an array of platforms. Wladia has brought her expertise to such well-known companies as Kabam as the Head of Worldwide Central QA and Konami Digital Entertainment as Senior Director of Quality Assurance to Vivendi Games as Quality Assurance Brand Manager. She also founded and served as President and CEO of her own firm, ZS Quality, which provided QA outsourcing, customer service, technical support, fulfillment and operations services to small and middle-sized companies. Today, Wladia serves as the Head of Worldwide Operations at Red Cerberus where she built the organization and manages the company’s operations and delivery of Functionality, Certification, Localization and Translations services worldwide.
Tero Virtala
Remedy Entertainment
CEO
Tero Virtala is the CEO of Remedy Entertainment. Previously he spent 12 years building and running the Finnish video games development studio Redlynx. During his tenure, the studio created the global hit franchise Trials. Ubisoft bought Redlynx in 2011. After spending a few years as a consultant to some of the world’s leading video game studios, Tero joined Remedy in 2016 as the CEO. Remedy Entertainment employs over 260 professional and is working on four projects with the most recent being the critically-acclaimed Control.
Christopher Bergstresseer
EG7
COO
Christopher Bergstresser has been leading publishing and development teams in the games industry for over 20 years. He has been a senior executive with iconic games companies like Sega, Konami, Atari and Miniclip where he focused on expanding international reach through commercial diversification, product, investments and M&A. In 2016, Christopher joined MTG focusing purely on investments and M&A. Most recently, he joined Toadman Interactive (now EG7) as the group COO.
Steve Escalante
Versus Evil
General Manager / Founder
Steve Escalante is the General Manager and founder of independent games publisher, Versus Evil. An industry veteran with 20 years of game development and publishing experience, Escalante started his own indie development team in 1999. Prior to starting Versus Evil, he also held several VP and Director level positions with the most notable as Director of Marketing for five years at Bethesda Softworks. In 2017, Escalante also started Red Cerberus, a services company focused on quality assurance, compliance, localization and porting games. With main operations in Brazil, Red Cerberus has experienced strong success with over 85 team members and growing. Notable titles launched with Versus Evil to date include the award winning, Banner Saga franchise, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, Antihero, Guild of Dungeoneering, Yaga and more.
Anna Hollinrake
Mediatonic
Principal Artist
Anna Hollinrake is a Principal Artist at Mediatonic, and an award winning art director, illustrator and BAFTA Breakthrough Brit. She has worked on much loved game IPs such as Adventure Time and Magic: The Gathering, as well as crafting visuals on indie projects such as Lola and the Giant and Arca’s Path VR. Her work also extends to TV animation, having art directed the 2D animated show ‘Love Monster’ for the BBC. In her personal work she builds worlds filled with light and life, as well as being a vocal advocate of mental health awareness and diversity.
Paweł Rohleder
Techland
CTO
A highly experienced developer, manager and video games enthusiast who is keen on new technologies. Right now, working on shared technology for two amazing AAA unannounced titles @ Techland. Over 16 years in the game development industry, of which the last 13 years are with Techland (Dying Light, Dead Island, Call of Juarez). Paweł currently manages a team of 80+ professionals developing cutting-edge technology for games across multiple platforms. Is crazy about synergy between technology, science, business and art – and even did a PhD to prove such synergy exists. Loves new challenges and taking on “the impossible”.
Marek Rosa
Keen Software House
CEO & CTO
Marek Rosa is the CEO and CTO of GoodAI, a general artificial intelligence R&D company, and the CEO and founder of Keen Software House, an independent game development studio best known for its best-seller Space Engineers (4 million copies sold). Both companies are based in Prague, Czech Republic. At this time, Marek is developing both Space Engineers and Medieval Engineers, as well as leading daily research and development on recursive self-improvement based general AI architecture – Badger.
Victor Kislyi
Wargaming
CEO
A big history buff, huge chess fan and an avid gamer, Victor Kislyi is a co-founder and CEO of Wargaming. He established the company in 1998, one year before graduating from university with a degree in physics. Over 20 years, Wargaming has shipped over 20 titles, taking the world by storm in 2010 with the release of World of Tanks, which has become one of the leaders in the free-to-play MMO market.
Today as the company’s CEO, Victor leads the team, setting strategy and continually evolving Wargaming with his experience and enthusiasm.
Marie Rouzié
Ubisoft Mainz
Narrative Designer
After obtaining a degree in History from la Sorbonne (Paris) along with a bachelor and a master from Sciences Po Paris in social sciences and communication, Marie became a game developer, working on Anno 1800 as a Narrative Designer. Marie created DLCs main storyline, main game and DLC’s quests, DLC characters, expeditions. Overall, Marie is working to improve the use of narrative in the game to enhance the player experience.
Dan Luffey
Freelance
Translator
Dan is a translator with over ten years of experience in the game industry. After translating novels and manga, he transitioned over to the game industry and has localized a variety of Japanese games into English, including “Dragon Ball FighterZ” and “The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories.” Aside from translation, Dan also interprets for Japanese creators at events around the world, has served as a localization manager for indie games, and is writing the story for an indie game that should be released very soon.
Ivan Buchta
Bohemia Interactive
Creative Director
Ivan Buchta, a 40-years-old Czech national, has been working on the Bohemia Interactive’s Arma series since 2006, specialising in delivering authentic environments for the tactical mil-sim games. He took part in the creative direction of Arma series and design of both environments for DayZ survival MMO, and pioneered the cooperation of Bohemia Interactive with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ivan currently participates on the development of Enfusion, new proprietary technology of Bohemia Interactive. In his work, he blends his passion for games with his environmental sciences background.
Andrew Vaughan
Dolby
Content Relations
Andy Vaughan works in content relations for Dolby Developer, helping developers (from independent to AAA) deliver Dolby Atmos-enabled titles for PC and Xbox. Based in Dolby’s San Francisco headquarters, he works in a larger Consumer Entertainment Group that helps advance the science of sight and sound in the cinema, at home, and on-the-go.
Daniel Tabar
Atomontage
President
Daniel Tabar has a couple of decades as a game developer under his belt, building remote teams and award-winning engine technologies that took way too long to make. He more recently co-founded the deep-tech startup Atomontage, and now pursues a grand quest to accelerate an inevitable and fundamental shift in how 3D simulation and rendering is done everywhere.
Neil Holmes
ID@Xbox
Developer Partner Manager
Neil is an industry veteran with 30 years in the games industry, as programmer, producer and technical manager. He has helped develop a diverse range of titles from independent games, to F2P mobile hits and AAA console games. In his current role as a Developer Partner Manager for ID@Xbox in EMEA Neil assists developers across Europe to bring their games to Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Windows 10.
John Day
Abstraction
Head of Production
John joined the industry in 1998 working on military and airline simulators, later working at Disney Interactive as a producer on Toy Story 3, Cars 2, and the Disney Infinity series. After heading up production on Hunt: Showdown at Crytek, John joined Abstraction in 2018 as part of their foray into internal development and innovation, in addition to multiplatform adaptations.
Petr Kolar
Bohemia Interactive
Project Lead
Petr started his career in game development on the other side of the barricades – as a gaming journalist for a Czech webzine Doupe.cz. Then he took an Arrowhead to the knee and joined Bohemia Interactive for Arma 2: British Armed Forces DLC as an Encoder. He started leading the Encoding team on Arma 3 and took over Arma 3: Apex expansion as a Project Lead. Arma 3 based even a standalone free-to-play shooter Argo where he led the transition to live-ops. This changed his focus to free-to-play completely as he took over Xbox One exclusive shoot’n’loot Vigor. He is now wondering on how to get the project to live-ops mode after the release last year.
Gordon Van Dyke
Raw Fury
Co-Founder
Gordon Van Dyke has a background in production and design with 15 years of experience at DICE, Electronic Arts, Paradox Interactive and co-fouding Raw Fury In 2015. As co-founder he helped shape Raw Fury into a burgeoning boutique indie games publisher. The first game published by Raw Fury was Kingdom, which Gordon in addition to his production duties also leaned into with design and balancing during the development. For Kingdom Two Crowns he took the role as Game Director and Designer leading the entire development effort of Kingdom Two Crowns, the latest entry in the series.
Benoit Houle
BioWare
Director of Product Development
Benoit Houle is a Director of Product Development at BioWare. He is an experienced leader with more than 20 years of managing software multidisciplinary teams. Benoit started is game. industry career when he took a position of Principal Project Manager for the Dragon Age franchise in 2006. In this capacity, Benoit helped to redefine the software development framework and practices and team structure. He was promoted to Director of Production in 2012 and managed all project managers and producers in both Edmonton and Montreal studios. Benoit is now the Director of Product Development for un-announced projects.
Poria Torkan
Bungie
Executive Producer Publishing
Poria started his career in 2006 as a tester at Publishing house Playlogic Entertainment in Amsterdam. Within a year, he transitioned into production and eventually moved to development at Guerrilla Games where he contributed to Horizon: Zero Dawn and the Killzone titles. Five years ago, he crossed the Atlantic to work at Bungie, his childhood dream studio. His current efforts are production, marketing and most recently, helping establish international self-publishing for the Destiny franchise.
Doug North Cook
Chatham University
Professor & Researcher
Doug is a designer, professor, and researcher focused on VR&AR, experience design, and accessibility. He is the founding faculty for the Immersive Media programs at Chatham University, lead instructor for the Immersive Design Residencies at Fallingwater, and is in production on multiple new VR projects including museum installations, game projects, and social interaction research. Doug has also beat all 20 ascension levels in Slay the Spire – but only with Defect.
Jari-Pekka Kaleva
European Games Developer Federation
COO
As the COO of European Games Developer Federation (EGDF), Jari-Pekka Kaleva has followed European politics from the games industry perspective for more than 10 years. He is also the senior policy analyst at Neogames, working to accelerate, coordinate and support the development of the Finnish games industry. Learn more about the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF) at www.egdf.eu.
Graham McAllister
Independent
Graham is the creator of SYNC, a framework for turning ‘Good’ teams into ‘World-class’ teams. SYNC is a series of 8 templates which provides teams with a process for agreeing on the vision of the game, track how well the vision has been executed, and aligns the vision with the target audience. Previously he was the Founder of Player Research which was acquired by Keywords Studios in 2016.
Dino Patti
Coherence / JUMPSHIP
CEO / Executive Producer
With 15 years of experience in the games industry Dino Patti, has made a name for himself. Most notably he is known for his role in co-founding, scaling and running Playdead for almost 10 years while they developed and published the multi award winning titles LIMBO and INSIDE. Dino has had an advising role in several game and game related companies. In 2017 Dino founded JUMPSHIP with Chris Olsen, where the promising title Somerville is brought to life. Also recently he has Co-Founded Coherence, which he is a CEO of, a company that aims to democratize online game development.
Alex Schwartz
absurd:joy
Founder and Janitor
Alex is the “Founder and Janitor” at absurd:joy, a VR/AR venture focused on building magical new ways for humans to interact with technology. Previously, Alex founded, built, and ran the Google-acquired VR game studio Owlchemy Labs. He led the creation of the award winning titles Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: VR. His passion for design, art, and engineering led him to a role where he did just about everything until he managed to hire someone better to take it off his plate, hence ‘janitor’. When not advising GDC, DICE, and BAFTA, Alex is probably playing some kind of non-athletic fringe sport such as juggling, billiards, table tennis, and betting friends he can throw that crumpled piece of paper in that trash can 20ft away (and other similar pastimes covered on ESPN 8).
Dr Dan Pinchbeck
The Chinese Room
Creative Director and Co-founder
As Studio Head and Creative Director of The Chinese Room, Dan led the development of the internationally award-winning titles Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and So Let Us Melt.
He’s passionate about first-person games, and this even extends to him having a PhD in First Person Shooters.
Joining Sumo Digital in 2018, following the acquisition of The Chinese Room, Dan oversees the creative evolution of The Chinese Room into new areas of game development for the studio. Beginning with ‘Little Orpheus’ – ‘a pocket epic’ – currently under development, exclusively for Apple Arcade, Dan and the team are building on The Chinese Room’s reputation as one of the most innovative and exciting studios in the UK.
Lana Zgombic
Bossa Studios
Producer
Lana is a producer at Bossa Studios currently working on Surgeon Simulator 2, an electrifying sequel to the 2013 hit of the same name. Throughout her career Lana successfully shipped titles on all major platforms and although she started in publishing, she soon moved into in house development where she used both experiences to morph into the go-to producer for any multi platform projects. Lana’s has also been honored with a few notable recognitions such as MCV’s 30 Under 30 and gamesindustry.biz Top 100 Future Talent. Most recently, she became a Limit Break mentor for unrepresented genders aiming to empower anyone wishing to work in production.
Pawel Feldman
11 bit studios
Publishing director
Gained experience as a PR & Marketing manager at CD Projekt where he had worked on the creation of The Witcher as a global brand. Since 2012 at 11 bit studios, helping to expand the company from an indie studio to one of the industry leaders in Poland. Responsible for publishing of hits such as This War of Mine, Frostpunk, Moonlighter, Children of Morta on all platforms globally. Has a good taste in wine, music, games and people. Not a big fan of boiled cabbage.
Michael Cheung
Makers Fund
General Partner
Michael is a partner at Makers Fund, a venture capital fund dedicated to backing founders globally in the gaming industry. Makers has invested in 47 companies to date across Europe, North America and Asia. Prior to being part of the founding team at Makers Fund, Michael was a Senior Director at Tencent and before that spent his career advising Gaming and Internet companies on growth, global expansion and strategy. He also spent his younger years on a short (and failed!) stint as a semi-professional Counter Strike 1.6 player.
Nicolas Cantin
Panache Digital
Art Director
Art Director at Panache Digital Games since its founding, Nicolas has been in the games industry for 20 years now. He started his career at Microids on the award-winning Syberia games before moving on to Ubisoft where he was the Art Director on the first Assassin’s Creed for which he received a nomination at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2007 in the Visual Arts category. After a few months at Ubisoft Shanghai working on Tom Clancy’s End War, Nicolas came back to his native land at Eidos Montreal/Square Enix where he headed the art direction of Thief before being promoted to Game Director in 2013 until the game’s release. His most recent work on Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey received a nomination at the NAVGTR Awards in the category Art Direction, Period Influence.
Xinyu Qian
Outfit7
CEO
As the CEO of Outfit7 Limited, Xinyu Qian is responsible for running all facets of the company’s global business in service of its mission to deliver fun to every home in the world. Since joining Outfit7 three years ago, Xinyu has been energized by the dynamic nature of the mobile gaming industry. His passion and vision is to expand Outfit7’s scope, driving the company to new heights while continuing to deliver fun to hundreds of millions of players, viewers and fans around the world.
David Goldfarb
The Outsiders
Chief Creative Officer/Creative Director
David Goldfarb is a veteran game designer, writer and director with more than 20 years in games. He was a key creative on Payday 2, Battlefield 3, and Battlefield Bad Company 1/2, and titles he has worked on have sold collectively over 50 million units. He has also worked at Guerrilla Games, Milestone SRL, R/GA Interactive and Acclaim Entertainment. Currently he is chief creative officer and creative director at The Outsiders, a studio founded in 2014 in Stockholm, Sweden, working on an unannounced title.
Marc-André De Blois
Panache Digital
Senior Game Designer
Marc-André began his career in 1997 and worked at Ubisoft as a Game Designer on Hype: The Time Quest, Lead Designer on Batman: Vengeance and later on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. He then took a ten-year break from the industry to get a Master of Laws and worked as a Public Notary for a short period of time. In 2012, he came back to his first love, crafting games, as part of the development team of 1666: Amsterdam with Patrice Désilets. When Panache Digital games, an independent Montreal-based studio, was founded in 2014, Marc-André was one of the first to join the ranks as Senior Game Designer on Ancestors: The Humankind Kind Odyssey.
Žiga Osolin
Ekipa2 part of Outfit7 Group
Senior Software Engineer
Žiga is a software engineer, quantum physicist, and member of the team currently building Ekipa2’s still-unannounced, highly ambitious, next generation virtual friend game. He’s also an advocate of clean coding practices that make his co-workers’ lives easier and don’t come back to bite him further down the line.
Tamara Milenković
Ekipa2 part of Outfit7 Group
HR Director
Tamara is an HR partner with extensive experience at the frontline of game production.
Having worked as a game artist across more than 20 games earlier in her career, she’s the perfect person to take care of the HR needs of the product and art teams at Outfit7 Group. Whether she’s running eSports tournaments, organizing zombie walks, or providing day-to-day HR support to game production teams, Tamara’s people-focussed approach ensures that everyone else can focus on productivity, creativity and, above all, games!
Pavle Mihajlovic
Flavourworks
Technical director / Co-Founder
He moved to the UK from his native Portugal to start his game development career at 18 years old. After a few years as a programmer at Peter Molyneux’s 22cans where he helped launch Curiosity and Godus, he moved on to co-found Flavourworks, where they released Erica, an innovative marriage of games and film published by Sony. Pavle is an active member of the game development community, and has done talks and panels about starting a game studio.
Renee Gittins
IGDA
Executive Director
Renee is the Executive Director of the IGDA, and a multi-disciplinary leader with expertise in software engineering and creative direction. She is a passionate advocate and connector for developers and diversity in the game industry, with a background that spans across engineering, design, and production. She is outspoken about initiatives to increase diversity both within the game industry and gaming overall to help the game industry grow and improve for everyone.
Ian Dallas
Giant Sparrow
Creative director
Ian is the creative director at Giant Sparrow, creators of What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) and The Unfinished Swan (2012). He’s interested in designing experiences that help people see the world in new ways and in making the world a stranger place. His current game is an exploration of the way animals move, focusing on interactions between humans and urban wildlife.
Anya Combs
Kickstarter
Director of Games Outreach
Anya Combs is the Director of Games Outreach at Kickstarter. She has been in the digital games space for over a decade, and worn many hats in production, development, and community management. She has overseen multiple mobile and online titles launched for Nickelodeon & AddictingGames, and has worked with countless game creators launching successful projects on Kickstarter. She loves working with game devs and helping them in any cycle of their development process. When she’s not helping game developers, Anya is a saxophone player in NYC. You might find her playing on the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn.
Žiga Sedovnik
Ekipa2 part of Outfit7 Group
Senior Data Scientist / Game Monetization designer
As a monetization expert, Žiga fuses data science with game design to ensure that games given away for free still turn a handsome profit. Since joining Ekipa2 in 2016, he has improved the economies of existing games, and ensured that recent mega-hits like My Talking Tom 2 and Talking Tom Hero Dash have sustainable monetization built into their foundations.
Hendrik Lesser
remote control productions / EGDF
CEO / President
Serial entrepreneur Hendrik is well known as CEO of the international production house remote control productions and President of the European Game Developers Federation. After starting out in the industry as a Producer and Product Manager he has been building a family of independent development studios throughout Europe for over 13 years, which today consists of 13 teams in five countries with more than 270 passionate game makers. Hendrik is also a co-founder and Executive Producer of Chimera Entertainment, the 60 heads strong development studio behind the AAA mobile productions Angry Birds Evolution and Angry Birds Epic (100+ million downloads) and a yet to be announced title. Besides his roles as CEO and producer, Hendrik also is an avid lobbyist for the political and academic acceptance of video games as goods of cultural value.
Jack Attridge
Flavourworks
Creative director / Co-Founder
After a history in audio design, filmmaking, and games design across studios such as EA, Rebellion, Mind Candy, and 22cans, Jack co-founded Flavourworks with the goal of merging the worlds of film and games like never before. The studio’s first title ERICA was published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PS4 in August 2019. The studio’s in-house, multi-platform Touch Video technology enables Flavourworks to make tactile environments in a seamless, cinematic, Live Action world. The studio has built a unique approach to marrying story and design, as well as a production workflow that merges game development with high-end filmmaking. In late 2019, Flavourworks announced a series A funding round led by Hiro Capital and Sky, and continue to work with publishers on new film/game hybrid projects.
Teddy Dief
Independent
Writer, Director
Director and Designer of the palm tree project, partnered with Kowloon Nights. Teddy co-designed award-winning RPG Hyper Light Drifter. Former Creative Director at Square Enix Montréal, designer at Disney and game narrative researcher at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Co-founder of Los Angeles arts collective Glitch City – a hub for the gamemaking community. Teddy hosted and produced events such as the Chocobowl charity livestream, IndieCade Innovation Awards, and Idle Thumbs Playscape podcast. Their work explores narrative systems, love, and creative life on the internet.
Callum Underwood
Kowloon Nights
Portfolio Manager
Callum is the portfolio manager at Kowloon Nights, a global games fund dedicated to independent and exceptional developers. Callum is also the founder of freelancing collective Robot Teddy, and which includes clients such as Oculus, Splash Damage, SUPERHOT, and Modern Wolf. An experienced scout, Callum has signed dozens of games over the years, and focuses primarily on the business side of games, although can be seen wearing a producer’s hat on occasion.
Mike Bithell
Freelancer
Writer, Director
Mike Bithell began as a designer and design lead in the games industry in the 2000s, before launching his breakout rectangle game in 2012 and escaping to independent development with his own remote studio. Over seven years, Bithell Games have shipped a number of successful games. Our most famous is Thomas Was Alone, a BAFTA winning minimalist platforming game, we produced a critically and commercially successful stealth action game called Volume, collaborated with Google on EarthShape for their VR hardware and created the Circular series of short science fiction story games. We recently completed the well received video game adaptation of our favourite action movie, John Wick Hex, in collaboration with Lionsgate and Good Shepherd Entertainment.
Shane Bierwith
Modus / Maximum Games
Executive Vice President
Shane is an Executive Vice President at both Maximum Games and its independent publishing label, Modus Games. With over 17 years of experience in PC, console, and mobile games, he’s facilitated over $1 billion in revenue across some of the largest IP in the world, including Harry Potter, Marvel, Rainbow Six Siege, the Far Cry franchise, and more. As a thought leader and originator of Modus Games, Shane aims to drive the indie landscape forward by providing true AAA-level publishing to independent developers.
Chris Remo
Valve
Game Designer, Composer, Writer
Chris Remo is a game designer, composer, and writer at Valve. He was a key creative contributor as game designer, composer, and audio director on Firewatch at Campo Santo. Previously, he worked in multidisciplinary roles on games including Battlefront II: X-Wing VR, The Cave, Gone Home, Thirty Flights of Loving, BioShock Infinite and more, independently and with Criterion Games, Double Fine Productions, and Irrational Games. Chris also co-founded the podcast network Idle Thumbs, where he has hosted and produced several popular podcasts.
Daniel Lučić
Croteam
Communications Manager
After a decade-long career in games journalism, Daniel Lučić has switched to the other side to fill the a communication manager role at Croteam, Croatia’s most experienced studio producing games for PC, consoles, VR, and mobile. At Croteam, Daniel is developing communications, marketing, and community building strategies for Croteam’s key titles including the award-winning philosophical puzzler The Talos Principle and the fan-favorite frantic shooter series Serious Sam.
Christina Seelye
CEO
Modus / Maximum Games
Christina is the CEO of indie video game publisher Modus Games and its parent company Maximum Games. Christina founded Maximum Games in 2009, bootstrapped her way to become one of the fastest growing businesses in America and a Top 20 global video game publisher, and launched Modus Games in 2018 to provide AAA publishing services to the best independent developers around the world. Christina is the recipient of several American Business Awards including Executive of the Year and Maverick of the Year.
Igor Simić
Demagog Studio
Creative director / CEO
Igor Simić graduated from Columbia University, New York, after which he entered the art world and is currently represented by Galerie Anita Beckers in Frankfurt.
Igor is the creative director and CEO of the transmedia company Demagog Studio, which created he award-winning, Apple-featured video game Golf Club: Wasteland, original soundtrack Radio Nostalgia from Mars and three animated music videos. The studio is currently developing a new game and animated series.
Anisa Sanusi
Limit Break
Founder, UX/UI designer
Anisa Sanusi is a London based video games UI/UX Designer and Founder of Limit Break, a mentorship program for developers of underrepresented genders in the games industry. Throughout the years Anisa has cultivated a devotion to ethical UX design, speaking at the first UX Summit held at GDC in San Francisco and also served as a Juror for the BAFTA Games Awards for multiple years. Anisa is an advocate for diversity and inclusivity in the industry, and this year she was listed as one of GamesIndustry.Biz Top 100 Influential Women in the UK Games Industry.
Rami Ismail
Vlambeer
CEO
Rami Ismail is the Business & Development Guy at Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio known best for Nuclear Throne, Wasteland Kings, Ridiculous Fishing, Super Crate Box, LUFTRAUSERS, GUN GODZ, Serious Sam: The Random Encounter & Radical Fishing. Believing sharing knowledge openly is the cornerstone of independent development, Rami has spoken on a variety of subjects at dozens of game events around the world. His current big project is organizing Gamedev.world, a truly unique online game developers conference as well as working on his latest game.
Ivan Krechnak
PowerPlay Studio
CEO, Co-Founder
Originally a doctor of medicine, Ivan Krechnak has been involved in the game industry since 2003. Together with his two partners he founded PowerPlay Studio in 2007, a company primarily focused on developing online sports games. PowerPlay Studio has released 15 games played by over 12 million players worldwide. The best known titles are Biathlon Mania and Ski Jump Mania 3. Among other things, PowerPlay Studio is actively involved in the promotion of sports and supports talented athletes. The studio earned the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 in Central Europe award in 2014 as the fastest growing tech company in Slovakia.
Srdjan Kovačević
Orqa
CEO
Srdjan is a former computer games journalist and gamer, who somehow grew up to become a boring financial industry exec. Luckily, he came to his wits after 10 years in fund management, and decided to do something fun: a tech startup. He co-founded Orqa, a hardware company specializing in ultra-low-latency remote vision systems and immersive video headsets. In 2019 Orqa ran a successful Kickstarter to launch FPV.One – world’s most advanced video headset for drone pilots. Now they want to innovate immersive gaming.
Adam Boyes
Iron Galaxy Studios
CEO
As Chief Executive Officer of Iron Galaxy Studios, Adam Boyes is responsible for the Company’s overall strategic vision and core partnerships. Prior to this role, Boyes was Vice President of Third Party Relations & Developer Technology Group at Sony Interactive Entertainment America where he oversaw Publisher & Developer Relations, Portfolio Strategy, Financial Strategy, Partner Alliance, Technical Account Management, Developer Technology Group and the 3rd Party Production team – driving them to record revenue and profitability numbers consistently year over year. Previously, Boyes was Executive Producer and Director of Product Development at Midway Games and Capcom respectively. Boyes studied Computer Science & Business Administration at Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Johanna Pirker
Graz University of Technology
Head of the GameLab Graz Research Group
Dr. Johanna Pirker is a computer scientist focusing on game and VR development, research, and education and is an active and strong voice of the local indie dev community. In 2011/12 she started researching and developing VR experiences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the moment she is Ass. Prof. for game development at the Graz University of Technology and researches games with a focus on AI, HCI, data analysis, and VR technologies. Johanna was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of science professionals for her innovations in immersive technologies for education.
Dave Gilbert
Wadjet Eye Games
Owner
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 12 years since, Wadjet Eye has developed and published over 15 games including the Blackwell series, The Shivah, Gemini Rue, Primordia, Resonance, Shardlight, Technobabylon and (most recently) Unavowed.
Patrice Désilets
Panache Digital
Co-Founder / Creative Director
Patrice is at the head of Panache Digital games, an independent Montreal-based studio he co-founded in 2014. With close to 22 years of game design under the belt, he his mostly known for his work on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and as the creative director behind the global success franchise Assassin’s Creed from his years at Ubisoft Montreal. His first independent and highly expected title Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey on the evolution of humankind was released in August of 2019.
Andrej Levenski
Gamepires
Technical Director / Co-Founder
Andrej is an industry veteran of 16 years and the Technical Director at Gamepires. He has been a programmer for much longer, almost 22 years, starting out as an enthusiast with his friends. He co-founded Gamepires 8 years ago, working on the in-house PranaEngine used on the award-winning Gas Guzzlers Extreme racing combat game, and has spent the last 2 years working in UE4 on SCUM, a multiplayer survival game currently in Early Access. His interests and experience span all technical areas of the game development.
Jonas Antonsson
Raw Fury
Troublemaker / Founder
Jonas is an Icelandic entrepreneur that has founded several companies in the games space. 6 years ago he moved to Sweden, where he worked at Paradox Interactive. In the beginning of 2015 he founded Raw Fury, and independent publisher of games, which he now runs. The company has established itself firmly in a short time and enjoyed success for both itself and the developers that it has worked with. Some of Jonases friends suspect he might be a vampire. He does not deny that this might be true.
Austin Wintory
Composer
Grammy-nominated and two-time British Academy Award-winning composer Austin Wintory diverse career has straddled the worlds of games, films and concert music. Austin’s soundtrack for the hit PS3 game Journey became the first-ever Grammy-nominated videogame score, also winning two British Academy Awards and many others! Austin’s score for the earlier game flOw made him the youngest composer ever to receive a British Academy Award nomination and also won him a wide variety of other game industry accolades, Since Journey’s release Austin’s subsequent scores to The Banner Saga, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and ABZU have each earned BAFTA nominations. He collaborates regularly with orchestras and chamber ensembles around the world.
Kate Edwards
Global Game Jam / Geogrify
Executive Director / CEO
Kate Edwards is the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy which pioneered content culturalization, and is the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). In addition to being an outspoken advocate who serves in several advisory/board roles, she is a geographer, writer, and corporate strategist. Following 13 years at Microsoft, she has consulted on many game and non-game projects for BioWare, Google, Amazon, and many other companies. Fortune magazine named her as one of the “10 most powerful women” in the game industry in 2013 and in 2014 was named by GamesIndustry.biz as one of their six People of the Year. In 2018, she was honored with Reboot Develop Blue’s annual Hero Award and also presented with IndieCade’s annual Game Changer Award. She is also profiled in the December 2018 publication Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play.
Ste Curran
Game designer, writer, broadcaster
Ste Curran is a game designer, writer and broadcaster. He’s perpetually working on games he can’t talk about, just like you, so instead of breaking NDAs he writes lengthy monologues about love, death and videogames, and Kills The Games Industry over and over again exclusively at Reboot. His radio show, One Life Left, is the longest-running videogame radio show in the world and he hosts Maraoke, the amazing modded karaoke night. Taylor Swift replied to him 13/3/2013.
Jakub Dvorský
Amanita Design
CEO / Creative Director
Jakub is the founder, game designer and creative director in Amanita Design, Czech based independent studio best known for games like Machinarium, Botanicula, Samorost series, CHUCHEL or Pilgrims. The studio is currently working on three upcoming games.
Alen Ladavac
Google Stadia
Engineering Manager / Developer Experience
As the engineering manager for the Developer Experience team, Alen is making sure that developers making games for the Stadia platform have all the tools they need to access the power of Google to reach players on any screen.
Before joining Google, he has collected more than 25 years of experience on PC, console, mobile and VR games. Since 1993, he architected and developed the technology for all the games in the world-famous Serious Sam franchise and for the critically acclaimed The Talos Principle, as well as some smaller titles, for a wide range of platforms from 16-bit computers in the ‘90s, PC and various consoles as well as VR and mobile.
His broad range of interests and experience spans all technical areas of the game development, from rendering, sound and physics, to networking, build systems and content pipelines.
Patrick Sweeney
Interactive Entertainment Law Group
Attorney
Patrick Sweeney is one of the leading attorneys in the games industry, and a long-standing “deal-makers” in the global games market. In his 20+ years in the games industry, Patrick has negotiated an array of game development agreements, resulting in the commercial release of more than 1000 games and well over a billion dollars (USD) in development fees and advances. The IE Law Group is the largest firm in the world that is solely dedicated to the games industry. Firm clients are spread around the world, representing 28 countries. Patrick is also a founding member and President of the Video Game Bar Association, an invitation-only organization made up of the top legal practitioners in the games industry. He is a law school professor and lecturer at numerous universities and taught the first game-specific law school course in the United States back in 2005.
Ivan Švarc
Gamepires
Lead Animator
Ivan Švarc is an avid gamer who managed to build a successful career combining his two passions – art and video games. Currently working as Lead animator at Gamepires, he is also a senior 3D artist with over 20 years of experience. From working on award-winning Gas Guzzlers Extreme racing combat game to currently leading his team of animators on the PC survival game SCUM (developed in Unreal Engine 4), he has developed and expanded his expertise with each new project. This unsuccessfully treated perfectionist (or just a slow worker, as his wife would say) is truly a man of many talents – from miniature boat building to social dancing art form is too big or too small to be overlooked.
Tobias Kopka
Ludicious / Reboot
Festival Director / Head of Community Relations
Tobias is experienced international networker and program director, with a long-term background in the demoscene from the 90s on. Nowadays he is Festival Director of Ludicious Zürich Game Festival and Head of Community Relations at Reboot Develop keeping relations to everybody in shape. Before joining the Reboot mission Tobias has been heading the Conference & Program Direction of Quo Vadis, Berlin for more than five years and was also a major force behind Respawn – Gathering of Game Developers in Cologne, also supporting the inception of devcom, to name only a few conferences and professional events he curated with his vast background in tech, art and science for more than 10 years.
SWERY / Hidetaka Suehiro
White Owls Inc.
CEO
Swery is one of Japans representative indie developers. He’s been working in the game industry for 24 years, and continues to create unique, spirited work based on the slogan: From Osaka to all of YOU around the world. His representative works include Deadly Premonition, D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, Spy Fiction, among others. His newest game MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories has received high praise for its anthropological value, such as being nominated for the Games for Impact category in the Game Awards 2018. In 2019, it won 2 NAVGTR Awards, one award at Japan’s biggest indie game show, BitSummit, and an Etna Comics Award at the biggest award ceremony in southern Italy. His next game, The Good Life is scheduled for release in 2019 and he has just announced that he is working intensively on Deadly Premonition 2 as game director!
Luis Felipe Villegas
Bungie Studios
Director of Services, Infrastructure and Game Security
Born in Medellin, Colombia, he moved to the United States at the age of 16 with dreams of becoming either a professional basketball player or a game developer. Basketball was not as fun as playing games so he decided to pursue a degree in Computer Science from Florida International University and joined Bungie Studios in 2003. Luis’ journey at Bungie gave him the opportunity to work in different areas, including Tools, Graphics, Networking, and Matchmaking. In 2016 Luis took an interest on business and got an MBA from University of Washington. Luis is the Director of Services, Infrastructure, and Game Security at Bungie, where he combines his passion for technology, business, and people and leads the team that ensures that every Destiny player has the best possible experience.
Damir Durovic
Reboot
CEO
As a veteran of games industry with 22 years of combined experience in running huge games industry events, media and being key part on marketing and PR side of things Damir has seen empires fall and rise. For last 8 years together with an incredible and small but super agile team has been running REBOOT brand that besided running one of the biggest comsumer games shows in Europe, as well as the big European consumer games media is the company behind world famous Reboot Develop Blue and Red, two games industry conferences that have redefined the worldwide games industry event landscape. Damir was also recently elected to serve as an advisor on advisory board of European Game Developers Federation.