Laura spent 10 years working for Sony (later Guerrilla) Cambridge before joining Inkle, the critically acclaimed makers of 80 Days. She has spent the last 2 years leading the art team wrangling the behemoth that is Heaven's Vault into release.
About the talk
How I used the methods I learned in AAA to build 14 unique environments on time, to budget, with 3 people - a journey through the things worth doing even on a small team: style guides, design processes, pipeline tips, and the occasional spreadsheet.

Freya Holmér is the co-founder of Neat Corp (Budget Cuts, Garden of the Sea), the creator of Shader Forge, an educator, streamer, and an indie game dev of her solo project, Flowstorm! Her work generally involves Unity, tech art, shaders, and C#.
About the talk
A lot of the math we use in game dev, is rarely taught in math class, and those who know that math, presume everybody else does too. This talk covers some of the most useful core math tools we deploy, and how they can be used in your games

Nathalie Lawhead is an interactive artist and experimental game developer.

About the talk
This talk is about abuse in our industry.
The necessity of providing a safe space for survivors to come forward about abuse.
The equal importance of our community to constructively create accountability for those that cause harm.

Piotr works at 11 bit studios as Business Development Manager. He is responsible for sales management, partner relations, searching for new business opportunities. Prior to 11 bit he worked at CDP and Deloitte. He holds a Master of Economics degree.

About the talk
How to manage your game's life-cycle : case study of This War of Mine and Frostpunk.

The Kissinger Twins - film & interactive directors duo exploring the intersection of narrative and technology. The authors of award-winning artistic projects such as Sufferosa or The Trip and interactive experiences for Expedia, Honda or Philips.
About the talk
Instagram has become a narrative tool for a new wave of interactive storytellers. We'll show you how to disrupt and utilize medium which is both a tool for production and distribution and the largest visual social media platform.

Maria holds a PhD in inclusive playful interactions & digital games. She works with playfulness, applied in different settings & communities & she is currently the artistic director of “Trust In Play: European School of Urban Game Design”.
About the talk
What happens when you add playfulness in traditional structures? A game design lab in a special education school, a squat of 300 game jammers in a cultural institute & an urban games design school based on trust, will be some of our case studies.

Jade "JDWasabi" Leamcharaskul is a game music composer, sound designer and music culture consultant. She hopes to offer more culturally accurate options to game dev and regularly performs Taiko Drums on stage. Previous works include Dragon Fin Soup.

About the talk
Pitch, volume, reverb, ADSR, psycho-acoustics...what does it all mean?! This talk covers the design process of audio in games, terminology break down, the impact of audio on players, and why it matters.

A seasoned game designer with nine years of industry experience, Shringi turned researcher three years ago. Her work is dedicated towards finding how game designers can take practical inspiration from other creative fields like Magic and Poetry.
About the talk
This talk focuses on principles we can learn from the art of stage magic. It throws light on perceptual causality, choreography of surprise, illusion of choice. We also discuss how magic can be used to create uncertainty in moment to moment gameplay.

Emilie is a French concept artist based in England and working at The Creative Assembly on a brand new video-game IP. She enjoys science-fiction, spaceships and robots just as much as she enjoys designing them in virtual reality.

About the Playformance
Untitled Goose Game

Editor-in-chief of the voluntary & associative website Game Side Story, discoverer of independent games since 2011.

About the Playformance
Proteus

Nicole and Hannes form the serious performance biz warriorprincesswario. They've previously explored intimate play, divination and the hot reality of trashy-perverted games. Together they are liable for various performances/exhibitions/other failures.
About the playformance
13.5 glorious trainwrecks by various artists. Herbal tea will be provided.

Nicole and Hannes form the serious performance biz warriorprincesswario. They've previously explored intimate play, divination and the hot reality of trashy-perverted games. Together they are liable for various performances/exhibitons/other failures.
About the playformance
13,5 glorious trainwrecks by various artists. Herbal tea will be provided.

I'm trying to do pixel art in my bedroom for a living.

About the Playformance
Routine Feat

Game artist, activist and Jack-of-all-trades. I've been working in the industry for almost 8 years. I talk about worker's rights, accessibility & mental health for a more inclusive industry. I'm obsessed with UV Mapping please give them to me.
About the Playformance
Layers of Fear

Dr Tine Bech is a multidisciplinary artist and has a PhD in Play Theory and Interactive Art. She creates innovative, interactive art, and designs eloquent, playful and meaningful artworks in the public realm, and for galleries and museums.

About the talk
Tine will share her practical and theoretical knowledge on creating play in public spaces and designing for human interaction. Using examples from her practice, she will reveal why we need to play.

Historian, seasoned boardgame designer, parisian

About the talk
How boardgame are adapted into video games, how video games are adapted into boardgames, and why it's completely different.

Jennifer Schneidereit is an award-winning game designer and programmer. In 2010 she founded Nyamyam, after having worked for a number of years in AAA.
About the talk
Astrologaster is a story-rich comedy game set in Elizabethan England. It is based on the Casebooks of real historic figure Simon Forman. This talk explores how history informed the design and creative direction of the game.

I am a writer, game designer and coder focusing on narrative videogames. I am the director of Open Lab Games, a group of four indie game developers based in Florence, Italy.
About the talk
Sports in videogames are represented either through simulators or as management games. We will explore an alternative "anthropological" path using narrative and strategy to represent football's universe and its paradoxical epic.

Delphine Fourneau (aka Dziff) is an independant art director & illustrator who's been working in video games for about 9 years. She’s part of the Klondike Collective, and casually work on soothing & personal game experiences.
About the talk
Welp, my work and hobbies are the same.

Anita Cavaleiro has a M.F.A. from USP and teaches undergrad and graduation courses, as well as workshops in games, interactive design, digital art and storytelling. She worked as game curator and was involved in indie dev meetups for almost 10 years.
About the talk
The talk focuses on indie dev events as cultural intermediaries, shaping the independent game development scene in Brazil. Such events portraits how dev communities are structured, unravelling some of the sociopolitical and cultural tensions in them.

Made Bad North. Ex-Ubisoft. Pretty good at procedural generation.
About the talk
Generating cozy towns from cubic tiles at interactive speeds through a mix of Marching Cubes and Wave Function Collapse.

Before Reigns, François developed a few games: Singular, Devouring Stars, Magic Shot and Passengers. Each one very different from the previous one, but each one a very useful learning experience.
About the talk
Nerial first released game was called Singular and it started "the loop". Not all our games are successful, but each of them brings something new to the following one.

Gareth Damian Martin is a writer, artist and game designer. He is currently developing In Other Waters, a game which casts the player as as an AI operator, guiding a stranded xenobiologist, as they explore and study a beautiful and strange alien ocean. He is also known for his work as a games journalist, Eurogamer columnist and editor of the games and architecture zine Heterotopias. He was recently nominated for the prestigious New York Game Critics Circle Games Journalism Award and his writing has been described by Arkane Studio’s Harvey Smith as ‘both beautiful and illuminating.’

Marketer, producer, game developer. I'm the swiss knife itself. Currently marketer at Goblinz Studio and developing my own indie games.

Martzi Campos is an artist/interactive designer living in Los Angeles. She has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Designwhere she studied Painting and Installation art and an MFA in Interactive Media and Games from the University of Southern California. She has designed many interactive works ranging from Pop up books that control video games to haunted interactive radios. Her main focus and passion are on combining handcrafted objects with digital technology to create magical interactions and experiences. She has show her work at E3, IndieCade, DIGRAPH and the Game Developers Conference. She is currently teaching Game Design at USC.

I'm a co-founder and a programmer at a small indie studio in Switzerland. We are developing a narrative game, where words are the main tool to interact with a game world.

Max Pixel is the team lead of Freeform Labs, a software & games studio focused on technical expertise. Max grew up among Michigan's plentiful forests, which were a strong inspiration for ElemenTerra. He studied at USC, and now lives in Los Angeles.

After studying economy and marketing in media, I've decided to study game and level design (sounds cool). This academic background lead me to create a video game with few friends, worked in the Game Bakers team and other smaller projects as level designer. I've studied the video game market and assisted computer and video games company as consultant for Digiworld IDATE. During my free time I've organized several Game Jam with the Region Occitanie and association Collectif Antithese. Now I'm marketing and playtest coordinator at Magic Design Studios. So, I don't know how to defined myself but I definitely love working in the video game area (and I can do a fantastic dolphin impression).

Shawn lives on the east coast of the United States, is involved in many game related activities, and recently started baking bread. His sourdough starter six months old, and he is worried that it won’t remember when he gets back home.