Pedro Medeiros de Almeida – The Art of Celeste
Pedro is a game artist and programmer. He worked on Celeste, TowerFall, Out There Somewhere and more than 70 pixel art tutorials and game development articles. Originally from São Paulo, Brazil, he recently moved to Vancouver to keep working with the Celeste team.
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Victoria Tran – Underdressed and Stressed: Why Fashion in Games Matters
Victoria Tran is the Communications Director at Kitfox Games, an indie studio in Montreal, Canada creating intriguing worlds like Boyfriend Dungeon and Moon Hunters. Additionally, they are publishing Dwarf Fortress and Six Ages to Steam. She is passionate about designing kindness in game communities and in her spare time, organizes various local game meet-ups and events.
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Kate Edwards – Game Creators and the Quest for Leverage
Kate Edwards is the Executive Director of the Global Game Jam and the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy which pioneered content culturalization. She is also an award-winning industry advocate who is a Board Member of Take This and the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA).
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Lyndsey Gallant – Maybe The Internet Is Good Sometimes: The Totally Remote Game Studio
A Nova Scotia denizen now residing in Toronto, Lyndsey Gallant is the Art Director & Co-Founder of Sonderlust Studios: a new indie game studio comprised of ultra-talented industry veterans who are creating an unconventional, systems-driven narrative title. With 8 years of game industry experience, Lyndsey spent the early years of her career visually designing and art directing a variety of mobile games that were enjoyed by millions of players across the world.
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Neilson Koerner – Dust2 Dust, Aging with Counter-Strike
Neilson Koerner is an interactive media artist working in videogames and virtual/augmented reality, he also has an identical twin brother Milan, together they create work under SCRNPRNT. His recently released game DUSTNET explores the death of Counter-Strike.
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Lachlan Sleight – Falling Without Style
Lachlan Sleight is a creative technologist who’s spent the last 7 years mining the technological and conceptual frontiers of the beautiful, precarious world that we all find ourselves living in. He co-founded Liminal, a psychology-focused VR company in his home town of Melbourne in 2015 and more lately has worked on various international and local projects in augmented, mixed and virtual reality. In his copious spare-time, he creates abstract, generative virtual reality simulations designed to teach people about nature, reality and ourselves.
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Johnnemann Nordhagen – Refining Your Game Idea, or How to Make Jaws Without a Shark
Johnnemann is a 16-year veteran of the game industry. He has worked as a QA tester, in Sony’s Research and Development department, on the Bioshock series at 2K Marin, and was co-founder of The Fullbright Company and the sole programmer on Gone Home. He founded Dim Bulb Games and headed development of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, released in February of 2018.
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Alex Beachum – Designing for Curiosity in Outer Wilds
Alex Beachum is the Co-Creative Lead at Mobius Games and Creative Director of Outer Wilds, which began as his graduate thesis at USC’s Interactive Media MFA program. He is gifted with the Sight, cannot be killed with conventional weapons, and should not be allowed to write short bios about himself.
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Danny Baranowsky – All Games Are Music Games (Kind Of!)
Danny Baranowsky is a composer, musician and larger-than-life personality living in Vancouver, Canada by way of Mesa, Arizona. Over the past decade, Danny has risen to the top of his field, composing the music for best-selling games Cadence of Hyrule, Canabalt, Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac, Desktop Dungeons, Crypt of the Necrodancer, and more. Danny’s music immediately demands attention with soaring melodies and complex harmonies and has garnered him critical acclaim from publications such as Kotaku, PCGamer and Destructoid.
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Shane Neville – Put A Castle In the Middle – Design Lessons from Disneyland and Zelda
Shane Neville has been making games for over 20 years. He was worked as a designer, writer, producer and studio manager and has been indie since 2010, working on titles such as Bunker Punks, Shellrazer, Company of Heroes and Need for Speed.
Cherry Thompson – You Got This, Happy Accidents Count and Other Accessibility Pep Talks
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Cherry is an accessibility specialist with a focus on systems design and user experience. They’ve worked on projects of all sizes from small indies (e.g Gambrinous, GlitchMN) to AAA (e.g Guerrilla Games, Media Molecule). Their practice includes workshops, accessibility audits and education followed by design collaboration. They have a passion for making both games and the industry inclusive of everyone. Their hobbies consist of cake eating, bird watching and adventuring with their one eyed cat, Odin.