Alexandre Thabet

Alexandre Thabet, CEO of the Montreal-based mobile video games studio Ludia, has more than 20 years of experience in the video game industry. Since Ludia’s creation in 2007, he has helped the company grow to reach nearly 400 employees including a portfolio of globally successful games, privileged relationships with renowned licenses, and a solid position as a Canadian leader in the mobile gaming industry.

Alma Talbot

Alma is an Associate Development Manager at Motive on the Star Wars: Squadrons team. She is the chapter Lead for Women’s Ultimate Team in Montreal. She is a firm advocate that innovation thrives when built on a foundation of diverse perspectives.

Anamaria Musca

With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I am now responsible for the production of all monetization assets and their pipeline on the new Ubisoft Battle Royale, Hyper Scape. These assets include: characters, weapons, vehicles, emblems, logomotes and loading screens.

Anne-Marie Collins

Avery Rueb

With more than 20 years of classroom experience, Avery brings together a deep understanding of pedagogy and a love of casual games that everyone can fall in love with quickly. His research on games and Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow has been published funded by the SSHRC and published internationally. He is also the co-founder of the Association Edteq which brings together over 80 educational technology companies and non-profits to work directly with the Quebec Ministry of Education to improve access and educational outcomes

Ben Mattes

Berkley Egenes

Berkley Egenes is the Vice President of Marketing at Xsolla specializing in creating and marketing solutions aimed at helping our partners reach more players and earn more revenue. He is a creator of successful partnerships, collaborations and campaigns for brands and organizations aimed at elevating their awareness, perception and experience in the global marketplace. 


With over 20 years of marketing and product integration experience, he brings his talents to Xsolla from the esports industry where he most recently helped build the Ghost Gaming brand, sponsorship sales, media relations, social presence and online store, prior to its acquisition. As their Head of Marketing // CMO, he built numerous campaigns aimed at engaging with fans and activating brand partnerships featuring gaming pros and creators in Fortnite, PUBG, CS:GO, Gears of War, Rocket League and Apex Legends, across three continents.


An agency and global brand veteran, he has led marketing organizations focused on driving engagement and results at the intersection of brands and technology having represented blue chip organizations including NEXTVR (immersive virtual reality live sports & entertainment experience – acquired by Apple), MERIDIAN (retail-focus SaaS-based augmented reality platform), Alcatel/TCL, VIZIO, Kellogg’s, AB-InBev, NASCAR. IBM, Walmart, and CVS.

Brenda Romero

Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game director, entrepreneur, artist and Fulbright award recipient and is presently game director and creator of the Empire of Sin franchise. As a game director, she has worked on 50 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons and Def Jam franchises. Away from the machine, her analog series of six games, The Mechanic is the Message, has drawn national and international acclaim, particularly Train and Siochán Leat, a game about her family’s history, which is presently housed in the National Museum of Play. In addition to a BAFTA and a Fulbright, Romero is the recipient of multiple lifetime achievement awards, a Grace Hopper Award, a GDC Ambassador Award, and many of the games she has contributed to have won numerous awards. Romero is CEO and co-founder of Romero Games based in Galway, Ireland.

Bronson Zgeb

Bronson Zgeb is a Technical Content Developer at Unity Technologies. As a game developer, he’s been using Unity for a decade, first at the artist-owned studio KO_OP and then later at Square Enix Montréal. Now he builds demos and learning material for Unity.

Carl Thibeault

Carl Thibeault is a Technical Artist in video games, currently working at Stadia Games and Entertainment. During his 8 years of experience as a developper, he started his career at Ubisoft Montréal on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, then moved to Typhoon Studios in 2017 on Journey to the Savage Planet. Generalist in 3D art, Carl has done work on modeling, texturing, shading and optimization of graphic performances, shipping 6 main titles along the way. Gaming at an early age, he grew up renting video games at his local rental shop , playing Nintendo and wishing to make one some day.

Carl-Edwin Michel

Carl-Edwin Michel is a tech and video game enthusiast. He is the founder and CEO of Northern Arena, an esports production company.

He’s been also reporting on the high-tech industry since 2009 as a freelance journalist, lecturer and TV personality. His specialties lie in consumer electronics, computers, Internet trends and interactive entertainment. He has been working in broadcasting, being a host of tech segments and correspondent for various TV shows but also hosts the Cineplex pre-show. Besides his work as a host, he is a prolific producer and has created multiple TV shows, popular websites and esports events.

His interests and experience in the field led him to create his own company and partner with some of the country’s leading companies and iconic brands to deliver projects that have an impact. Carl is also the creator and executive producer of the Canadian Game Awards, which recognizes the immense talent in the Canadian Video Game industry.

Caroline Boucher

Cassia Curran

Cassia Curran is an adviser at WINGS Interactive, a fund that invests in games by female game developers and diverse teams. She was Head of Business Development at Jagex in Cambridge, UK, where she developed deals in M&A, publishing and IP licensing, as well as founding the company’s first Diversity & Inclusion group. Prior to Jagex, she worked in Business Development and Investor Relations at NetEase in Hangzhou, China.

Chad Comeau

Chad Comeau is an independent game designer from Nova Scotia currently studying at the Cologne Game Lab in Germany.

His passion for video games started at age four when his grandma introduced him to Nintendo games. Years later, he started making games with friends as a hobby, often incorporating themes of language and identity. This focus on cultural elements is reflected in his company’s name, Fring Frang, which is a local dish.

His last major project was Clarevoyance, an adventure game about the folklore of his hometown, created in direct collaboration with over one hundred members of his Acadian community and funded by three levels of government. Another recent project, Local Paper Small Town, is a nominee at the Deutscher Entwicklerpreis 2020.

Charles-Antoine Richard

Charles-Antoine, Monetization Director for Ubisoft Quebec, is passionate about creating, operating, and optimizing video game revenue streams. He has participated in the conception and launch of over 12 new products, brands, and businesses. A gamer at heart, he focuses on strategies where strong ROI can be synonymous with a positive player experience.

Chelsea Blasko

As Iron Galaxy’s Co-CEO, Chelsea Blasko is the “Wizard of Oz” who runs the company’s day-to-day operations and makes all of the magic happen from behind the curtain. She oversees Information Technology, Human Resources, Finance and Product Development for Iron Galaxy’s portfolio of games.

Chelsea was the company’s 13th employee and has been instrumental in Iron Galaxy’s growth and high employee retention. While she was initially brought on to produce and run the studio, she proactively took the reins on the hiring, expansion and development of the studio’s culture to help elevate and shape the company to what it is today. Chelsea mentored the studio’s leaders by overseeing product development and teaching others the process along the way. Additionally, she created Iron Galaxy’s career coaching program that assigned every employee with a more senior staff member to ensure they were offered opportunities to continue to support their growth and areas of interest. Iron Galaxy now has offices in Chicago, Orlando and even a virtual Austin location.

A Notre Dame graduate, Chelsea was a high school German teacher, and managed an H&M and high-end boutique before finding her start in games at Electronic Arts in Chicago, where she was enticed by the ability to flex her creative and artistic muscles. While there, she served as the assistant to the GM and a Production Coordinator on a variety of titles and then spent a few years at Robomodo as a Producer and Project Manager. She was finally convinced by Iron Galaxy’s Founder Dave Lang to share her production expertise at Iron Galaxy and quickly took over the entire company’s production department and internal operations before becoming the COO.

Chris Petrovic

Mr. Petrovic is a games, technology and digital media veteran, with over 20 years of global experience in the sector. He currently serves as SVP and Head of Corporate Strategy, M&A and Business Development for Zynga, a leading developer of the world’s most popular mobile games that are played by millions of customers worldwide. Chris is responsible for driving the company’s growth through strategic M&A, partnerships and market expansion efforts. Chris has deployed over $3 billion in capital during his time at Zynga for the acquisitions of Rollic Games, Peak Games, Small Giant Games, Gram Games, Peak Games board and card studio, Harpan and Puzzle Social. He has also secured licensing partnerships with Disney (Star Wars), Warner Brothers (Harry Potter), NBC/Universal (Fast & Furious), HBO (Game of Thrones) and World Poker Tour and in responsible for the company’s Asia market strategy.

Prior to joining Zynga, Chris served as SVP and Head of Corporate Strategy & Development at Kabam, another leading mobile gaming company. During his time at Kabam, he led Kabam’s international growth strategy efforts, with a particular focus on Asia, and also was responsible for a number of key licensing deals with Disney, Marvel, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate. In addition, Chris oversaw Kabam’s M&A activity as well as its 3rd party publishing business, which was sold to Chinese publisher Gaea Mobile.

Prior to Kabam, Chris served as the global GM of GameStop Digital Ventures, the digital strategy, corporate development and incubation arm for GameStop, the world’s largest provider of video game products and services. As a member of the company’s senior management team, Chris served as the principal leader of GameStop’s global digital strategy and was responsible for building on the company’s ongoing efforts to integrate digital initiatives and business lines into the company’s multi-channel strategy, as well as overseeing the development and execution of new organic growth and product development, acquisitions, strategic partnerships and investments. As a result of these efforts, digital revenues grew from $100MM to over $600MM during Petrovic’s tenure.

Prior to joining GameStop, Chris held senior level digital positions at Playboy, AG Interactive (a division of American Greetings), drkoop.com and theglobe.com. He began his career in the late 90’s as an entrepreneur, serving as the CEO of Internet start-up BannerGreetings.com. From there he went on to become COO of Buzztone.com, a leading interactive marketing agency, before joining Prime Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based in Santa Monica, California.

Chris Swan

Chris started in the games industry as a programmer at Big Red Software in 1994. Moving to Blitz Games Studios in 1999, he led the technical teams for a number of PC and console titles including Fuzion Frenzy, and the award-winning Xbox Burger King games. Moving from frontline game development, he became Business Development Director for the studios’ Blitz 1Up publishing programme, helping indie developers access publishing and distribution support across a range of platforms, before leading the creation and launch of pre-Steam Greenlight indie developer distribution portal IndieCity. In 2013 he joined Radiant Worlds, initially as Web Systems Director and then Publishing Director, for UGC sandbox adventure SkySaga. Since 2017 he has been the Publishing & Live Game Director for game creation and publishing platform Crayta, currently available exclusively on Google Stadia.

Christina Liu

Christina Liu is currently VP of Product for AppLovin’s games and hails from an impressive gaming background that includes prior roles with Scopely, Glu Mobile, and Zynga. She was responsible for leading and owning the product for Zynga titles including Wheel of Fortune and FarmVille 2 across various development cycles. As VP of Product, Christina is a cross-functional leader that brings AppLovin’s teams together to ultimately deliver high-impact mobile games for millions of players around the world.

Christopher Chancey

Christopher Chancey is a CEO who specializes in the financing and marketing of video games. In 2015, he ran crowdfunding campaigns for himself and clients totalizing over half a million dollars. In 2014, he founded ManaVoid Entertainment and raised over 3 million dollars for the studio’s second game Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan (to be released Q2 2021). Early collaborator in La Guilde and the Indie Asylum, today Chris is a partner and investor in many video game studios. Since 2017 he also teaches game design, programming and marketing at the University of Montreal (UdeM) and the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), on top of being one of the founders of the indie game microprogram at UQAT, making sure the gaming entrepreneurs of tomorrow are up to the task.

Christopher Dragert

Christopher Dragert has worked on the Watch Dogs series for five years and at Ubisoft Toronto for 6. On the recently released Watch Dogs: Legion, he acted as a Team Lead Programmer focusing on Game Systems and the core ‘Play as Anyone’ functionality. Before that, Christopher worked on Watch_Dogs 2 where he acted as principal programmer for the ‘Invasion of Privacy’ missions. He received his Ph.D. from McGill University in 2015 where he studied Model-Driven Development of AI for Games and has presented work on the topic at various academic conferences along with GDC in 2016.

Damian Sommer

Damian Sommer is a Toronto-based game designer best known for his IGF-nominated experimental multiplayer narrative game, “The Yawhg”. In 2016, Damian helped co-found GLOAM, a game studio committed to bold, uncompromising aesthetics, and bold, uncompromising game design. Together, GLOAM is finishing up their first commercial work, “Bravery Network Online”, a competitive battle RPG taking place in the post-post-post-post apocalypse. Damian spends most of his days trudging through the mire that is narrative and game design, and he likes it that way.

Dan Bernardo

Born a games geek and design nerd, Dan has degrees in Anthropology and Graphic Design. Working as a creative for over 17 years for a range of start-ups and large businesses, most recently Unruly Group where he was instrumental in developing it from a one-room startup to a global company with 20 offices in 4 continents and sold for an excess of $150m. He then decided to use his experience creating talented teams and efficient products in pursuit of his childhood dream of creating games.

In 2018, Dan founded Playtra, an independent game studio, which quickly grew into a team of 9 diverse staff, winning the ROKiT Global PitchFest where they came up at first place among more than 400 game projects.

Playtra is currently working on its first game for PC and Consoles called Grid Fight – Mask of the Goddess, a fast-paced action/strategy game where you control a squad of powerful heroines in the all-female universe of Gora.

Dan is an advocate of alternative narrative structures and cultural diversity in games, giving talks on those subjects during game events around the world, including PAX, PGC, CGC, BFI and DEVCOM.

Danny Lew

Danny works as Legal Counsel at EA in Montreal. He is a lead on both the Asian and Pacific Islanders and PRIDE Employee Resource Groups in Montreal, and is a strong believer that allies play a crucial role in ensuring greater diversity and inclusion in the workplace and in our games.

Dean Zhao

Debbie Bestwick

Debbie Bestwick MBE, is Chief Executive Officer of award-winning veteran games developer and international games label, Team17. Debbie joined the games industry at the age of 17, starting out in indie retailing where she won ‘Indie Retailer of the Year’ at just 18; she then co-founded Team17 in 1990 at the age of 20. Team17 is a leading international games label with award-winning franchises including The Escapists, Overcooked!, Yooka-Laylee, Worms, and many more titles from developers around the world. Most recently, two critically acclaimed titles – Blasphemous and Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair – joined an impressive roster of over 100 games released by Team17 across PC, console and mobile platforms over the past 30 years. Since becoming CEO in 2010, Debbie has focused on transforming Team17 into a global games publishing label with strong year-on-year growth, bringing expertise gleaned from decades of games development to support independent development studios in taking their IP to market. In order to broaden Team17’s profile globally and to support further growth, Team17 successfully completed its admission to the London Stock Exchange in 2018. Debbie Bestwick received an MBE in 2016 for services to the video games industry and was awarded ‘Business Leader of the Year’ at the Yorkshire Business Awards 2018. Previously, Bestwick was recognised as making an ‘Outstanding Contribution to the UK Games Industry’ at the 2017 Golden Joystick Awards, ‘Businesswoman of the Year’ at the 2016 Women in Games Awards, won the ‘Hall of Fame’ award at the European Women in Games Conference 2015, and MCV’s ‘Person of the Year’ in 2015.

Denis Talbot

Denis Talbot is a leading figure in the video game and technology industry. Over 17 years, he hosted and produced more than 2,409 live episodes of M.Net. Today, his Twitch channel has become a must-watch for video game and technology enthusiasts. Denis Talbot is also a regular columnist for Planète Techno on Explora (Radio Canada).

Ed Fries

Ed Fries created his first video games for the Atari 800 in the early 1980s. He joined Microsoft in 1986 and spent the next ten years as one of the early developers of Excel and Word. In 1996 he left the Office team to pursue his passion for interactive
entertainment and created Microsoft Game Studios. Over the next eight years he grew the team from 50 people to over 1200, published more than 100 games including more than a dozen million sellers, co-founded the Xbox project, and made Microsoft one of the leaders in the video game business. In 2004, Ed retired as a Microsoft Vice President and began working as a board member and advisor with entrepreneurs in the video game business as well as serving on the board of many non-profit organizations including the International Game Developers Association, the Pacific Science Center and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2019 Ed joined with some friends to launch 1Up Ventures, a venture fund to support independent game developers around the world.

Emily Greer

Emily is the co-founder & CEO of Double Loop Games, a new mobile game studio. Previously she was the co-founder & CEO of Kongregate, leading its rapid rise as a free-to-play web destination before expanding into mobile publishing, launching hits such as AdVenture Capitalist and Animation Throwdown. A data geek at heart, Emily is well-known in the game industry for her presentations on the economics and psychology of free-to-play games.

Emily Short

Emily Short is Creative Director at Failbetter Games. Her AI-related experience includes three years as a product manager and then CPO at Spirit AI, where she worked with natural language processing and generation, character moods and social behavior, and conversation modelling. She was previously the creative director of the Versu project, building interactive iPad stories around AI character agents. She has an extensive background in games writing and narrative design as well as tooling for writing interactive fiction.

Eric Kucharsky

Erin Hoffman-John

Erin Hoffman-John is a game designer, author, and speaker. She is currently on baby bonding leave but most recently led creative for Google Stadia’s R&D team. She is also creative lead at Sense of Wonder, an independent maker of digital games with a social good mission. Erin began her design career as an Assistant Worldbuilder for Simutronics on Dragonrealms in 1999, and has worked in a series of game sub-industries in their emerging technology phases, including free-to-play virtual worlds, international MMOs, social games, handheld games, virtual worlds for kids, and games for education. Prior to joining Google, she was a teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC program, and led design at GlassLab, a three-year project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation with the mission of bringing AAA development to educational games, and to pioneer realtime game data analysis for learning. Select game credits include Kung Fu Panda World, SimCity EDU, Mars Generation One, and Doki-Doki Universe. She is also an author of science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction, with the Chaos Knight fantasy series published by Pyr Books, and short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry at an assortment of other markets.

Frédéric Sanchez

Gabriel Ware

Gabriel joined Google in November 2019 as a technical architect to work at Stadia Games and Entertainment Montreal. Previously, Gabe worked for more than 13 years in the game industry before co-founding a tech start-up in the travel industry.
In the game industry Gabe worked on many game engines and pipeline systems, including code generation systems, animation, networking, navigation, streaming and low level optimizations amongst other things. Nowadays, he spends most of his time in the cloud: working with infrastructure as code systems and distributed systems.

Gemma Stewart

Gemma is a games producer with experience in Triple A, indie PC and mobile platforms. She is passionate about not only building great games and experiences, but great teams as well. At Ludia since 2018, she launched Ludia’s first own IP called Lovelink, a first of its kind Interactive Dating Mobile Game.

Guha Bala

Guha Bala is President of Velan Ventures, Inc. an innovation investment company with a focus on video games and game related technology companies, and Velan Studios, Inc., a game studio that focuses on the discovery of new play patterns. Velan Studios recently announced its debut title, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit, a new kind of mixed reality racing experience to be released by Nintendo in October 2020.
Previously, Guha co-founded Vicarious Visions with his brother, Karthik, in 1991. Vicarious has since grown to become an industry-leading game developer, helping to shape popular culture around the world. The company has grown into one of the most prolific creators of video games in North America, accounting for over $4 billion in sales and 45 million units of software spanning entertainment franchises such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, and Crash Bandicoot. After leading Vicarious Visions for 25 years, the brothers transitioned out of the company in 2016 to become entrepreneurs again. Guha enjoys mentoring start-up ventures and was honored as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2013. He is a Board Member of St. Peter’s Health Partners, and the Albany Symphony. Guha holds an AB in Chemistry from Harvard College, and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Guillaume Lapôtre

Guillaume Lapôtre is a Game Security Manager at Ubisoft. He started 6 years ago as a Security Analyst helping multiple Ubisoft games improve their security stances on various topics. He now leads a team which mainly focuses on protecting players’ experience for most of the Ubisoft games worldwide for the past 4 years.

Haley Uyrus

Haley is the Head of Brand Communications at Tonic Games Group (Mediatonic, The Irregular Corporation, and Fortitude Games). Previously she’s worked on over 35 indie titles at a boutique games PR agency, and as an in-house marketing manager on Sunless Skies, Sunless Sea and Fallen London at Failbetter Games. Haley also is a proud Limit Break and NYU Games Incubator mentor, Game Dev Heroes award winner and is a co-founder of the UK Games Marketer London meetup.

James Gwertzman

James Gwertzman is the CEO & Co-Founder of PlayFab and now
General Manager of Gaming Cloud
at Microsoft where he leads the Gaming Cloud business.

Jamie Sefton

Jamie Sefton began his career in the games industry more than 20 years ago as a writer and editor of magazines and websites such as Arcade, Official PlayStation Magazine and PC Zone. Jamie is now the Managing Director of Yorkshire and Northern England games network Game Republic with more than 900 games industry members, including Sumo Digital, Team17 and Revolution Software, hosting events with publishers, platform-holders and investors such as Microsoft, Kowloon Nights, Sony and Ubisoft. In addition, Jamie co-organises events with the world’s biggest games business website GamesIndustry.biz including the Investment Summit, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. As well as bringing a physical Investment Summit to PAX East in Boston, USA in February and delivering two successful online global versions in May and September, Jamie is delighted to now host a special GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit at MEGAMIGS.

Jean-Christophe Sandoval

Jean-François Dugas

As Product Manager on Square Enix Montréal’s Hitman Sniper franchise, Jean-François Dugas is responsible for shepherding the game’s Live-Ops operation. With more than 10 years in the F2P market, starting from kids’ Browser Games to Social Casinos on Facebook, he worked on renowned games such as Jurassic Park Builder and Jurassic World: The Game.

Jean-Philippe Beck

Jean-Philippe Beck is a community manager on Tribes of Midgard, a Co-op survival game developed by Norsfell and published by Gearbox. He graduated in communication and economic and social sciences. He has accumulated more than 6 years of experience in the fields of online reputation, marketing and social networks before entering the video game industry. He now focuses on implementing strategies to maximize community growth and involve players in the development of projects.

Jennifer Pierre

Jennifer Pierre is a user experience and human-computer interaction researcher with expertise in social, digital, and interactive media, computer-mediated communication, critical data studies, and social informatics. Her research interests center on how people use various forms of media and data to form and maintain communities. She is currently working as a User Experience Researcher at Google, conducting research on games and gaming communities as part of the Stadia team.

She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, where she focused her dissertation on how youth use social media for social support. She holds a Masters of Library & information Science from the same department, and a Bachelor of Science in Communication from Cornell University.

Her work has been published in HICSS, PACM HCI CSCW, Big Data & Society, and InterActions, and has been recognized by ACM SIGCHI, the Ford Foundation, and the Bouchet Honor Society. In addition to her research, she has worked as an instructional designer with the UCLA Library WI+RE team, and has fueled her passion for inclusion in STEM, higher education, and tech as a member in several diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Jenny McBean

Jenny McBean is Associate Director at Bryter, a market research agency specialising in gaming research. She works with a variety of companies in the gaming industry, helping to understand player experiences and perceptions across a range of platforms and titles. Alongside regular client work, she is also the driver of Bryter’s Female Gamers Study – an independent annual study, exploring gaming behaviours, as well as experiences of abuse and discrimination, and perceptions of the industry.

Joann Pollard

Joann is a Global Brand Manager for Madden NFL in Orlando, FL. She is a lead on the Women’s Ultimate Team, the development pillar lead for BEAT! (Black EA Team) and an active member of SOMOS EA. She has seen firsthand how allyship, inclusion, and diversity have aligned to offer true representation in our games.

John Linden

John Linden is the CEO of Mythical Games, a video game platform company focused on building player-owned economies using blockchain technology with top game developers and publishers. Prior to Mythical Games, Linden was the President of Seismic Games which developed Marvel Strike Force, Blade Runner: Revelations, and an unannounced TCG game. Seismic Games was acquired by Niantic Labs in June 2018. Prior to Seismic Games, he was a Studio Head at Activision Blizzard leading the Call of Duty and Skylanders franchises.
Before working in the video game industry, Linden was the Co-Founder / CTO at Adknowledge and at OpenX. He also built his own startups, Planet Alumni (acquired by Reunion.com) and Litmus Media (acquired by Think Partnership).

Julie Roy

Julie Roy has worked for Québec International since 2018. As an Advisor – International Talent Attraction, her role consists mainly in advising employers and human resources professionals in the Québec region, and supporting them in their efforts to attract and retain international talents. She previously held various positions in international relations, human resources and communications.

Julien Cuny

Julien Cuny joined Google as Portfolio Director for Stadia Games and Entertainment in 2018. Prior to Google, he worked at Ubisoft for 10+ years and has worked on many major video game franchises.
With a dual background in marketing and production, Julien has held various roles over the years such as Head of Content for Assassin’s Creed and Global Brand Director for Far Cry.
Julien has also developed an expertise in the indie, mobile, and PC space thanks to various ventures he’s been involved over the years.
After living in Monaco, Paris, Montreal, and Toronto, Julien currently resides in Mountain View, California.

Julien Lallevé

Julien is a Software Developer at Motive. Passionate about the collaborative & creative craft of making games, he currently specializes on art workflows with the goal to empower team members to focus on their craft. He is a lead with the PRIDE Employee Resource Group in Montreal.

Julien Lassonde

Karim Mounaim

Kei Hirono

Kei Hirono is the Producer of FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS series.
Kei began his career at Bandai Namco Entertainment in 2002 as a publishing producer of DARK SOULS and has worked on many other games since then. In 2012, Kei joined SQUARE ENIX to produce the PC game Imperial SaGa and the live action TV show, JITSUZAI-SEI MILLION ARTHUR in addition to FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS and WAR OF THE VISIONS FINAL FANTASY BRAVE EXVIUS. Kei also takes the role of Division Director of Division I, Creative Business Unit IV of SQUARE ENIX.

Kirk Lakes

As a Business Development Manager for Stadia Games at Google, Kirk Lakes works with publishers and developers to build partnerships, maximize opportunities within Google, and bring awesome games to Stadia. Gaming has been a lifelong passion, and Kirk is driven by wanting to help creators find as large an audience as possible for their games. Since joining the industry, Kirk has worked on several major product launches and generation-defining game partnerships for platform holders. His first major role was working with Xbox and was there for the launch of Kinect and Xbox One. He then moved to PlayStation’s Third Party Relations team, where he managed publishers’ portfolios, AAA game partnerships, and worked on the launch of PlayStation VR, PS4 Pro, and the PlayStation Now streaming service. Prior to joining Google, Kirk was at Twitch, where he managed BD and strategy for platform studios (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo) and global publishers.

Kjartan Emilsson

Kjartan Pierre Emilsson is the CTO and co-founder of cloud-gaming company Mainframe Industries. He previously was CEO and co-founder of Solfar Studios, a VR game company following his12 year long stint at CCP Games where he held various roles through the years from Lead Game Designer of EVE Online at its launch, Principal Game Designer and Studio Director at CCP Shanghai. Prior to that he was the CTO of OZ.com. He holds a Phd in Chaos Physics.

Laurène Betard

After completing her B.A.A. in marketing and management, Laurène is in the process of completing her M.Sc. (management) in marketing at HEC Montreal. Passionate since her youth about the world of entertainment and more specifically video games, she decided to carry out her graduation project in a developing company that works with entrepreneurs in these fields. Her role as digital marketing manager complements her university experience and her associative implications by pushing her to go beyond the limits of her current academic knowledge and by teaching her more every day about innovative industries in Quebec. In her perpetual quest for new opportunities, she is involved in inspiring projects such as the MegaMigs conference and is not afraid to take up the challenges she or her company faces. Her adage: Together we go further because collaboration is the key to success.

Laurent Mercure

Laurent Mercure has been working in the gaming industry in Quebec City for 7 years. He was first a community manager at Genia and then at Frima and is currently the communications manager at Chainsawesome Games. As such, he plans and executes all communication, community and marketing operations and works actively to finance the studio’s projects. Since their debut in 2013, Chainsawesome Games has already developed and marketed three games and is currently working on their fourth, Knight Squad 2. Laurent is a game enthusiast who is interested in all aspects of game creation from art direction to marketing strategy.

Leah Hoyer

Leah Hoyer leads an incubation project at Bungie, and is Founder of Level Headed Games. She has developed and produced television series, video games, and interactive experiences for some of the world’s most successful companies (Disney, Xbox, Telltale Games) for nearly twenty years. She is passionate about supporting diverse voices in entertainment, and helping to make everyone feel that gaming is for them.

Liam Flookes

15 years of programming in the games industry, spanning AAA, indie, mobile, PC and console. Often affiliated with llamas.

Lindsey Rostal

Partner at Kowloon Nights and Founder/Game Director at Timberline Studio, Lindsey Rostal has knowledge and experience on both sides of the table. She seeks to empower developers with unique voices and a cohesive vision by providing production advice and funding. Her background includes having produced and co-written the King’s Quest Episodic series and her studio’s upcoming dog-sledding survival game: The Red Lantern.

Liz England

Liz England is a Team Lead Game Designer at Ubisoft Toronto working on Watch Dogs: Legion. She specializes in bringing together game systems and narrative, and using the power of procedural generation to help create the “Play as Anyone” fantasy of the game. Prior to Ubisoft she’s worked on games such as Scribblenauts and Sunset Overdrive.

Louis-Félix Cauchon

Trained in communication and interactive media as well as in game design, Louis-Félix has worked in several professions including DJ, radio host, music director, web designer and event producer.

In 2010, he co-founded the video game company Artifice Studio which gave birth to the very first title based on Quebec culture and folklore, Sang-Froid, whose story was written by Bryan Perro and the music signed by the Charbonniers de l’Enfer and Nicolas Pellerin in particular. The title was a success selling over 300,000 copies all over the world.

In 2014, he co-founded the company Jeux Borealys which launched in 2017 its first game Mages of Mystralia, which is the first Quebec title to be distributed in China on the platform of the largest video game company in the world, Tencent. The story was written by Ed Greenwood who sold over 240M books all over the world and the soundtrack was performed and recorded by the Video Game Orchestra who recorded the music for titles such as Final Fantasy XV.

In 2015, he co-founded and became president of The Guild of Independent Video Game Developers which is a non-profit cooperative of producers. From its foundation, the group became the largest official group of independent video game developers in the world with more than 189 member companies in Quebec. Through La Guilde, Louis-Félix created the MÉGA festival, The Musical Odyssey of Video Games and JamNATION.

Louis-Félix has been teaching at university since 2008 and is currently working on the next Borealys Games game which is yet to be announced.

Louise Bonnamy

Louise Bonnamy is the User Research Manager at Square Enix Montréal.
For over 15 years she has worked to improve the User Experience (UX) by integrating them as early and as often as possible into the product and game design process. She is interested in the many and exciting challenges that mobile gaming offers.

Luc Beaulieu

Head of Games at Unity, my main mission is to drive the democratization of video game development across America. From building relationships with the largest studios from the industry and sharing their expertise to supporting indies in their creations across all platforms.

Fueled by 25 years of experience in technologies, I’ve collaborated with the main actors in the video game industry for more than 10 years as the CTO at Frima Studio and now at Unity.

As a passionate gamer as well, my values allowed me to build lasting relationships that have stood the test of time.

Maize Longboat

Maize Longboat is Kanien’kehá:ka from Six Nations of the Grand River and was raised on the unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation near Vancouver, BC. He holds an MA in Media Studies from Concordia University where he studied Indigenous videogame development and created Terra Nova, an award-winning cooperative platformer with an interactive narrative.

Manea Castet

Producer & Entrepreneur with 10 years of expertise in the mobile game industry, Manea Castet is the Lead Producer and Senior Producer at the Gameloft Montreal studio.
Originally from Tahiti and an avid player since his youth, he is passionate about games and their ability to tell stories and bring joy to players. In high school, it became evident to him to make a profession out of his passion.
Manea started his career in 2006 as a Game Designer in Belgium and then in France. He then co-founded with two collaborators BYOOK, a company specializing in mobile games and apps. He would also teach mobile game design at the renowned French video game school Rubika.
In 2016, Manea joined the Gameloft Montreal studio as Senior Game Designer. Since his arrival, he has contributed to many major projects, including Gameloft’s biggest titles.
Now working on a new thrilling cross-platforms game with some of the world’s biggest franchises, Manea has a central role in producing our games where he advises and supports the various producers and game teams.

Marilou Loncol Daigneault

Every year, Marilou evaluates about sixty project proposals submitted to the CMF’s Experimental Stream. She brings nearly 15 years of consulting analysis and project management in the creative industries. Her project financing experience spans over a dozen financing programs from Ontario’s Ministry of Culture, Creative Ontario and now the CMF. She also managed mobile and web productions for Turbulent Media.

Marwan Bitar

A converted technology entrepreneur, founder of Innoprofits, lecturer in financing and entrepreneurship at the École Polytechnique and lecturer, Marwan Bitar understands and optimizes the financial aspect of technology companies. He acts alongside entrepreneurs to give them the means to achieve their goals. He has made his mark by creating significant leverage for a large number of Quebec start-ups and indie studios. With his team specializing in tax credits and grants, he has to his credit the largest number of tax credit claims for indie studios in Quebec.
Innoprofits is the only firm that knows how to brilliantly maximize Multimedia, SR&ED tax credits with the CMF with amounts claimed much higher than the competition and an unequalled success rate of 100%.

Matthieu Dupont

Since he arrived at the beginning of 2019 as studio manager, Matthieu Dupont has devoted his energy to creating all the necessary conditions for Gameloft Montreal to flourish and for its products to succeed. Before crossing the Atlantic, he worked in several important positions at Gameloft’s headquarters in Paris and was actively involved in the success of the company’s games, particularly the Dungeon Hunter franchise. Matthieu currently leads the production several games, some of which are Gameloft originals while others are partnerships with top licensors.

Maxime Raynaud

Maxime Raynaud is a Game Security Programmer at Ubisoft Montréal. Prior to joining Ubisoft, he worked for 7 years in the defense industry as a Security Software Engineer where he acquired an expertise in C++ programming, operating system internals and malware threats. He is now applying his knowledge and experience to the video game industry challenges, in anti-piracy and anti-cheat. 

May Ling Tan

Game designer with a passion for social and inclusive design. Previously worked on titles like Ghost Recon Phantoms, Watch Dogs 2, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, and Hyper Scape.

Melissa Johns

Melissa Johns is from a mixed Mohawk (Turtle Clan) and French Canadian background, and is currently based in Toronto ON. She is an multimedia visual artist and educator specializing in virtual reality installations, digital painting, and video art. Having completed her B.A in Fine Arts & Business at the University of Waterloo, as well as an Advanced Diploma in 3D Animation from Humber College, she is pursuing a Master’s in Interdisciplinary Art from OCAD University. Melissa’s visual practice manifests at the convergence of contemporary media, using interdisciplinary methods to collect, preserve, and transform fragments of the stories around her. At imagineNATIVE, she is passionate about making new media accessible to audiences, and delights in introducing viewers to interactive experiences for the first time.

Melissa Prophète

Michael Cheung

Michael is a General Partner at Makers Fund. He helped to found Makers in 2017, a fund dedicated to investing in and supporting creators who are building the future of Interactive Entertainment.

Michael previously spent the last decade helping companies grow and scale internationally in the Interactive Entertainment sector. An engineer at heart, he was a Senior Director at Tencent and before that a Data Scientist working with companies in the Entertainment and Gaming industry.

Michel Gélinas

Michel Gélinas is a partner at Davies. He focuses on domestic and cross-border M&A, private equity, venture capital and corporate finance transactions, especially in the video game and technology industry.

Michel has extensive experience representing U.S., European and other international clients investing in Canada, as well as Canadian clients investing abroad. Earlier in his career, Michel practised corporate and securities law in New York.

Michel also serves as de facto general counsel to Canadian privately held companies providing general business law advice, including on raising capital and financing, licensing and distribution, negotiating commercial agreements, executive employment law, and IP.

Nadine Gelly

Working in Quebec’s tourism and cultural industries for more than 20 years, Nadine was the general manager of La Vitrine culturelle de Montréal for more than 10 years and participated in the creation of an environment conducive to the development and influence of Montreal entrepreneurs in the fields of content creation and technology in the creativity and entertainment sector as the general manager of Hub créatif Zú, Guy Laliberté’s flagship Montreal project. She now holds the position of Executive Director of the La Guilde du jeu vidéo du Québec, which has more than 245 members and whose mission is to promote the video game industry locally and internationally and to support its development as a global hub. Quality of the workforce, training, recruitment, diversity, creativity, innovation, support for entrepreneurship, export, outreach and member growth are her leitmotifs.

Concerned about all opportunities for arts-business networking and actively involved in various creative projects and the place of women in key positions, Nadine sits on the board of directors as vice-president of the Festival international de la chanson de Granby, on the board of directors of Concertation Montréal as treasurer, is president of the governance committee of the Synthèse project, pôle image Québec, acts as a director on the boards of La Ruche, CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal and Antenne créative and also sits on various committees, including the Cravates Roses.

Neil Alphonso

Neil Alphonso is the Studio Creative Director at Splash Damage in London, and plays a key role in nurturing the studio’s home-grown games, such as Outcasters, a brand-new title coming to Stadia. During Neil’s successful 12-year career at Splash Damage he has been integral in bringing titles like Dirty Bomb, Batman: Arkham Origins multiplayer and BRINK to fruition. Neil’s globe-trotting career actually started in Montreal with the original Tom Clancy’s: Splinter Cell at Ubisoft, eventually crossed an ocean to work on Killzone 2 at Guerrilla Games, before finally heading to London.

Nick Mitchell

Nick Mitchell is the Vice President of Legal for Wizards of the Coast, the tabletop and digital publisher for Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.
Nick oversees Wizards’ global legal operations including IP management, litigation, corporate governance, esports, and data security, privacy and compliance.
In his prior life, Nick represented game developers, publishers and content creators. He also did a stint at Xbox where he supported inbound licensing initiatives for 1st party games and Xbox Live and the launch of Xbox 360.
When not fighting dragons, Nick has been known to teach law and occasionally speak on legal issues and the game industry.

Nikolas Duval-Gagnon

Holder of a M.Sc. (management) in strategy, a B.A.A. in marketing and a technique in music. Nikolas is particularly interested in experience and innovation in the fields of entertainment, multimedia, art and culture. Nikolas has been mandated by the FRQRS to work on a research project on the impact of digital in the cultural sector. After conducting several case studies on the sociofiancing in independent music groups, he presented his findings as a speaker at the 87th edition of the Acfas congress. Focused on performance and creativity, winner of several mentions for academic excellence, and an idealist for multiple events, he uses this knowledge as a project manager at Innoprofits to push the limits of companies in the same industry.

Olivier Groulx

Olivier is a graphics programmer at Stadia Games & Entertainment. Prior to joining Google, he works at Typhoon Studios, where he takes part in the development of Journey to the Savage Planet. Previously, he worked at Eidos Montreal on a few projects, one of which being Deus Ex : Mankind Divided, and at Behaviour Interactive.
He was also a Flash programmer during its golden era, working notably with Mecano and Sidlee on various games and interactive websites.

Oskar Guilbert

Oskar Guilbert is the CEO and founder of DONTNOD Entertainment, the studio that created Life is Strange, Vampyr and Remember Me and is releasing two new productions this year, Twin Mirror, the first self-published game by the studio, and Tell Me Why published by Microsoft.  Oskar founded the studio twelve years ago and floated it on the stock market in May 2018. Prior to DONTNOD, he worked at Ubisoft and Criterion (EA). These studies led to a PhD thesis in Computer Science. He also taught at university before joining the video game industry.

Pascal Forget

Pascal Forget is a tech columnist. For more than twenty years, he has been seen, heard, and read on La revanche des nerdz, Les affaires, pascalforget.com and the podcast Une tasse de tech.

Patrick Naud

Patrick Naud has over 20 years of video game industry experience. Today, as Head of Mobile for the Square Enix Group and Head of Studio for Square Enix Montréal, he helms mobile development for Square Enix in Canada, the US, and Europe, overseeing product and business strategies. Under Patrick’s leadership, Square Enix Montréal launched the highly successful and award-winning GO trilogy (Lara Croft GO, Hitman GO, Deus EX GO) and Hitman Sniper.

Paula Neves

Paula Neves is a gamer turned psychologist turned UA specialist turned Product Manager. She has 12 years of experience leading user acquisition for different products, out of which 7 in the gaming industry. In her current role, she leads the management of 2 products at Square Enix Montréal, from their pre-concept phase to launches to production and live-ops phases.

Pauline Zampolini

Pauline joined WB Games Montreal in February 2020 and is deploying all her community management know-how on the studio’s next AAA, Gotham Knights, announced in the summer of 2020.
Originally from Amiens, France and living in Montreal since 2015, Pauline is a recent graduate of UQAM where she has just completed her Master’s degree in Communication, focusing on video games with her thesis on “Gender Dynamics and the Place of Women in the Video Game Community of Meltdown Montreal”.

Passionate about games, cinema and all the social issues related to diversity, her approach to communications in our industry is resolutely inclusive.
Prior to joining WB Games Montreal, Pauline contributed to Multijoueur.ca for 3 years as a writer and social network manager. She then worked as a freelancer for RDS Jeux Vidéo, then as a community manager and communications manager at Gameloft.

Philippe Nadeau

Philippe Nadeau is Director – Private Equity at Distinction Capital. He joined the team in October 2018 to define, implement and execute a private equity strategy. Prior to that, he spent more than six years in the Private Equity group at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, where he was instrumental in the completion of a number of initiatives, including the opening of the London office and the European expansion of the Quebec institution’s activities.

Philippe Valentine

Pierre André Gervais

Rebekah Saltsman

Rebekah is the CEO and co-founder of Finji, an independent development studio and publisher. Finji has published several award-winning indie games including ‘Canabalt’, ‘Hundreds’, ‘Feist’, ‘Panoramical’, Night in the Woods and ‘Overland’, and are currently hard at work supporting Andrew Shouldice’s ‘Tunic and Chicory: A Colorful Tale, as well as, several unannounced projects. Rebekah is a co-designer on Overland and manages all of the console and storefront relationships and initiatives for Finji’s internal and partner publishing projects. Rebekah’s career began in media relations before working as a technical writer and product manager in the photography software industry. She moved into games in 2008 with the support of her husband and Finji co-founder, Adam, and she managed the finances and porting partnerships for Semi Secret Software. Rebekah loves to write, run long distances, and spend as much time as possible at Lake Michigan every summer with her and Adam’s two beautiful chaotic boys.

Renee Gittins

Renee Gittins is the Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) from July 2019, succeeding Jennifer MacLean. She also serves as Creative Director at her indie game studio, Stumbling Cat, which is developing the game Potions: A Curious Tale. Renee Gittins is the daughter of Carol Gittins and the Olympian, Boyd Gittins. She received her degree in engineering from Harvey Mudd College in May 2012 and worked in biotechnology prior to joining the game industry. Prior to her appointment as Executive Director, Gittins served on the IGDA’s executive board as secretary and started her company, Stumbling Cat, in 2014. As Executive Director, Gittins promised to focus on sustainable careers and inclusion within the game industry, and has taken a strong stance against the significant overtime hours worked within the game industry. Gittins was named as part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 class of 2020 in Games.

Richard Henkel

Richard is the CEO of Odyssey Interactive, a new Canada based game dev studio that he founded with 3 former peers & friends from Riot Games. Richard spent a little over 5 years at Riot, 4 years serving as the product lead of the Summoner’s Rift Gameplay Team on League of Legends, and then as the co-product lead for the game “Teamfight Tactics” from ideation > live ops. After experiencing the power and magic of working on a small high powered team with a clear goal to shoot for, Richard dreamed of replicating the best parts of Riot in a smaller studio setting, and thus the dream for Odyssey Interactive was born.

Ritesh Khanna

Ritesh Khanna is Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Clipwire Games, a fast growing mobile games studio in Toronto. Ritesh is responsible for leading the design and engineering teams — facilitating the ideation, building, and growth of Clipwire’s high-performing mobile games. Prior to Clipwire Games, Ritesh was an early employee at Zynga, where he ran the MMO games division and founded the original office in Toronto.

Robin Hunicke

Sabrina Bouchard

Sabrina Carmona

Sabrina Carmona has been a producer for over 10 years and is now the Executive Producer, Senior Director at Farm Heroes Saga at King. From having her own studio back in Sao Paulo, where she is originally from, she has led the development of games from mobile to console, from companies like Square Enix to King, in a total of 6 countries: Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Germany Sweden and now the UK. Whether it is in Portuguese, English or Spanish, she is passionate on creating the right environment to enable culturally diverse teams to do what they do best: make games.

Sebastien Nadeau

Sebastien is an experienced entrepreneur and technology manager with over 15 years of experience in domains such as video games, film and healthcare. He kicked off his career working on game cinematics for a number of AAA games including Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed. His next endeavor was in the field of medical imaging simulation with the development of the Vimedix, which, following its success, was soon acquired by CAE. He went on to launch several other projects, during the course of which he has raised capital with various public and private funds. Today, he is one of the founders and the Head of Technology at Breaking Walls, an indie game development studio that is currently working on AWAY: The Survival Series, and has overseen the development and funding efforts for the company.

Seth Sivak

Seth is the CEO of Proletariat Inc., a 100 person strong independent studio in Boston focused on building innovative multiplayer games. Over the last 8 years Proletariat has built and released several games, starting in mobile with World Zombination in 2015 to most recently releasing Spellbreak in September, 2020. Prior to Proletariat, Seth started in the industry as a gameplay engineer but has been a product manager, lead designer, and executive producer on various projects.

Sidick Bakayoko

Sidick Bakayoko is the Founder and CEO of Paradise Game, an Ivorian company with a mission to Entertain, Educate and Empower young Africans. Paradise Game’s vision is to engage and influence 200 Million young Africans using video games in the next 5 years.

Paradise Game is the beacon for esports and video games in West Africa. Paradise Game presents activity centers in significant malls, hosts video game events & festivals, produces gaming multimedia content and supports African game developers across the continent. In 2017, Paradise Game started FEJA, one of the biggest video game event in Africa offering business conferences and major esports tournaments to participants from 10+ countries. In 2018, Paradise Game initiated the “Africa Corner” a space to promote 15+ African video game studios at major events such as Paris Games Week.

Sidick is on the board of the African Game Developers Association. Earlier in his career, he led the sales and marketing efforts of mobile value-added service provider DIGITAL AFRIQUE TELECOM (DAT) in 27 African countries. He also led the marketing efforts of the revolutionary mobile backup application ClickOVA alongside SCANBUY founder Olivier Attia in New York city back in 2007.

Sophie Guindon

Sophie Guindon is Multimedia Project Manager at the Bibliothèque nationale de France for “”The Kingdom of Istyald””, the first video game published by the BnF.
“”The Kingdom of Istyald”” is a richly illustrated, narrative and immersive adventure video game. Available online on the BnF website devoted to Fantasy (“”Fantasy, A Once and Future Genre””), it offers the player the opportunity to explore a fantastic universe. Accompanied by a mysterious witch, the player makes numerous encounters, finds wonderful objects, and solves puzzles to meet a huge challenge: The Tree of Knowledge, the source of all wisdom, is dying. With him, the very equilibrium of Istyald’s world is threatened. And it’s up to the player to find a way to save him. Doors to open, enemies to defeat, objects to collect and reuse later, sentences written in strange languages ​​that must be translated, enchantments to be lifted … The solution of a riddle posed in a place is almost always found in another place, and you have to strike up a conversation with the locals to get valuable clues and other information.
https://fantasy.bnf.fr/en/play

Stefan Beauchamp-Daniel

Stefan Beauchamp, producer at Behaviour Interactive, has over ten years of experience in game development. He is currently overseeing all aspects of production on Dead By Daylight, having the joined the project shortly before its launch in 2016. Having seen the game evolve from a single platform launch (Steam) to the cross-platform monster it has become over the years, he has a good understanding of the challenges & complexity involved in multi-platform development. Prior to this, while still at Behaviour Interactive, he had worked with multiple external partners on various development and co-development projects, on titles such as FarCry 3 (Ubisoft), Halo Waypoint (Microsoft) & Star Citizen (Cloud Imperium Games).

Stéphane Cosentino

Stéphane Cosentino has been working in the film, television and digital-media sector for more than 20 years. He has substantial experience in financing as well as in entertainment law. Stéphane spent the first part of his career as a lawyer in Telefilm’s Legal Services department, where he served for more than 15 years. In 2006, he was appointed Deputy Director within the French market television team. In 2010, he was appointed National Deputy Director of the Experimental Stream. He manages a national multidisciplinary team whose mandate is to select and invest in innovative new-technology projects.
 

Steve Sobel

Steve Sobel is the Global Industry Leader for Media & Entertainment at Databricks where he is charged with solution development, customer/partner engagement and account support and for some of the world’s most prominent media & entertainment organizations spanning agencies & advertising, broadcasting & film, publishing, gaming, sports & entertainment and new media. Steve works closely with strategic customers across the globe to translate what Databricks does and closely align platform use cases to help industry customers drive revenue and operational efficiency through more efficient use of their big data with Databrick’s Unified Data Analytics Platform

Tanya Kan

Tanya Kan is the Director and Executive Producer of Vivid Foundry. It is a studio in Toronto, Canada focusing on developing dramatic games that reflect the social issues of our time. Vivid Foundry is diversity-led and comprise of majority under-represented genders. Tanya has been working in the Interactive Digital Media industry for 8 years, and has created digital media for amusement park rides, fashion storefronts, real estate, Autodesk, and has contributed to game prototypes, teaching game arts pipeline at the University level, and as a narrative consultant on Celeste. Nowadays, she spends much of her time developing Solace State, an award-winning 3D cyberpunk visual novel about a young hacker, Chloe, who comes to her political awakening as she seeks her friends in a biotech surveillance society.

Teddy Kossoko

Teddy Kossoko is a space engineer and founder of Masseka Game Studio, the first studio in Europe to create content exclusively on African myths and legends. Masseka Game Studio is also working on a store of apps, games and ebook adapted to the realities of the African market.

Thierry Boulanger

Après avoir travaillé pendant 8 ans à titre de chef d’équipe de programmation, il co-fonde Sabotage en 2016 pour devenir directeur créatif et créer les jeux qu’il a en tête depuis le primaire.

Sabotage mélange l’esthétique rétro avec le game design moderne pour créer des jeux qui parlent à l’enfant en nous, et en utilisant l’apparente simplicité comme outils de storytelling, où les attentes des joueurs sont l’ingrédient clé. Le premier jeu de Sabotage est un platformer rétro, The Messenger, sorti en 2018 et qui a gagné le Game Awards pour “Meilleur Premier Jeu”. L’équipe travaille maintenant sur son deuxième titre, Sea of Stars, un RPG tour par tour inspiré de l’ère 16-32bits.

Thierry croit beaucoup en la vulnérabilité comme vecteur principal du processus créatif, et utilise généralement le micro pour parler de croissance personnelle à travers les réalisations professionnelles.

Tony Zhu

Tony Zhu has been worked over ten years and specialized in telecommunication area as a network designer. His background includes expertise in carrier-class network design and operation, transmission, Cloud and network security.

Currently, Tony works as a senior project manager in CMI HQ, being responsible for supporting CMI’s key projects. He is also a major contributor to CMI gaming cloud solutions, and has hosted many sales training webinars. In the previous years, Tony had been worked for NSN for many years as a research and development engineer, and provided technical and compliance support in the area of Transmission network equipment R&D.

Tülay McNally

As Director of Inclusive Design & Product Development at EA Studios, Tülay Tetiker McNally is responsbile for steering vision, establishing strategy and execution of EA’s approach to creating inclusive products and experiences that put all our players first. In collaboration with EA Studios leadership and developers, Tülay is responsbile for establishing what inclusive design excellence looks like across EA’s product portfolio.

Veronica Glémaud

Walid Sultan Midani

Founded in 2011, Digitalmania is the first video game studio in Tunisia. In 9 years, its multidisciplinary team of twenty people has developed more than 125 games: Social games, advergames, and serious games. And this on almost all existing platforms: mobile, desktop, VR, console, and browser. DigitalMania’s vision is to create games that bring real added value to players and that is why since 2018 www.theinfniteloop.net has been developed; a virtual reality and online video game dedicated to experiential learning and team-building sessions.

In 2019 The infnite Loop VR was the most played video game for team building in the world and 2020 and with the COVID The infinite Loop Online was used by hundreds of companies on Zoom to entertain, unite and train their teams. In 2021 DigitalMania plans to release several new games dedicated to team building and team training.

Yannick Simard

Yannick Simard is a Technical Director at the Stadia Games & Entertainment Montreal studio.
Since 2005, he has played different technical roles at Electronic Arts, Eidos, Ubisoft and more recently Typhoon Studios, acquired by Google in December 2019, thus joining the Stadia family.
Leveraging his academic background in computer sciences (MS) and physics, his experience over the last 15 years covers topics such as physics simulation, animation, computer graphics and gameplay systems. He is credited for his contribution on many successful titles, including Army of Two (2008), Army of Two: the 40th Day (2010), Watch Dogs (2014), Watch Dogs 2 (2016), and Journey to the Savage Planet (2020).
During the last 10 years, he has gradually converged toward software developer management roles.

Yossarian Yggy King

Yossarian King is CTO and co-founder of Blackbird Interactive, where he was lead programmer for Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak and now runs the engineering team and guides technical decision-making for the company. Prior to Blackbird he spent 15 years at Electronic Arts as a systems and render programmer and technical lead on FIFA soccer, Fight Night, Facebreaker, Warcraft II, and various sports titles for PC, Sega Saturn, 3DO, Nintendo 64, Playstation 1 and 2, and other platforms. He first made games on his Commodore 64 in high school and has loved programming ever since. Yossarian has a master’s degree in computer vision from the University of British Columbia. In his spare time he runs, plays ultimate, and occasionally rides a unicycle.

Zac Antonaci

Zac Antonaci is the Director of Publishing at Frontier and has been working in the games industry for nearly 15 years. Frontier are based in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom with a highly passionate and dedicated team of over 590 people. They’re best known for developing and publishing titles such as Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution and Planet Zoo. They’ve also recently announced their all-new Games Label, Frontier Foundry, where they are funding and publishing games from bold and innovative studios from around the world!

Zhuo Liu

LIU Zhuo is a Telecommunication and Data communications professional with over 10 years of industry experience. His background includes expertise in telecom carrier level IP/Data Network Engineering and Operation, Routing and Switches, SD-WAN and Network Security. 

Currently LIU works as head of product support in CMI USA, where he manages front line support and CMI’s global network construction. He is also a key contributor to CMI’s Application Acceleration Service development, and has given numerous sales training webinars events. Formerly, LIU worked years for another Asian carrier as lead sales/network engineer, and provided technical and business strategy support in the area of IP and data transport.