Alan Hill

Alan Hill helps game teams and marketing make better decisions through data driven advice. After completing his Ph.D. in math at Dalhousie University, he spent several years supporting the Canadian Armed Forces. Alan joined the games industry in 2014 at EA Vancouver, supporting primarily the NHL and FIFA franchises in their live services. In 2016 he moved to Montreal to join Motive Studio, and has worked with game teams to support the single player campaign of Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017), as well as all aspects of Star Wars: Squadrons and now the Dead Space remake. Alan is currently the Analytics Manager for Motive Studios.

Albane Français

At SYNTHÈSE, Albane acts as Director of Communications and Partnerships with the goal of promoting the Quebec digital creation ecosystem and positioning SYNTHÈSE’s expertise in the area of training-job matching. Albane has been working in the digital creativity industry for 15 years. She started at NAD School and then held various positions at URBANIA MEDIA and CREO production studios. She also sits on the board of iScola, an organization dedicated to promoting education in the digital age. Thanks to these varied experiences, she has a good understanding of the issues and future challenges related to the digital creativity sector.

Alma Talbot

Alma Talbot is a Development Manager at Motive and is part of the Dead Space Remake team. Her previous titles include Star Wars: Squadrons and Star Wars Squadrons: Live Service. Alma is the Chapter Lead of the Women’s Ultimate Team (Employee Resource Group) in Montreal. She’s a firm believer that innovation thrives when built on a foundation of diverse perspectives.

Amanda Farough

Amanda will be the moderator for the panel “Montreal Mobile: SPR – The Rise of AAA Mobile Experiences”.

Amanda Farough has been covering the video games and the game industry for over a decade in a variety of forms, including as a journalist, podcast host, professional speaker, and analyst. These days, Amanda co-hosts the Virtual Economy podcast; occasionally writes for the Washington Post, the ESRB, and GamesBeat; and streams on Twitch as ReadyPlayerMama as part of the Take This Ambassador stream team.

Annick Dumais

In the video game industry since 1997, I decided to reorient my career towards teaching in 2008. Since then, I am responsible for the development of Level Design programs and I teach full time at Campus ADN. My tasks vary from content development, teaching Level Design, Game Design and programming, as well as managing/technical support of our students’ final projects.

Arcade Berg

AAA industry veteran with a career focus on game design. Franchises include Bulletstorm, Gears of War and Wolfenstein – but is today Creative Director at Neon Giant who recently released their first game The Ascent.

Brigitte Monneau

Brigitte joined SYNTHÈSE as Executive Director after more than twenty years as a manager in the media and entertainment field (film, television, digital media) in the public, private and association sectors, both nationally and internationally. She was previously the Executive Director of Femmes du Cinéma, de la télévision et des médias numériques (FCTMN), the Quebec chapter of Women in Film and Television International. She began her career as a legal advisor in television production companies before joining Telefilm Canada, where she was Director of Coproductions and Director of International Relations and managed several teams in business relations and program administration at the Canada Media Fund. photo credit (c) Laurence Labat Photographer

Cardell Kerr

Cardell Kerr has been in the game development industry for over 20 years, and has worked on multiple online games. Starting in MMO’s in the 2000’s on Asheron’s Call, he worked on Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online. From there he moved on to more PvP Oriented games, with Infinite Crisis and his most recent game, Spellbreak.

https://www.proletariat.com

Carl Kwoh

“Carl Kwoh is the VP of Product at Phoenix Labs. Carl’s passion and expertise in the product space uniquely positions him to be a leader on Dauntless, the studio’s free-to-play action RPG with over 25 million players worldwide. Carl is also a key member of Phoenix Labs’ incubation program, where all new game concepts at the studio are realized and come to fruition. He helps teams define product goals and risks as they move from idea, to pre-production, and beyond.

Carl joined Phoenix Labs following a stint leading independent studio Ghostly Bear, which he co-founded, and prior to that he was a producer at Riot Games on League of Legends.”

https://phxlabs.ca/fr/

Cassia Curran

“Cassia Curran is the founder of Curran Games Agency, a business consulting agency for indie game developers. She specializes in sourcing and negotiating partnerships and investment for indies, as well as providing strategic advice and market analysis. Cassia is also an advisor at WINGS Interactive, a micro-fund that invests in games made by women and people of marginalized genders. Previously, Cassia was the Head of Business Development at Jagex and worked in business development and investor relations roles at NetEase in China.”

http://curran.games/

Charles Cecil

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

https://revolution.co.uk/

Chelsea Blasko

I’ve been with Iron Galaxy for 11 years, starting as employee number 13 with the company. I was in Production, but quickly started taking on more operational and HR duties, eventually becoming a partner in the company about six years ago and the Co-CEO with my counterpart, Adam Boyes.

Chris Cobb

Co-founder and CTO at Pragma Platform, a Greylock portfolio company, providing the backend engine for games.

As an Engineering Lead at Riot Games, Chris helped establish one of the first teams in the industry to focus on player behavior, toxicity, and encouraging positive social interactions in online gaming communities.

His relevant experience includes working on many live service games, including League of Legends (Riot), Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies (PopCap), Dauntless (Phoenix Labs).

Chris is passionate about continuing to work on the mission of supporting healthy online communities, particularly addressing systemic problems that currently plague online social games and media.

When not working on scaling game platforms, Chris enjoys speedcubing and battling Pokemon TCG decks with his kids.

Chris Quaidoo

Chris is an investor at Griffin Gaming Partners, a leading VC fund investing singularly in the gaming industry. Before joining Griffin, he worked as an equity analyst investing in publicly traded stocks in the technology sector, including gaming, leading investments in Activision Blizzard and Glu Mobile stocks. Chris also hosts the podcast Venture Games, in which he showcases conversations with guests in the gaming and VC industries. Chris is passionate about improving diversity in the VC and gaming industries, and has spoken candidly about the topic on his podcast and in other forums.

https://griffingp.com/

Christopher Chancey

Christopher will be the moderator for the panel “Nurturing an Industry Ecosystem”.

In addition to founding and leading ManaVoid Entertainment, Chris Chancey is Vice President and head of the Communications and Marketing Committee of the Quebec Video Game Guild. This association represents 250 Quebec studios and over 15,000 jobs. He also teaches game design at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue since 2016 and at the Université de Montréal since 2018.

Beyond ManaVoid, Chris Chancey is committed to the success of the Quebec video game industry. He co-founded Indie Asylum, a business incubator and gas pedal in this sector. It provides business development, mentoring, marketing support and investment in emerging companies.

In 2020, Chris Chancey received the prestigious ARISTA award from the Jeune Chambre de commerce de Montréal in the category of Young Techno-Creative Leader of Quebec.

Christopher Dring

Christopher will be the moderator for the panel “Lessons from the Best Places to Work”.

Christopher Dring is a 14-year games business media veteran. He spent nine years at UK games business newspaper MCV, including five years as editor, and currently leads the GamesIndustry.biz team. He heads up the Best Places To Work Awards, Investment Summit and GI Academy events around the world, and was part of the team behind the Women In Games Awards and the Gamescom Daily magazine. You can also read him on The Guardian, BBC, VGC and Doctor Who Magazine.

Colin Penty

Colin has worked at The Coalition with a focus on visual features, performance optimization, and content creation workflows for over ten years. Most recently Colin shipped Gears 5 as the Studio Technical Art Director. Prior to Microsoft, Colin was a CG Supervisor at EA for seven years working on the FIFA, Skate, and Need for Speed franchises.

Danny Godin

Danny Godin is co-director of the Department of Creation and New Media at UQAT in Montreal and a professor of game design since 2012. There, he co-founded the Bachelor’s degree in video game creation and the microprogram in independent video game, programs that graduate, each year, more than 70 young 3d artists, designers, software integrators and/or entrepreneurs who are trained for the transdisciplinary work of video game development. As a professor-researcher, Danny Godin is interested in the theory of knowledge applied to research through design as well as decision making in game design.

Darren Korb

Darren Korb is the award-winning composer and musician behind the scores for Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and Hades. As Audio Director at Supergiant Games, Darren is responsible for all of the music, sound effects, and voiceover recording at the studio. He also voices Zagreus and Skelly in Supergiant’s latest game, Hades.

David Giraud

David has worked in the entertainment industry since 1997. He worked at ubisoft, eidos, IO interactive, THQ to name a few and have created AAA characters mostly for in-games but also marketing and cinematic for games such as hitman, splinter cell, assassin’s creed, prince of persia, Rainbow 6, Street fighter 5, Devil may cry 5, Monster Hunter and many more. David work also in the collectible industry for sideshow, XM studios, DC direct and others and created dioramas, statues and busts for the last 10 years, he has been 3d art director at Volta for the past 7 years.

Deanna Stanley

Deanna will be the moderator for the panel ” Post launch life”.

Deanna Stanley is an Associate Producer at Ubisoft Montreal, working on Rainbow Six Siege. Starting in QC, she is now the main Live Stakeholder and oversees the long term closing and deployment strategy of Ubisoft’s largest GaaS. Prior to joining Ubisoft Montreal, Deanna spent 5 years with Nintendo Europe in Frankfurt Germany, supporting press events, conferences, and working as a data center technician. Deanna strives to bring calm and a positive outlook during Live Emergencies, as well as promote team health, and advocate for women in tech and leadership.

Dimitri Jevaguine

A financial planner for 9 years now, he loves making a difference in people’s lives by popularizing difficult financial concepts. I studied at HEC Montreal, with a specialization in investments, but I’m also finishing a minor in law to deepen my knowledge of legal concepts. Otherwise, for the rest, I am passionate about computers, video games and personal development books.

Eric Laurent

Eric excels at finding innovative solutions to major challenges. He helped an entire school board combat bullying in their schools with a video documentary made directly with youth.

He was responsible for the merger of two of Canada’s largest skateboarding businesses and made sure they were running smoothly in person and online.

He has also been a forward-thinking pillar in an industry of influencers. These experiences make him a sharp community and marketing manager.

Eros Resmini

With over 20 years of experience in music, entertainment and gaming, Eros has honed his expertise to build businesses at all stages of growth. Most recently Eros was a founding executive at San Francisco based start-up Discord, the largest communication platform for gaming communities and beyond. Previously, he was a Partner at YouWeb, a Silicon Valley based accelerator where he invested in and advised start-ups. Prior to YouWeb, Eros was SVP of Marketing and Developer Relations teams at GREE, a role he held through the acquisition of
OpenFeint where he was a founding executive. He’s held similar roles at a number of companies including Hewlett Packard and Real Arcade. In addition to his expertise with startups, Eros is a performing musician and founding partner of San Francisco’s independent label Los Kamikaze Records. Eros is currently managing partner at the Mini Fund, an angel fund focused on hands-on investing in early stage companies throughout the world.

François Beauregard

A video game aficionado since his first SNES, François Beauregard has followed his passion for gaming and the industry throughout the last decade. With a background in Business Strategy from HEC, he grew his marketing career finding answers for companies in various
growing industries with innovation challenges. His newest career highlight, the Brand Manager for Unknown 9 at Reflector Entertainment. Working alongside a team of experts in the field, he is developing a new way to approach entertainment marketing with a AAA video game at the core. In his personal life, François has recently embarked on the wonderful life journey that is becoming a first-time dad. He also practises yoga and meditation daily to centre himself.

Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin

Gabrielle Trépanier-Jobin is a professor of video games at the École des médias of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and co-director of the Homo Ludens research group. As part of her doctorate in communication and her postdoctorate at MIT, she was interested in gender issues in video games as well as in video game parody. Her current research interests include player immersion (FRQSC 2018-2021) and diversity and inclusion in the video game industry (SSHRC 2019-2021).

Guillermo Gómez Zará

Guillermo Gómez Zará is a Game Designer, Producer and Technical Artist.
He earned a BA in Sociology and a BA in Communications at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. With more than 5 years of experience in game developing on mobile platforms and virtual reality projects. He currently works as a producer at IguanaBee and as President of the Chilean Association of Video Game Development Companies, Video Games Chile (VGChile).

Hal Milton

Hal Milton is the Studio Design Director for Pipeworks Studios in Eugene Oregon. In his 25 years as a game developer he has worked on core, casual, social, and serious games on nearly every platform, with almost every major publisher and developer.

Henrik Jonsson

Henrik will be the moderator for the panel with The Ascent.

With over 20 years experience in games and graphics programming (Ion Storm, Electronic Arts), Henrik is now working as a technical advisor, industry scout and community ambassador for Amplifier Game Invest (part of Embracer Group). Awarded a prize for “Online Angel of the Year” in Sweden for his work to make the game industry a better place, Henrik believes game developers do their best work in a psychologically safe environment. Amplifier Game Invest is working “Human First” to create the most attractive home for game developers and their studios, empowering their aspirations and creativity for sustainable, long-term success.

Ian Proulx

Ian Proulx is the CEO and Co-founder of 1047 Games, makers of Splitgate. 1047 Games was founded by Ian Proulx and Nicholas Bagamian in their dorm rooms at Stanford (the company was named after the address of their dorm). What started as Ian putting portals into an FPS for his senior project, has now turned into a VC-backed company that recently closed $100 million for its series A, making it one of the fastest growing game studios in the world. Through their flagship game, Splitgate, 1047 Games aims to bring back the glory days of arena shooters. Splitgate has already been downloaded over 14 million times during its beta and has received high praise from streamers and press with Dexerto saying “Splitgate beats Halo at its own game.”

Jake Kulkowski

Previously a content creator himself, Jake joined Dead Good PR in 2019 and has, in less than two years, helped spearhead the agency’s organic content creation strategy.
Providing its clients with successfully integrated and targeted influencer coverage as part of a wider PR campaign, Jake has also expanded the international influencer consultant team into paid influencer marketing campaigns.

Jason Della Rocca

Jason is a game industry entrepreneur, funding advisor, and cluster expert. He specializes in business/partnership development, pitching/funding, and ecosystem/cluster development. As the co-founder of Executions Labs, he was a hands-on early-stage investor to 25 independent game studios from North America and Europe. Between 2000-09 he served as the executive director of the IGDA, and was honored for his industry building efforts with the inaugural Ambassador Award at GDC. As a sought-after expert on the game industry, Jason has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide.

Jayson Hilchie

Jayson Hilchie is President & CEO of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, the trade association representing companies that develop, publish and distribute video games in Canada.

Mr. Hilchie joined ESAC as President and CEO in 2012. Under his leadership, the organization has broadened its membership to include a cross section of major publishers, mobile developers and independent studios, making the association more inclusive and strengthening its voice to government. He has successfully led multiple government advocacy campaigns in provinces across Canada as well as being the lead advocate for the industry with the federal government in Ottawa. He has represented the industry in front of Prime Ministers, senior Cabinet Ministers, as well as multiple Parliamentary Committees.

He is the primary spokesperson for the video game industry in Canada and frequently appears as the public face of the industry in media outlets such as the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, as well as CBC and BNN.

Prior to joining ESAC Jayson was Director, IT & Interactive Media at Nova Scotia Business Inc. There, he led initiatives to grow the video game industry in Nova Scotia, including attracting multiple international studios to Halifax and helping domestic companies make global connections.

Mr. Hilchie holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia and a Master of Arts degree in Diplomacy from Norwich University in Vermont.

Jean-François Nadeau

After studying graphic design at Cégep de Ste-Foy, Jean-François joined the Frima team in 2007 and quickly progressed from UI designer to UI Lead and now UI Director. Since the beginning of his career, Jean-François has worked on over 30 projects at Frima Studio. He remains very involved in his projects and enjoys actively collaborating on them.

Jean-Michel Morency

Jean-Michel has over a decade of industry experience under his belt. He has taken a leadership role on several artistic teams at Frima with his innate creativity and expertise in animation, design and creation of environments, characters, objects and interfaces.

Jennifer Kilback

As Chief Business Officer at Hyper Hippo Jen focuses on corporate strategy, business operations, communications and ensuring the studio has a positive impact in all it does. Jen has played key roles in tech startups that have transitioned to growth, expansion and acquisition. She is passionate about the well being of the Hyper Hippo team, the local community, and for creating an inclusive environment at work and in industry.

Jérémie Ratomposon

I’m a French guy living in Quebec for more than 12 years. Professional web developer for at least that long, part-time solo video game creator and inventor-artist the rest of the time. Passionate about feminist causes and constantly learning/challenging. I have a daughter and two cats to whom I would like to leave my work for a better world (not to the cats, because they don’t care).

Jesse Houston

Jesse Houston is an industry veteran in the gaming space, having started his career in 2000. Jesse is the CEO and co-founder of Phoenix Labs, which he and the other co-founders formed to bring players together through deep multiplayer games. Previously, he held key leadership roles at both Riot Games on League of Legends, and BioWare on the Mass Effect series. He also served as Production Director at Ubisoft, overseeing Project Management, Pipeline Planning, Development and Design, among other responsibilities.

Jocelyn Benoit

Jocelyn Benoit is an academic director and professor at the NAD-UQAC School, where he teaches mainly video game development methods and the use of game machines. He holds a bachelor’s degree in software engineering and a doctorate in engineering from the École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS). His research interests are broad, but focus on game machines and video game development.

John Nguyen

John is a seasoned business developer, marketer and game developer, with over 12 years of industry experience. He co-founded Stompy Bot Productions, a Canadian indie development studio which grew into an indie publisher, where he worked primarily as the company’s Senior Business Developer and Marketing Director, but also played a role in game production. He then went on to co-found Turboplay, an indie-focused store platform where he acted as the COO. In between Stompy Bot and Turboplay, John also worked as a consultant with game related and technology clients.

Josef Falkensköld

Former Audio Director at Level Eight, current Audio lead & Content creator at Aurora Punks. Founder and music producer of Falconshield.

JP Van Seventer

JP has been a game industry professional for 22 years, with a vision for optimizing the international success of aspiring and experienced game development companies. He has been a pioneer within the global game incubation/acceleration space since 2007 with the launch of Dutch Gamer Garden. JP has experience with games on all leading platforms ranging from mobile, console, pc, tablet, browser-based and custom platforms and VR/AR/XR in his extensive career. JP has a background in Industrial Design, Mechanical engineering and started his career as a game designer, 3d artist and level designer.

Julien Desaulniers

Julien has been working in the video games industry for over 20 years. Using technology to enrich the lives of people has always been the goal for him. In recent years, he has been more involved in management, identifying and fostering the key behaviours programmers need to adopt for successful development. He is also interested by many other types of experiences, such as playing music and discovering other cultures.

Justin Alae-Carew

Justin came to games from a career in management consulting, where he helped media and technology companies develop frameworks to achieve their strategic goals. Now he co-heads Blazing Griffin Games where he focuses on concept development and commercial strategy.

Justin Woodward

With a mixture of over 12 years of independent and AAA development and production experience and a master’s in Game Production and Management, Justin Woodward Co-founded and directs an independent game studio, Interabang Entertainment as well as The Media Indie Exchange (The MIX) which is an organization that helps to elevate indie developers’ visibility and business opportunities through exclusive indie showcases online and in-person worldwide. Being involved in the development scene has also lead him into the role as a lead advisor with Humble Bundle on the Humble Black Game Developer Fund as well as a consultant for the investment/crowdfunding platform Fig, IGN Prime, and has helped organize the IGN Indie Open House and Double Fine Indie spaces.

Kirill Tokarev

Effective media manager and product leader. Helped launch and develop 80 Level Media, 80 Level Talent recruitment service, 80 Level Research – market research agency. Acted as a producer on a number of visual production projects. SAFe-certified Agilist and Stanford University Graduate School of Business alumnus. Over 7 years of managing international projects with internal and external resources. Great experience finding and nurturing talent.

Lateef Martin

Lateef Martin is a multi-disciplinary artist, from writing, music production, voiceovers, cosplay and fabrication. At the core of it, he is an illustrator with a taste for video games, comics, sci-fi and 80s Saturday morning cartoons. He founded his company Miscellaneum Studios in 2013, its goal to tell stories centring black, indigenous and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, the disabled the neurodivergent and other marginalized communities.

Lateef Martin has sat on juries for the Canada Council of the Arts, Pixelles’ BIPOC Creator Fund and as Co-administrator for BIPOC Facebook group Game & Colour, has consulted for the Canada Media Fund. He also hosts presentations on games, comics, entrepreneurship and inclusivity in schools and conventions.

Lionel Fuentes

Lionel is a Technical Director at Asobo Studio. Among other things, at Asobo Studio he worked on two of the launch titles for Microsoft Hololens, participating in the creation of the first holographic videogames. Since 2016 he has been leading a team of engineers to create and improve the technology for Microsoft Flight Simulator, focusing on recreating a digital twin of the Earth, platform integration, game development pipelines, distribution pipelines, MSFS SDK… His interests vary between game asset and production pipelines, rendering, optimization, machine learning, team management and problem solving in general. He is also a piano and guitar enthusiast.

Luc Duchaine

Luc started in the video game industry 25 years ago in promotion at Nintendo and for a few years in peripheral development at Guillemot Corporation. He then joined Ubisoft Montreal in 2005 where he held marketing roles on flagship brands such as Far Cry, Rainbow Six, Assassin’s Creed, Avatar and For Honor. Since January 2021, Luc is now head of brand marketing at Behaviour Interactive where he leads the brand management team for all products developed at the studio.

Marie Chantal Ledoux

Marie Chantal is a human resources strategist with over 25 years of experience. As Senior Director – Talent & Culture Canada for more than two years, Marie Chantal has been leading the human resources transformation of Eidos Interactive Corporation, the third largest presence in the video game industry in Quebec with three studios, Eidos-Montreal, Eidos-Sherbrooke, Square Enix Montreal, as well as the Square Enix QA entity. Marie Chantal is a member of the Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés.

Marie-France Thérien

For over 10 years as a Digital Media Analyst for the Canada Media Fund, Marie-France has assessed hundreds of projects from companies all over Canada, giving out millions to indie studios to develop their games. She has also worked as a Program Officer at Canada Council for the Arts and was the director of the artist-run center Avatar in Quebec City’s Meduse Cooperative.

Marion-Isabelle Muszynski

Marion-Isabelle Muszynski leads the experience design practice for Electronic Arts’ Montreal Studio, Motive. Focusing on every aspect that affects the experience, Marion-Isabelle champions the highest level of player experience and journey for EA’s games: from removing basic friction to increasing motivation to play. Drawing from experience, research, playtest data, and feedback, she and her team are believers in the power of both basic and applied research in the design process.

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.

Micheal Silverwood

Michael is the CEO & co-founder of Pixile Studios, and co-creator of Super Animal Royale, a 64-player battle royale that pits murderously adorable animals against each other in a fight to reach the top of the food chain. He previously worked in venture capital for San Francisco-based Tandem Capital for 5yrs, helping pre-seed and seed stage startups design, build and launch their products. Outside of game design and entrepreneurship, Michael is a long-term kitten foster parent and connoisseur of fine animal puns.

Moncef Bahmed

As an expert in financial planning, he has been working in the financial field for over ten years. During all these years, he has always put the interest of the members first and has done everything in his power to help them achieve their projects through complete financial plans.

Passionate about financial planning, he is considered a resource person within his team and is recognized by his colleagues for his willingness to share his passion and expertise for financial planning.

Outside of work, Moncef is also passionate about food and travel.

Monica Perazzo

Monica Perazzo, business and digital media analyst at Telefilm Canada for the CMF Experimental Stream, has over 15 years of experience as a video game producer and digital mediaentrepreneur. Monica has an MBA from HEC Montréal and a gold medal in Dragon Boat from the first World Outgames in 2006. She has evaluated hundreds of projects in the last many years of working at Telefilm Canada for the Experimental Stream and loves to see projects succeed.

Nathalie Bogros

Nathalie Bogros is a liaison officer in the Department of Creation and New Media at UQAT in Montreal. Trained in business administration and communications, she ensures that the department’s activities run smoothly on a daily basis, listening to and responding to the needs of students. Proud ambassador of UQAT, she likes to meet future students in their CEGEPs or during promotion events in order to enlighten them in their pursuit of studies and to promote the many successes of the department. During this conference, she will present the different programs dedicated to video game creation and 3D creation.

Neil McPhillips

Neil has worked in the entertainment industry for over 20 years at various companies such as Midway, PlayStation, Channel 4 and is now a co-head of games at Blazing Griffin. There he runs all internal operations, production and creative on their internal projects.

Nicolas Eypert

Nicolas has 30+ years of industry experience, starting as a programmer in the 16bits era, up to being Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal.

He has worked on both AAA games and new creations in the online space, also designing new projects incubation environments.
His main area of focus is the conception of new games and particularly processes to drive the creation phases of such games.

He co-created Watcha Games which works on a new type of games designed specifically for the new market of streamers – viewers communities on interactive streaming platforms like Twitch.

Nicolas Gareau

Nicolas Gareau: Formerly a lecturer in media production (television, film and new media), Nicolas Gareau is now responsible for several programs in creative and digital media at the Grasset Institute, including the DEC and AEC programs in video games and 3D animation.

Nicolas Guerin

Spiritfarer’s Creative director, Nicolas Guérin is also credited as Lead Designer and Lead Writer on the game.
A true passion project, Spiritfarer allowed him to finally take the creative liberties and methods only a nimble and dedicated studio such as Thunder Lotus made possible.

Before his enthusiastic leap to the Indie scene, he assumed various key design roles throughout his decades-old career in the video game industry, working on AAA franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs, and Skate for Electronic Arts and Ubisoft.
To him, games have a duty to mean something, have a purpose, and show heart, soul, and ambition.
Father, husband, and proud cat lover, Nick has spent a lifetime fulfilling quests in many different types of digital or physical media but still sees tabletop RPGs as the pinnacle of interactive entertainment.

Oliver Miescher

Oliver Miescher leads the international activities for the SwissGames support scheme at the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Pro Helvetia has been committed since 2010 to promote video games as high potential cultural goods and to offer ongoing support for interactive media with grants, coaching/mentoring and access to international platforms.
The SwissGames initiative is designed to promote Swiss video games on an international level. Its main mission is to help Swiss developers gain visibility, establish contacts with the international game industry and access the global market.

Osama Dorias

Osama will be the moderator for the discussion with Charles Cecil.

Osama is a Senior Game Designer at Warner Brothers. He’s also a game design teacher at Dawson College and a co-host of the Habibis podcast. Osama loves to empower people in expressing themselves through game making. He especially loves to give a voice to marginalized people and causes. He has hosted game jams, workshops and other community activities to this end, which has culminated in co-founding the Montreal Independent Games Awards.

Patric Mondou

Patric is studio lead game designer at Gameloft Montreal. His indie and Gameloft experience has led him to take on several different design roles: TGD, level designer, gameplay designer, system designer, narrative designer and game director.

With a background in university research, Patric also has a few years of college teaching and freelance work in web development and motion design. His approach to communication combines theoretical notions and concrete observations made over the years.

Patrick Hansell

Patrick is a Senior Partner Engineer at Improbable, based in London. He leads a team that works with gaming partners to build tailored solutions for complex multiplayer issues, with a particular focus on cross-play enablement and online services integrations. At Improbable he has had the opportunity to work on numerous in-house and 3rd party AAA/AA titles, including on Midwinter Entertainment’s recently launched title Scavengers. He has a background in indie game development, having developed multiple titles under his own studio, Mission Ctrl and other studios in the UK prior to joining Improbable in 2017.

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. Square Enix Montréal recently announced 2 new games in development: Hitman Sniper: The Shadows and a new experience for mobile based on Space Invaders.

Peter Sikachev

Peter Sikachev – currently a Principal Graphics Programmer at People Can Fly – has been in AAA game development industry for almost a decade. He worked with many top studios including Rockstar Toronto, Eidos Montreal, and CD Projekt Red, contributing to multiple AAA titles, such as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, among others. He also shared his work through events and publications, most notably at SIGGRAPH conferences and in GPU Pro book series.

Phil Duncan

Phil is the co founder and design director at Ghost Town Games. Creators of the award winning and relationship challenging Overcooked series.

Philippe Ratté

Philippe is currently a 3rd year student in the 3D Animation and Image Synthesis Techniques program at the Cégep de Matane. He is directing his final year work towards technical direction, more specifically animation structures for characters.

Philippe Renaud

Philippe Renaud leads the User Experience research efforts for EA’s Motive & Bioware studios. The User Experience Research (UXR) team’s purpose is to deliver a deep understanding of players to inform and improve the user experience of EA’s game. By embedding UX researchers into the development teams, UXR partners work closely with analysts, designers, artists and production managers to ensure EA’s products benefit from a strong, agile and iterative research process. Phil holds an MSc in Marketing research and has been doing research in the video game industry for nearly 15 years.

Philomena Schwab

Philomena Schwab is a game designer and community manager from Zurich, Switzerland. She wrote her master thesis about “Community Building for Indie Developers” and went on to co-found the indie game studio Stray Fawn in 2016. The studio’s main focus is the development of procedurally generated simulation games. In 2017 Philomena has been named a 30 under 30 in Technology in Europe by Forbes. As a vice president of the Swiss Game Hub, she helps the local game industry grow.

Pierre André Gervais

M. Gervais unlocked many achievements in Group Insurance and Retirement Savings Plans, completing levels in account management in the insurance carrier and independent advice worlds.

Specialized with small and mid-sized organizations, subsidiaries of foreign companies and start-up plans, he will be able to give you the walkthrough of your studio’s group benefits plan design and implementation, while describing it clearly to employees.

Richard Laberge

Richard LaBerge is Vice President of Gaming and Technology Partnership with D-BOX Technologies inc. Richard has more than 20
years of experience in media and technology with the majority of that experience in immersion technologies. Before D-BOX, Richard cofounded Sensio where he negotiated agreements with major TV manufacturers (LG, SAMSUNG, Vizio and Panasonic) to provide access to 3D content online. He was also instrumental in signing distribution contracts with Hollywood studios (Disney, Universal, FOX, Paramount and Warner) and independent shops for the 3DGO! VOD service offering the largest 3D movie library on most Smart TV.

Robert Bäckström

Games producer with more than 15 years of development experience and 10 plus titles.

Extensive knowledge of console and PC development, publishing and business development, mainly premium games within the indie segment but also games as a service and live ops.

Angel investor and DIY-believer, with experience from several startups.

Sebastien Borget

“Sébastien Borget is the Co-founder and COO of The Sandbox and COO of Pixowl (US). Together with Arthur Madrid, he has co-founded 3 companies, 2 of them have been acquired. Sebastien has more than 10 years in mobile gaming, running production and marketingfor top grossing titles. His work was awarded by the nomination for 2 consecutive years of The Sandbox in App Store Best Games of 2012 and 2013! Passionate for blockchain technology, gaming and education, he is a very active speaker and evangelist on the opportunity Non-Fungible Tokens brings to gaming. Sebastien also became the President of the Blockchain Game Alliance in 2020, a non-profit organization of 230 key members of the industry. He was recently named in the Top #100 most influential people in crypto by CoinTelegraph.”

Sébastien Leblanc

Sébastien Leblanc has been teaching in the 3D Animation Techniques and Image Synthesis program since the first cohort of students in this program. He has developed numerous contacts with organizations working in the field of 3D production and video games, notably by organizing the Anijam event between 2011 and 2014. Sébastien has also participated in various research projects at the Centre de développement et d’intelligence numérique (CDRIN) in motion capture.

Sheenah Ko

Raised in Toronto, New Mexico, Texas, Saskatchewan and Hawaii, Sheenah Ko has lived most of her life moving across North America with a thirst for discovery. Raised by Chinese/Irish immigrant artists, Sheenah began composing original songs and studying piano and percussion when she was 5. By the time she was 16, she was touring across North America performing vibraphone and shortly after writing original compositions for touring bands.

Multi-disciplinary, it wasn’t until 2010 that Sheenah decided to dive headfirst into music and leave her successful corporate career to exploring her passion for arts in Montreal. In a decade, she went from knowing little about the Quebecois music scene to touring internationally with musicians from The Band, Lou Reed, Ron Sexsmith, The Barenaked Ladies, and the Nylons. Presently, she is the full-time keyboardist for The Besnard Lakes (Flemish Eye) and continues to tour with an extensive list of bands, including Bedouin Soundclash (Sony), Little Scream (Merge Records), Antoine Corriveau (Secret City), Folly Joseph Edgar (Rosemarie Records) and Thor Harris (Swans).

In 2018, Sheenah decided to take things to the next level and challenge herself as a solo artist with the release of her first album, FREE. She began performing solo; inspiring and dramatic performances with analog keyboards and synths, driving beats, fierce, enigmatic vocals, beautiful visuals and a contemporary dancer. Her solo performances opening for bands such as Ex Eye (Relapse), Liima/Efterklang (4AD), and festivals including Montreal Jazz Festival, Dusklit (New York), Sled Island, and Halfway Festival (Poland) have been described as hypnotic, powerful, and emotional.

Despite being released at the beginning of the pandemic, Sheenah’s debut album, Nowhere In Time, made it to the top ten national electronic charts. Her music video for her first single, Wrap Me Up, won the prize for Best Choreography at the UK Music Video Awards and is nominated for Music Video of the Year in the 2021 Juno Awards. Following her debut album’s success, Sheenah is currently co-producing her sophomore album with producers, Jace Lasek, Ryan Battistuzzi, and Steeven Chouinard.

The pandemic also opened the door to video game composition when Sheenah teamed up with Antoine Vachon to co-compose many of the tracks on the Rainbow Billy Soundtrack. Together, they “locked themselves” into a studio during the initial lockdown in Quebec, and brought together their extensive collection of vintage/new analog and digital synthesizers to co-compose many of the tracks on the soundtrack, including the theme song. It was also an excellent opportunity to employ many of Sheenah’s friends who were stuck at home with canceled tours, and you can hear some incredible musicians on the Rainbow Billy soundtrack, like banjo player Jordan Officer, trumpeter Andy King and drummer Kevin Warren.

Sophia Feng

Sophia Feng is an investor at Makers Fund, a global interactive entertainment VC firm focused on early-stage investments. With over 75 portfolio companies to date, Makers is dedicated to furthering growth and innovation in the interactive entertainment industry. Sophia works with portfolio companies and founders across North America. Prior to Makers, she worked with US consumer tech companies on strategy.

Stéfan Beauchamp-Daniel

Stefan will be the moderator for the panel “Cross platform performance: making multiplayer work”.

Stefan Beauchamp-Daniel, senior 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 before its launch in June 2016. Having seen the game evolve from a single platform launch (Steam) to the cross-platform beast it has become over the years, he has a good understanding of the challenges & complexity involved in multi-platform development. Prior to this, while employed at Behaviour Interactive, he had worked with multiple external partners on various work-for-hire and co-development projects, on titles such as FarCry 3 (Ubisoft), Halo Waypoint (Microsoft) & Star Citizen (Cloud Imperium Games).

Stephane Gayraud

Stephane Gayraud is Lead of Analytics for Motive, an Electronic Arts studio. Through analytics (including AI), he and his team are responsible for bringing actionable player insights throughout the game development process and post-launch. Stephane is a strong believer in balancing data with intuition, and he thrives in creative environments. He has developed and led multidisciplinary analyticsteams in consumer software, fashion retail and more recently, transportation & logistics. Stephane holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Dartmouth College.

Stéphanie Bouchard

Stéphanie will be the moderator for the panel “Creating believable characters”.

For 14 years, Stéphanie Bouchard has worked as a System Designer in AAA, indie, academic research, R&D and freelance games. She worked on all types of games, with all kinds of constraints, with or without budget.

After 8 years as a generalist, she fell in love with creating homicidal characters and decided to specialize in artificial intelligence. After all, someone has to make Black Mirror a reality! Distant dystopian futures don’t just happen, it’s a lot of work and cardio!

Stephanie Harvey

Stephanie will be the moderator for the panel “Watchability FTW: Designing for Streaming and Spectator Engagement”.

Stephanie Harvey, five-time Counter-Strike world champion and women’s pro-gaming icon, is now the Director of Development for Madison Square Garden’s esports team, CLG. Formerly a video game designer for Ubisoft Montreal, she is heavily involved in the esports scene: she is the founder of ÉLEVEY, host of the RDS Vie De Pro web series, and runs an esports production company.

She also works with the International Olympic Committee and devotes much of her time to raising awareness of healthy habits around video games, gender equality and online toxicity. Her 16 years in esports as a player and 7 years in the industry as a developer have earned her a Forbes 30 under 30, one of the BBC’s 100 Women and the title of Canada’s Smartest Person Season 3 on CBC.

Stu Taylor

Working in the creative industries for over 25 years, from writer/editor on a variety of video game / pop culture magazines through to PR Director and Owner of Dead Good Media (the company behind Dead Good PR, Dead Good Comics and Game Tomb).
Making the move to full-time PR in 2007, Stu has led and provided vital contribution to the lifestyle and specialist games press PR campaigns for titles like Disco Elysium, Baldur’s Gate 3, Dying Light, Dead Island, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, DJ Hero, Guitar Hero 5, BioShock 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Thierry Boulanger

After 8 years as a game programming team leader, Thierry launched Sabotage in April 2016, where he leads the design and production of games mixing retro aesthetics and modern design.

Following the success of his first title The Messenger, Sabotage is currently working on Sea of Stars, an RPG inspired by SNES classics.

Tor Frick

Tor Frick is an ex-AAA Art Director with 15 years of experience. During that time, he contributed to some of the world biggest action franchises, such as Far Cry, Doom, and Wolfenstein. He recently left AAA to co-found Neon Giant, where he is Creative Director. Neon Giant recently launched their first game, the action-RPG, The Ascent.

Valérie Boudreault

Valérie Boudreault has been the module and advanced studies program secretary at NAD-UQAC since 2008. She holds a bachelor’s degree in translation from the Université de Montréal and is also a great lover of video games. Her work consists, among other things, of answering all students’ questions about the university programs on campus and also of advising future students on their portfolio and motivation document.