Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein was Narrative Director on WE HAPPY FEW for Compulsion Games, as well as its DLCs, and was Story Director on CONTRAST and Narrative Lead on STORIES: THE PATH OF DESTINIES for Spearhead Games. He is currently working on Compulsion’s latest, unannounced game.

Alex started his career in films and tv. He co-wrote the film Bon Cop / Bad Cop, which broke the Canadian box office record, and co-created the comedy series NAKED JOSH, which ran for three years.

His books, CRAFTY SCREENWRITING and CRAFTY TV WRITING, have sold over 30,000 copies in English and have been translated into Korean and Chinese.

Alex Galasso

Alex is a seasoned product leader in mobile games with over a decade of experience operating mobile games at Scopely and Playtika. He is currently Sr. Director, Growth at Skillz leading the Product and LiveOps teams for their mobile eSports platform.

Alexandra Orlando

Alexandra Orlando is the Community Manager for Kitfox Games, an indie studio based in Montreal, Canada, currently working on Boyfriend Dungeon, Dwarf Fortress, Mossfield Origins and more! Her goal in the industry is to create kind, inclusive spaces for queer gamers and developers to thrive in. She has published articles on competitive gaming communities and livestreaming platforms. She is currently trying to read all the Dune books (don’t spoil it for her!)

Alexandre Reynaud

Alexandre Reynaud is an Assistant Professor at McGill University. His research focuses on human visual perception and particularly binocular vision. To study those, he develops computer-based psychophysics, behavioral experiments. His research also focuses on a more clinical/translational aspect: the study of amblyopia, a neurodevelopmental condition which emerges during childhood and results in deficit of binocular vision. He tries to understand and develop treatments for this condition based on digital technologies and digital therapies.

Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau

Alexia is a Research Scientist at Samsung working primarily on generative models. Her ultimate goal is to push these models beyond their current capabilities so that one day we can generate complex media content (such as movies, music, video games, and comics) through artificial intelligence.

Alexis Harvey

Co-founder of Astrolabe Interactive in 2018, Alexis Harvey is now Accessibility Game Designer at WB Games Montréal. Autistic himself, he is a candid advocate of neurodiversity, mental health, and inclusivity.

Améliane F. Chiasson

At Eidos-Montréal (prev. as part of Square Enix), Améliane works with multiple internal and external teams, projects and experts in order to break accessibility barriers in games, design with purpose, innovate and move towards a more inclusive future. Member of The Game Awards Future Class of ’21.

Angela-Mejia

Native of Colombia, Angela has a master’s degree in business from HEC Montréal and 15 years of experience in the management of SMEs. Since co-founding Clever Plays in 2013, Angela has been studio manager, utilizing her strengths in business development, financial management, and marketing direction. Under her leadership, Clever Plays studio launched the successful game Operation: Tango in 2021 and won awards at Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show and Numix. In 2022, Angela founded Indie Angels with the objective of helping indie developers to self-publish their games.

Arthur Protasio

Arthur Protasio is an award-winning, Emmy-nominated writer-director with over eight years of experience in the digital entertainment and interactive industries. Senior narrative designer at Archiact and founder of storytelling studio, Fableware Narrative Design, he’s known for the Cobra Kai games; tactical RPG, Sword Legacy: Omen; VR sci-fi adventure, Angest; TV series, Now Generation; and has worked with Disney, Netflix, Sony Pictures, Bytedance, and Samsung. When not crafting new tales, he teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Rumor has it his passion for storytelling is only rivaled by his love for cheese and music.

Barbara Decelle

Barbara Decelle worked for 10 years at the Institute of Research on Immunology and Cancerology (UdeM). During her lab (rat) life, she discovered data science and programming. Her interest and curiosity for this field led her to join the IVADO crew as a health research advisor. Since 2019, she works at creating bridges between health experts and AI scientists to foster the emergence of innovative projects.

Beatrix Moersch

Beatrix Moersch is the Audio Lead at Don’t Nod Studios in Montreal, Canada, and is currently working on a new and unannounced project. She has contributed to many titles during her career including big names like Dead by Daylight and Gears 5 as well as many indie titles. With an early beginning in experimental sound art, Beatrix has been creating sound and music to accompany visual experiences for well over a decade, and has worked professionally in the game industry since 2014.

Bianca Gabriela Lavric

Bianca is a 7 year video game industry veteran with a background in Technical Art and Quality Assurance with a strong passion for the arts and world building. She has worked on various major titles including Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and League of Legends. An artist since a young age, her goal in life is to create emotional pieces which touch a wide audience and express her vision. Having explored various visual mediums traditional and digital alike, she is now exploring the AI Art generation movement, and ways to implement it within her own workflow.

Carolina Mastretta

I’m a game developer born and raised in Mexico City, living in Vancouver, BC, where I co-founded Original Fire Games (OFG) in 2019 along with my two brothers Carlos and Alberto. My career in games began when I received the Brian Wood Memorial Internship at Relic Entertainment after graduating from Vancouver Film School’s Game Design program. My career at Relic progressed to Lead Game Designer on Age of Empires IV.

Having learned through my experience as a game designer that games are a miracle of human collaboration, I realized my deepest passion lies in building teams and helping the people I work with do their best work. My goal with Original Fire Games is to continue to build a team of individuals that coach and lead each other through the challenging oceans of game development.

Charles Beauchemin

Technical manager with 25 years of experience in video, audio, and video games.
Previously at Behaviour, EA, Ubisoft, Audiokinetic, Avid/Softimage, and Matrox.

Charles Pearson-Bernardoff

Gameplay Programmer with nearly ten years of experience in the video game industry using Unreal Engine 5 and Unity, Charles has worked for Cyanide Studio (Blood Bowl, Dungeonbowl, Confrontation), Airbus (Serious Games), Perihelion Interactive, Matsuko, and Eidos Sherbrooke, on both indie games and AAA titles.

In recent years, his efforts have been focused on creating a generic plugin for Unreal Engine 5 with Eidos Sherbrooke, allowing the detection of gameplay errors and regressions automatically.

Charlie Cleveland

Game Director and Co-Founder, Unknown Worlds (Moonbreaker, Subnautica, Natural Selection)

Colin Barré-Brisebois

Colin is the Head of Technology at SEED, Electronic Arts, where he focuses on cutting-edge graphics technologies and experiences. Previously he was Technical Director / Principal Rendering Engineer on the Batman: Arkham franchise at WB Games Montreal. Before WB, Colin was a rendering engineer on several games at EA, including Battlefield 3 at DICE, Need for Speed, Army of TWO, Medal of Honor, and others. He has presented at conferences (GDC, SIGGRAPH, I3D, HPG, GTC) and published work in books (GPU Pro, Ray Tracing Gems) and on his blog.

Colin DeShong

Colin DeShong is the current Head of Game Commerce and former Chief Creative Officer at Loaded. With more than 20 years experience, Colin has been building the infrastructure behind all aspects of the creator economy from the earliest days of online gaming. Whether it’s tools for aspiring competitors (ESEA, acquired by ESL in 2015), world-class esports teams (Evil Geniuses and Alliance, acquired by Amazon in 2014), or industry-leading creative partnerships and ventures (Loaded), Colin’s career has been devoted to empowering aspiring competitors, creators, teams, game developers, and brands to unlock their full potential in and around games. At Loaded, Colin has led the company’s push to augment its renowned talent management programs with developer strategy, sales, game-based economies, and IP ownership.

Daniel Dociu

Daniel Dociu is an award winning sci-fi and fantasy artist with 29 years of experience in the entertainment industry. Raised and educated in the capital of Transylvania, ( Romania), he earned a Master Degree in Industrial Design. He lives in Seattle since 1990 where he has functioned in senior creative leadership roles for multiple publishers and developers: NCsoft/ Ncsoft West, One More game, Amazon Game Studios, Arenanet, Electronic arts, Zipper Interactive, Squasresoft etc. Daniel is also a prolific IP development consultant and freelance artist, with notable contributions to numerous publications, advertising and film, as well as educational speaking engagements all over the world.

Dave Proctor

Dave Proctor is the founder of Mighty Yell Studios. He was the game director and designer on The Big Con, and has been working as a designer and producer in Toronto for 8 years. He enjoys learning new ways to run a studio sustainably.

David Bedard

David Bedard is a narrative designer, producer and COO at Sweet Baby Inc. With over a decade of experience in both AAA and indie games, his work with Sweet Baby has seen him lead multiple projects for Panic’s Playdate, write on the award-winning Sable by Shedworks, and manage over 40 creative titles with a wide variety of clients. Beyond his work with SBI, Dbed is known for his love of The Fast and the Furious franchise, obscure platformers, and pro wrestling.

David Fox

David Fox is CEO of Double Coconut, a design and development studio that crafts connected mobile games for clients such as Microsoft, WB Games, Ellen Digital, Cartoon Network, and many more. In the past, he co-founded iWin, Inc., where he helped guide development of best-selling titles such as Jewel Quest and Family Feud. He also held executive roles at Digital Chocolate and Telltale Games. He is the author of several best-selling books about internet technologies and culture, and his writing has appeared in publications such as Salon, Gamasutra, and Game Programming Gems.

Davide Diego Ricchiuti

13+ years of experience in the Game Industry in the Design department.
First Italian internationally published in Game Design.

Creative director with experience in AAA, Mobile and Indie, currently working on AA project at Caracal games and consultant for various game company.

Derek Kwan

Derek is an organizational culture/leadership development specialist and game developer in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He is an avid supporter of local game devs, and created the Game Discovery Exhibition, an independent games festival in Canada. Derek has credentials in education, technology management, business, project management, change management, and psychologically safe leadership. He is currently completing an MBA where he studies sustainable development in the indie games space. As a dev, Derek has focused on discoverability and biz-dev, but has spent the majority of his career building incredible places to work.

Eden Chen

Eden is the founder and CEO of Pragma and an active investor and advisor to more than 50 game studios and startups. Pragma is a backend game engine that enables multiplayer and social games and has raised more than $50 million and supports studio visionaries like Mountaintop, Frost Giant, Lightforge, BonusXP, Midnight Society, and Wonderstorm. Prior to this, Eden was the founder of Fishermen Labs, and Lightmark Capital. Eden was selected as a part of Forbes’ 30 under 30, LA Business Journal’s 20 in their 20’s, Emory Magazine’s 40 under 40, and was a TedX speaker.

Eric Bellefeuille

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Eric Bellefeuille has been working in the video game industry since 1998 as a UX/UI director, and previously in print since 1991. He presently holds the title of Art Direction – Visual Design at Ubisoft Montreal. During his time in the industry, he was had worked on many titles, included but not limited to: Deux Ex Human Revolution, Deux Ex Mankind Divided, Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect Andromeda, Guardians of the Galaxy and Splinter Cell Conviction.

He focuses on pushing the boundaries of user experience with by applying an ever evolving art direction approach through many facets of visual development and human computer interaction systems. Eric is fluent in many visual languages, including high-end graphic design layouts, concept art, iconography, logos, symbols and motion design. Developing user experience workflows that handle the cognitive feedback that video games require in order to provide a seamless interaction field for players is a foundational part of his work.

Eric is deeply invested in experimental art, always looking for new tools to add to his creative process. Fractal design, new shaders, and in particular new procedural tools in particular are always of interest.

François Devic

“François has been a tools programmer for more than 15 years in the video game industry in Montreal. After shipping Splinter, Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2, he joined Eidos Montréal to work on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
He is a lead tools programmer right now.
He really wants that content creators create without having to think of any technical issues.”

Francois Lord

Francois has worked in the visual effects industry for 25 years during which he worked as a generalist 3D artist, technical director, set supervisor and CG supervisor. He also participated in the development of the USD pipeline as pipeline architect and then head of pipeline at RodeoFX. He is now a professor at the NAD school of digital arts and a consultant in USD pipeline and color management.

Frédéric Robichaud

Vétéran de l’industrie du jeu vidéo, Frédéric entame sa carrière en 1998 chez Softimage comme programmeur. Après un passage sur Assassin’s Creed d’Ubisoft, il devient programmeur en chef sur la franchise Far Cry avant de rejoindre Behaviour. Fort d’un MBA de HEC, il aide au lancement de Thief et s’occupe pendant plus de 8 ans de la Franchise Tomb Raider en tant que directeur de programmation chez Eidos-Montréal. Il occupe ensuite le poste de directeur de la technologie chez Reflector avant de rejoindre Gearbox en 2021 où il chapeaute l’ensemble de la technologie sur les sites de Québec et Montréal. An industry veteran, Frederic began his career in 1998 at Softimage as a programmer. Later, he worked on Assassin’s Creed at Ubisoft, then joined Behaviour Interactive as the lead programmer for the Far Cry franchise. With an MBA from HEC in hand, Frederic helped ship Thief, and worked on the Tomb Raider franchise for eight years as the programming director for Eidos-Montreal. He then worked as the director of technology at Reflector before joining Gearbox Entertainment in 2021. He now guides all technology for their Quebec City and Montreal studios.

Frédérique FOURNY-JENNINGS

“Frédérique Fourny-Jennings began her career in the video game industry in 1998, in production management at Ubisoft Montreal.

After being a Producer for Microsoft Studios in Seattle, on the Minecraft and Forza franchises among others, she seized the opportunity of her return to Montreal in 2017, to continue to deepen her knowledge of the industry through the angle of talent acquisition and Human Resources.

In 2020, she has been appointed Managing Director of DON’T NOD Montreal, where she’s working to grow the studio, which count now more than 40 people, working on a brand new IP.”

Geoff Ellenor

Game Director at WB Games Montreal, Geoff Ellenor is a passionate designer and storyteller in AAA games with 15 years of experience in the industry. Chaotic good, cat-lover, autistic.

Gordon McGladdery

Gordon McGladdery is the Studio Director at A Shell in the Pit, a Canadian full-service game audio team and trailer production studio. A Shell in the Pit has shipped over 40 titles, including Untitled Goose Game, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach, Rogue Legacy 1 & 2, Night in the Woods, Sneaky Sasquatch, and Night in the Woods.

Guillaume Laforge

Guillaume Laforge is a software developer specialized in computer graphics.
He worked on both sides of the VFX industry. For Software companies developing Digital Content Creation applications and for Visual Effects companies involved in various films and commercials.

Jack Wilson

Jack hails from Melbourne, Australia. He’s been working in indie games professionally for about five years and has worn many hats across Production, Teaching, Design and Writing. These days he’s wearing less hats, choosing to focus on Narrative and Level Design. Past games he’s had something to do with include Eastshade, Florence (Nintendo Switch Port), Broken Roads, and most recently TombStar.

James Portnow

James is the creator of Extra Credits. He’s worked on games ranging from the Call of Duty to Farmville to League of Legends. He’s spoken at universities and corporations around the world and at conferences ranging from GDC to PAX to SXSW. He’s been quoted in the New York Times and Time Magazine, published by Oxford University Press and has taught at the Masters and Bachelor’s level.

Jason Della Rocca

Jason Della Rocca 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 Execution Labs, he was a hands-on early stage investor to over 20 independent game studios from North America and Europe. Between 2000-09 he served as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and was honored for his industry building efforts with the inaugural Ambassador Award at the Game Developers Conference. In 2009, Jason was named to Game Developer Magazine’s “Power50,” a list which profiles 50 of the most important contributors to the state of the game industry. As a sought after expert on the game industry, Jason has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide.

Jesse Malcolm Sweet

Jesse is a 20-year veteran of the video game industry, working his way through the ranks to cinematic and realization director at Square Enix, 2K Games and Ubisoft before founding Altar Creative in 2014. He is also an award-winning filmmaker with a deep love for the intersection of games and cinema.

Jesse Scoble

Jesse Scoble has been working in games for over 20 years now, with 15+ years in video games and 5 years in pen&paper rpgs. Currently at Lightspeed, he was previously lead writer for Ubisoft’s Hyper Scape, and contribued to AC Origins and Odyssey, and Far Cry 5. He was also lead writer for Wizard101 for several years. He lives in Montreal and makes a mean mojito.

Jessica Richard

Jessica’s first game was Penguin Adventure on MSX and she never quit video games after that. She studied Literature and Communication, then was a journalist and community manager for a French media group, before working as a Communication Manager at Dotemu and The Arcade Crew for four years. She’s now a part of the ICO Partners’ team and focusing on the french market. She loves cheese and dogs but not mixed together.

Johan Eile

Johan is the Co-founder and now General Manager of Kabam Montreal (a Netmarble company), The studio is a pioneer in Free to Play, Games as a Service, cross platform PC and Mobile games. At Kabam, Johan is responsible for the day to day operations of the studio and heads up the publishing. Johan has been in the crossroads of technology, art and business for 20 years and before starting Riposte Games (acquired by Kabam/Netmarble) he worked for companies like Ubisoft and THQ. An entrepreneur at heart, Johan is active in several game studios as an advisor and investor, most notably local rockstars like Norsfell (Tribes of Midgard) and Play Ventures.

Jongwoo Kim

Jongwoo is a co-founder and the creative director of Studio Imugi. His design philosophy focuses on telling narratives through core gameplay, so that player choices drive the experience. Due to his interest in history, moral philosophy and political systems, a theme that unites the projects directed by Jongwoo is the “Problem of Evil” – why does evil exist in human culture? To explore this, Jongwoo pursues design that challenges the existing materialistic design paradigms in the industry by presenting players with difficult ethical dilemmas.

Jules Gaudin

Jules Gaudin is a lawyer at Robic where he specializes in technology law and intellectual property. He assists and advises his clients on issues related to the commercialization of technologies, or regulatory issues. With a personal passion for video games, Jules has had the opportunity to assist studios and developers in negotiating publishing contracts with various publishers for the global distribution of their games. With this experience, Jules has been able to use his expertise at the international level to negotiate such contracts in Canada and elsewhere.

Julian Maroda

Julian Maroda is Co-founder, CEO and Minister of Creation at Norsfell, a Montreal-based studio, maker of the multiplayer hit Tribes of Midgard. This communication and game design graduate, born in Brussels, Belgium, specializes in the strategic vision and creative direction of games, and has contributed to the launch of more than 30 titles. Julian regularly gives his time to exchange with others, be it at the MIGS, IGDA or even Comiccon. He also played in the cult action movie, Kung Fury. 10% Viking inside ❄️

Kim Belair

Kim Belair is a writer, narrative designer, and the CEO of Sweet Baby Inc, a narrative development company based in Montreal. She’s worked on games including Sable, Neo Cab, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and Hyper Light Breaker, among many others.

Kim Derome

Pianist, composer and cat lover, Kim graduated from Cégep de St-Laurent in classical piano and from Université de Montréal in writing technique. Her career in video games began as a freelancer before joining Gameloft Montréal in 2014 as a full-time composer. She joined Square Enix Montréal in 2020 as a full-time composer/sound designer. She specializes in orchestral and electronic music and has worked on several titles such as Disney Dreamlight Valley, Disney Magic Kingdoms, Lego Legacy: Heroes Unboxed, Asphalt Street Storm and Hitman Sniper The Shadows. Kim is also a mentor to young aspiring composers and regularly gives lectures on the profession of video game composer.

Laurence Kennedy

Laurence Kennedy(they/them) comes from an award-winning background in immersive theatre and is a Co-Founder and Creative Director at Shedbuilder Games. Their work on the fully blind accessible ‘Radio.play’ has been met with recognition as a finalist in the Ubisoft Indie Series and selection for the initial cohort of the Eidos Innovation Program. Laurence’s practice centers on queering narrative and mechanics while always starting from a foundation of accessibility.

Louis Marcoux

Technical specialist in real-time and 3D content creation as well as user experience designer at Autodesk for 22 years. Recently joined NVIDIA in the Omniverse for Games Developers.

Luc BAGHADOUST

“Luc Baghadoust is Executive Producer of the DON’T NOD Montreal studio. Coming from a background in Audiovisual, he entered the Video Game world 16 years ago by becoming a mobile game tester at Vivendi Games.
He joined Dontnod in 2009 as Lead QA then Associate Producer on Remember Me, the studio’s first title.
He then became Producer of Life is Strange 1 and 2, before leaving for Montreal in 2019 to set up DON’T NOD Montreal and start the production of its first narrative game.”

Lucie Lalumiere

“Lucie Lalumiere is a 25+ year veteran video game and digital media executive whose myriad positions include: General Manager, French Market at MediaLinx Sympatico (Bell), Executive Director, New Media at Radio-Canada, Vice President & General Manager, Interactive at Corus Entertainment, Chief Operating Officer & General Manager of supersonic MINDS, and Founder & Principal of Lalumiere Media.

As President and CEO of Interactive Ontario, Lucie is a staunch advocate for the video game and interactive digital media sector. She is dedicated to helping the industry grow, compete on the global stage, and create leading-edge techno-creative jobs in our communities. She serves on boards of directors and advisory committees in the digital media and entertainment industry, and she and her teams have won many awards for their pioneering work in the field.”

Luis Antonio

Luis Antonio is the creator/writer of the award-winning Twelve Minutes, featuring James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe. He is known for his remarkable work as a senior 3-D artist for the BAFTA Games award-winning The Witness; his earlier work includes Art Director at Ubisoft and Artist at Rockstar Games.

Luke Lamothe

Since entering the industry in the late 1990s, Luke has worked as a programmer, technical director, and studio director at multiple studios on dozens of titles across a wide range of platforms and hardware generations.

His current role is that of the founder and CEO of 24 Bit Games, a Johannesburg based technical game development studio that focuses on helping clients to get their games into the hands of as many players as possible.

Madina Diabate

“As a Talent Acquisition, program manager within the gaming & technology sector, I strive to innovate internal mobility hiring practices and tackle game-changing challenges including diversity, inclusion, and equity (DI & E).

With 6+ years of impactful change leadership for global game publisher Ubisoft, I have been graciously awarded the 2017 Employee of the Year by my peers and am known for my inclusionary recruiting practices within the organization. In 2020, I founded Ubisoft Montreal’s first Black Employees Association ERG. As a passionate advocate, I work to build more supportive community networks by addressing issues, facilitating discussions, and resolving challenges in the workplace through both the internal & external Black communities. In addition to my ERG leadership, I am an active advocate for new candidates and current team members, ensuring all staff regardless of gender, race and/or sexual orientation feel safe, and are always provided adequate opportunities.

Persistent to foster environments of belonging and promote workplace inclusion, I lead through my people first, charismatic personality and extensive professional background. Always interested in creating impactful, positive experiences through diverse hiring processes, organizational resource groups and development of corporate social responsibility plans for the organizations I work with. “

Mahzad Kalantari

“Mahzad holds a PhD in Computer Vision and works at Eidos Sherbrooke as a Lead Machine Learning Specialist.
She is interested in test automation and reinforcement learning for video games.
Previously, she worked on recommendation systems at Ubisoft Montreal.
Mahzad has over 10 years of experience in various data domains.”

Maral Mohammadian

Maral Mohammadian is a producer at the renowned National Film Board of Canada’s Animation & Interactive Studio. Based in Montreal, her award-winning films include “The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer” by Randall Okita and “Deyzangeroo” by Ehsan Gharib, as well as international coproductions “Hide” by Daniel Gray (Hungary/France) and “Impossible Figures and other stories I” by Marta Pajek (Poland). Maral has helped to develop some of Canada’s top rising talents through the NFB’s flagship apprentice program, Hothouse. In addition to films, she produces distinctive interactive projects such as Paloma Dawkins’ acclaimed VR work “Museum of Symmetry”.

Marie Laurence Sauvé

After working for years in videogame retail, Marie Laurence obtained a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in project management from ESG UQAM with the sole purpose of working in the videogame industry and producing awesome entertainment. She worked with Ubisoft’s IT teams and Sauropod Studio as a project manager before taking on her role as an executive director at GamePlay Space. No matter where she is, she thrives on innovation, building better tools to take on the hardest tasks, and working in teams to find the best solutions to the greatest challenges. She loves puzzles, both jigsaws and mind, and sees every challenge as an opportunity to get higher and further. Marie Laurence is a firm believer that attacking every situation with positivity and laughter will lead a team to accomplish great things.

Marie Mejerwall

Marie Mejerwall is a long-time industry veteran who originally started her career in esports in 2001 in Sweden. She eventually transitioned into game development and moved to Montréal to launch her AAA journey, working at studios such as WB Games, Eidos and Funcom/Nvizzio. She then continued touring the world and worked for Capcom Vancouver, Ubisoft Berlin and a few others as she grew her experience and skills and ranked up to Game Director.

Today, Marie is an independent advisor and host and lends her expertise to game studios, publishers, investors and schools. She also hosts conferences. Read more on https://mejerwall.com.

Marilou Loncol Daigneault

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

Martin Talbot

Martin Talbot has over 25 years of technology experience in the digital entertainment industry. His impressive track record with major players in the gaming industry, including more than 15 years at Electronic Arts, EA Sports, EA Create and Frostbite, gives him the creative and strategic vision to be an impactful contributor. With his experience as a leader and mentor of numerous teams internationally, he has brought to Frima for the past 2 years, a leadership of influence and expertise within the business technology, art and quality control community, sharing his vast knowledge and passion for technology.

Matthew M. White

Matthew is CEO of Whitethorn Games, a publisher focusing on approachable, low stress games for PC, mobile, console, and cloud platforms. Previously in data science and user experience, Matt’s AAA work at Playstation, Volition, Keywords Studios, and elsewhere used player insights to drive business, design, and engineering decisions. At Whitethorn, Matt is working to widen the “core” game demographic by building experiences that can be enjoyed by anyone – regardless of skillset or ability level.

Maxine Sophia Wolff

Maxine Sophia Wolff is a writer and narrative designer from Richmond, Virginia. Aside from working in video games, she also writes fiction and has had her work published in print and online.

Mike Ducarme

Mike has been in the industry in some form or another since the mid 2000s.

Former Community Manager turned coder, who somehow stumbled into the Brand and Marketing Manager Position at Berzerk Studio; to this day how it happened is still a mystery even within the company, along with what it is that he actually does.

Myriam Beauvais

Myriam is a Product Manager, Software Engineer and Psychophysicist. While she started her career as a R&D graphics engineer, Myriam found a passion in understanding how technology impacts people and making its usage more accessible. This led her to research how different rendering techniques impact human perception of renderings’ quality. In parallel, she rebooted Montreal ACM SIGGRAPH with the mission to strengthen the local community and improve access to knowledge in the industry. Following her experiences at Eidos-Montreal, Frima Studio and Unity Technologies, Myriam is now Roblox’s Product Manager of Rendering, where she works on democratizing and pushing the boundaries of virtual worlds creation.

Nicolas Soufflet

A French native, Nicolas moved to California in the mid-2000s to put his multicultural ambitions in the hospitality and entertainment industries to good use. With 10 years of international production/executive production experience, his current role is to manage the network of production partners for the Interactive division of Skydance Media. His responsibilities spread across Production, Marketing and Business Development initiatives.

Nora Hébert

Hi there! I’m Nora Hébert (she/they), Montréal-based musician, composer, arranger, sound/voice designer, recording engineer and sometimes virtual instrument maker. I’ve been playing music for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been writing it for over 10 years.

I studied Jazz composition and arrangement at Université de Montréal, with a focus on interactive audio as well as ethnomusicology. My favourite styles to write are Jazz (fusion or otherwise), funk, and classical wind ensembles, but those are by no means the only ones I write!

Olivier Delisle

An entrepreneur and a gamer at heart, Olivier joined Ubisoft as Director of the Entrepreneurs program. A flagship program of the company that helps independent studios in Quebec to realize their projects through various initiatives, such as mentoring and financing. The new $10M investment fund, RADAR, is also part of Entrepreneurs’ key initiatives and is led by Olivier.

Over the course of his career, he has held several key positions in different companies, from sales manager to strategic planning consultant. This 360° vision of the company is definitely an asset in supporting the various studios, as he has a good grasp of the challenges and issues faced by today’s companies. Dedicated to the success of local studios, he puts his expertise at their service.

Pascal Langlois

Pascal Langdale is an actor and teacher known for versatility across multiple media. He has worked in TV, Film, Voice and Video Game. Described as the “Swiss Army Knife” of Mocap, Pascal is head of the Canadian branch of The Mocap Vaults. As a movement specialist with an expertise in nonverbal behavior, he brings characters to life through voice, body and psychology. His recent mocap work includes Far Cry 6 as a body double, and the voice of Bagley in Watchdogs: Legion (Nominated for a CGA), also contributing to many of the ‘Play as anyone’ NPC’s, as actor/movement director.

Pascal Nataf

Pascal Nataf has been teaching video game development for the past ten years. He co-founded Affordance Studio in 2012, a company specializing in gamification and social impact games. Very involved in the world of entrepreneurship and new technologies, Pascal serves as a mentor and investor. He co-founded Asylum, a video game incubator.

Paula Diane Rogers

Paula Rogers is a writer, editor, and illustrator with over 15 years of experience. She was Lead Writer and Story Editor of the BAFTA-nominated game Neo Cab, which was named one of the best titles of 2019 by the L.A. Times, The Washington Post, and Paste Magazine, among others, and awarded Best Narrative Design by IndieCade.

Pejman Mirza-Babaei

Pejman is a Game UX consultant, author and professor. His latest book, The Game Designer’s Playbook: An Introduction to Game Interaction Design, will be available in Fall 2022. He also co-edited the Games User Research book (2018), a compendium of insights from over 40 experts on UX research in games. He was the UX Research Director at Execution Labs (Montréal, Canada) from 2015-17 and UX Researcher at Vertical Slice/Player Research (Brighton, UK) from 2009-13. Pejman is passionate about working closely with game companies to solve complex interaction design problems.

Philippe Sawicki

Philippe Sawicki is an engineer passionate about Internet-connected applications, multimedia systems, and growing platforms. Over the last decade, he has contributed to a number of initiatives bringing multimedia workflows to the Internet, rallying traditionally separate worlds under the same umbrella for the benefit of Users.

With prior experience in web services, real-time, M&E, and AR/VR, he joined NVIDIA to work alongside equally passionate individuals, using their talent and expertise to bring Omniverse and Pixar’s USD to the Cloud.

Pierre Moisan

Pierre Moisan has traveled the world and the Seven Seas. Yes: everybody is looking for something.

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, Night in the Woods, Overland, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, and TUNIC. She is currently hard at work supporting The Glory Society’s unannounced title and Finji’s own internal development project. Rebekah is a co-designer on Finji’s original game development projects and manages all of the console and storefront relationships and initiatives for Finji’s internal and partner publishing projects. Rebekah loves being a soccer/basketball/track/swim… mom, to run long distances, make bad halloween costumes and spend as much time as possible at Lake Michigan every summer with her and Adam’s two beautiful chaotic boys.

Rob Roe

Rob is the VP of Rendering and Systems at Hololabs in Victoria BC. He has worked across a number of different interactive projects ranging from desktop & mobile games to AR, VR & projection mapping experiences for major theme parks. While focused on the rendering and tech art side of most projects, Rob also works in dev ops, backend and general system design throughout different projects at the studio.

Rodrigue Duperron

Since 2016, experienced Marketing professional Rodrigue Duperron has empowered Montreal-based indie Thunder Lotus with cutting-edge communication strategy, business intelligence, and marketing campaigns for the studio’s titles Jotun, Sundered, and the award-winning Spiritfarer. Perennially passionate about video games as a medium, yet mindful of its ever-evolving challenges as a business, Rodrigue considers it a blessing to work with a talented team that understands the crucial role marketing plays in successful gamedev. He proudly aims to help keep Thunder Lotus’ games self-published and perpetually profitable!

Rosemarie Sarno

Born in Montreal, Rosemarie made her way into the gaming industry after completing her Masters in Sociology from the University of Waterloo. She is currently the Community Manager at Red Barrels bolstering the Outlast fandom for the future instalment in the franchise, “The Outlast Trials”. Previously a Community Manager at Ludia working with IPs such as: Dungeons & Dragons, How To Train Your Dragon, and Jurassic Park. With a strong background in qualitative and quantitative research she aims to cultivate the player experience through social mediums to help shape game development with players sentiments in mind.

Shiew Yeu Loh

Shiew Yeu Loh joined Amber Studio in May this year as their Art Executive Producer to help with Blockchain Game and NFT Art Production. She will be providing mentorship to the art team as well as coaching them about process, tools and pipeline. A game industry veteran, she started as a texture artist, a generalist and a producer in 2004 before working at Electronic Arts as the Senior External Development Artist for 14 years. During her time at the Sims, Shiew Yeu worked on Sims Nintendo Wii, Sims 3, Sims Medieval, Sims Online Store, Sims Mobile and Sims 4. In 2020, she moved onto Pocket Gems as an Art Manager to oversee the mobile game War Dragon by working with the dev team, art leadership and outsourcing vendors. She was also in charge of implementing diversity and inclusion content into their character library. Shiew Yeu has been a speaker at various game industry conferences regarding being a mother in the game industry as well as topics that center around diversity and inclusion.

Shum Singh

Shum founded Agnitio Capital in 2003 and has close to 25 years of technology focused mergers and acquisitions expertise having worked in both New York & London. For the past 20 years, Agnitio has specialised in working with founder owned and led studios and assisting them in achieving their strategic options (exiting, raising funds or not pursuing any deal at all).
Shum has spoken at various industry events including Mobile Games Forum, Casual Connect Europe, Nordic Game, Pocket Gamer (London, Toronto, Helsinki & Vancouver), Pareto Gaming Investor Seminar and G-Star in Busan, Korea.
Shum was an investor and non-executive director of Innova Intellectual Properties SARL (exited to EG7 for €110 million), Heroic Labs Ltd & Sviper GmbH. He was also an early stage investor in Hutch Games Limited (exited to MTG for $375 million), Tower Pop Oy, Electric Noir Limited & Dream Payments Inc.

Stefania Pecòre

Stefania is a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. Her mission is to improve technology through AI in different domains, included the Game industry.

She previously worked as AI specialist for Square Enix. Now she is a Data Scientist at Behaviour Interactive in a cross functional team mainly for the Dead By Daylight brand.

Sydnee McLeod

“Sydnee McLeod is the Senior Community Manager at Norsfell (located in Montreal) creators of the co-op hit game, Tribes of Midgard. She graduated from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University with a focus on user experience, game design and immersive technologies. Ever since the Club Penguin days, she has been deeply embedded in online communities and what it means to build lasting relationships in a virtual world.

She specializes in upholding an open dialogue with community, with transparency being paramount. Her goal is to ensure players are listened to in an empathetic manner, in turn building trust and reducing toxicity.”

Tanya X. Short

Tanya is the Captain of Kitfox Games, serving as its principal game designer, business developer, and producer for games like Boyfriend Dungeon and Moon Hunters. She’s also the co-director of Pixelles and has co-edited textbooks on how to use procedural generation in game design and storytelling.

Terrance Cohen

Experienced technology leader, XR innovator, and game systems engineer with over 25 shipped titles on 12 platforms including franchise-firsts Bioshock, Resistance: Fall of Man, Medal of Honor, and League of Legends.

TQ Jefferson

With over two decades in the industry, TQ Jefferson has exhibited a special knack for steering franchise expansion for companies looking to leverage IP in gaming. As the Chief Product Officer for Survios, TQ will define the product roadmap as the company levels up from successful startup to developer with real AAA aspirations. This stewardship will encompass all projects currently in development, including those with partners 20th Century Games and MGM, as well as expanding the company’s vision to new partners and projects.

Trent Oster

Trent is a BAFTA Award-winning veteran of the games industry. He was one of six original co-founders of BioWare; during his time there, worked as a Technical Artist, Programmer, and Project Director, leading the development of the award-winning Neverwinter Nights from a one-sentence description through two expansion packs and over 5 million units sold.

In 2009, Trent left Bioware to co-found Beamdog with Cameron Tofer, where he hold the title of CEO.

Trevor Williams

I am head of Corp Strategy and Business Development at Hi-Rez Studios. Most of my time is spent on go-to-market strategy and GaaS needs for 4 live games and 3 more in development. Prior to Hi-Rez I spent time at Motiga on the Live services game Gigantic and Xbox 3rd Party Publishing where I spent time working on the [email protected] program, 2nd Party finance and 3rd Party finance.

Tsahi Liberman

Nordic by heart, Latino by nature, an award winning game designer, speaker, developer, economist and educator. Traveling the world and the forbidden realms to empower those who are less fortunate, a keen gamer for all platforms and genres, Formerly heading the game design and data at Lightneer, nowdays an owner of WAGMI2 – a blockchain and metaverse game design, game economy, tokenomics and narrative design hands on consultancy, globally working with international teams and studios, and an owner of Styrax studios, a Halifax Canada based game studio working on Console, PC and mobile games in various genres.

Vahe Vardanyan

Dr. Vahe Vardanyan is the Scientific Director and an active member of the AI team at CDRIN, leading various projects related to computer vision, graphics and more. He has about 8 years of experience in the industry, worked in different companies in Montreal, creating VR applications, games and museum expositions.

Vanessa Alarie

Project manager with a strong interdisciplinary background, Vanessa has over ten years of professional experience in various industries: science and technology culture, education and science outreach, organizational change consulting, asset management and innovation for international manufacturers. She is also an artist-entrepreneur with over 20 professional exhibitions to her credit. Her atypical background gives her a great capacity to adapt and makes her professionally versatile.

Trained as a scientific museologist, Vanessa also has a doctoral degree in applied human sciences on the ethical issues of natural science museum exhibitions. In 2020, she completed her academic career with an MBA at HEC Montréal, which consolidated her business skills and confirmed her interest in the effervescent space of new technologies, artificial intelligence and massive data.

Vanessa wishes to catalyze expert knowledge to contribute significantly to the improvement of society through innovation and value creation via knowledge sharing and collaboration in scientific and technological projects.

Vincent Archambault

Vincent started his career working as a developer in interactive media in the 2000s, and then quickly moved to the gaming industry. He co-founded Vandal Games in the early 2010s where he helped launched many multiplayer titles on PC, mobile and web-based platforms as Production Director. The company was then acquired in 2017, and after many years doing LiveOps he now focuses his energy on helping game studios launch multiplayer titles with his work at Edgegap.

William Bertin

After more than 15 years of reviewing video games, William is Sourcing Manager for Plug In Digital and its two publishing labels: PID Games and Dear Villagers. His goal: to anticipate future trends, and find the people and games that will shape the JV industry in a near future.

Yasmin Regis

Yasmin Regis has a background in law and for 3 years has been acting as Business Developer Manager, currently working at Devoted Studios. A role that requires wearing many hats, she covers the full External Development cycle – lead generation, pitching, bidding, negotiations, account management, and relationship construction with key clients on a world-wide scale and across all disciplines.

Yiyi Zhang

Yiyi (she / her / pronounced ee-ee) is an artist, immigration attorney, and game developer. She currently works as a PR + community manager in the games industry, with a strong focus on developing diverse, kind, and supportive ecosystems. She serves on the Board of Directors of both GUMBO.NYC, New York City’s largest collective of independent game developers, and Death By Audio Arcade, a Brooklyn-based organization that builds and curates indie arcade cabinets. She also volunteers as an immigration attorney and human rights advocate for Al Otro Lado, providing legal support to refugees, deportees, and other migrants from Central / South America and Haiti.

In her free time, she is a voracious daydreamer who regularly loses herself in tabletop RPGs, video games, and fantasy novels.

Yoan Fanise

Yoan Fanise is the French creator behind the games Road 96, Valiant Hearts, Lost in Harmony and 11-11 Memories Retold.
He first worked for 14 years at Ubisoft in France and Singapore before founding DigixArt studio, now part of the Plaion group of Embracer. His approach to creation is centered on the emotions that the player will feel, their variety, their depth, around a strong narrative content. The gameplay supporting this narrative framework. Its latest game Road 96 is both a critical and commercial success and the studio is now working on several creations.